User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2016/Nov

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City, state in infobox

Colonies Chris, I noticed your recent edits to several articles, including Earl Banks, where you removed the state from infobox fields like place of birth in cases where the city article in question is titled without the state. Was this formatting change discussed anywhere? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:46, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I now see there has been some discussion about this on your talk page before. There really should be an RfC or discussion about this at some high-level place on Wikipedia, as it's an issue that impacts thousands of articles across many subjects. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:54, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jweiss - these changes are in line with Manual of Style guidelines (see Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#United_States). Certain major cities are considered so well known that the state is unnecessary. This has been discussed and decided at the highest level - that's how it became a recommendation in the MoS - so it doesn't need to be rediscussed for every article individually. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:57, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

The MOS you're pointing me to here talks about conventions for naming articles about cities. It doesn't saying anything about the phrasing of those cities when they are referenced in other articles. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:45, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

The key question is always whether our readers are helped by the inclusion of this information. AP have decided that for certain major cities, state is not needed or helpful, and we've decided that we concur with their judgment. Whether the superfluous information is in an article title or in article text, it's still superfluous and not helpful. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:59, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Okay, but where is the Wikipedia consensus on that last part. I don't see it. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:44, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Colonies Chris, please cease editing city and states in tables using {{CFB Schedule Entry}} and the like. You do not have a consensus to interpret the MOS in way that you are. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Jweiss, where is the Wikipedia consensus to include largely redundant information in such a space-tight location? Tony (talk) 05:10, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Tony, "Largely redundant"? What are you talking about? I'm talking edits like this one, where Chris is replacing abbreviated state codes in those tight spaces with the full state name. I'm also talking about killing the state codes for cities like Atlanta in these tables, which breaks parallelism in the list. Jweiss11 (talk)

The tables I've changed are not particularly space-constrained; there's no actual need for abbreviations. And it's bizarre to complain that I'm taking up space by expanding states and also complain about me removing superfluous states. Colonies Chris (talk) 08:53, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

What bothers me is that you're breaking a consistent convention used in thousands of articles without discussion. The spacing is not the key issue. Tony brought it up. Let's put it by the wayside because it's not the heart of the matter. Jweiss11 (talk) 13:52, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Removing direct pipes to article

Chris, on another note, but related to these same edits, why are you removing pipes that link directly to the article in question? See your edit at 1950 Ole Miss Rebels football team: [[Vaught–Hemingway Stadium|Hemingway Stadium]]→[[Hemingway Stadium]]. What's the rationale here? Jweiss11 (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Those changes are my primary purpose with these edits.

The names of venues tend to change because of sponsorship deals with naming rights. A redirect provides a simple way to ensure that all links to an old name will go to the article under the current name. Piping an old name to the current name is pointless because if the name changes again, as it surely will when the current sponsorship deal comes to an end, the piped name will itself become a redirect and the already trivial benefit of a direct link will be lost. This has already happened in several cases - for example [[Baltimore Arena|1st Mariner Arena]] simply pipes the name to another name which has since been superseded, and is now itself a redirect.

Here are some relevant extracts from guides to best practice in piping and redirects:

1. From Wikipedia:Piped_link#When_not_to_use:

• It is generally not good practice to pipe links simply to avoid redirects. The number of links to a redirect page can be a useful gauge of when it would be helpful to spin off a subtopic of an article into its own page.
• Introducing unnecessary invisible text makes the article more difficult to read in page source form.
• Non-piped links make better use of the "what links here" tool, making it easier to track how articles are linked and helping with large-scale changes to links.

1. From Wikipedia:Redirect#Do_not_.22fix.22_links_to_redirects_that_are_not_broken:

• There is usually nothing wrong with linking to redirects to articles. Some editors are tempted, upon finding a link to a redirect page, to bypass the redirect and point the link directly at the target page. While there are a limited number of cases where this is beneficial, there is otherwise no good reason to pipe links solely to avoid redirects. Doing so is generally an unhelpful, time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental. It is almost never helpful to replace [[redirect]] with [[target|redirect]].

Another example that I've fixed a lot of recently is Shields–Watkins Field, which in quite a few cases was misspelled as Sheilds–Watkins or Shield–Watkins, but the piping to Neyland Stadium had hidden what would otherwise have been a redlink. There are also several cases where the piping would sent the reader to a general article, but correct piping would send the reader to a more specific article. For example, [[Ben Hill Griffin Stadium|Fleming Field]] - I changed the piping to [[Fleming Field (Gainesville)|Fleming Field]], which is an article specifically about that field. Another example is Cliff Hare Stadium, piped to Jordan-Hare Stadium (with hyphen), which is itself a redirect to Jordan–Hare Stadium (with endash), rendering the piping less efficient than just allowing the simple redirect to work (in addition to all the other much better reasons for using redirects, as described above). You may not have noticed that I helped readers searching for older stadium names by creating a redirect from Ladd Stadium to the current name, Ladd–Peebles Stadium, and dozens of other similar redirects for older names of venues. Or that I've created and piped to disambiguating redirects such as Auburn Stadium (Alabama) (distinguishing it from Auburn Stadium (New South Wales)). Or that I renamed Darrell K. Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium to the correct spelling, Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium. Or that I corrected links such as [[Arkansas Razorbacks football, 1970–1979#1977|1977]] (which goes to a section header within a general article that contains nothing but a {{main}} template pointing to [[1977 Arkansas Razorbacks football team|1977]]. (I could quote many more such examples).

And by the way, I also fixed a number of incorrect links to Harrisburg, Virginia, that should have been Harrisonburg, Virginia. And misspellings such as Harrisionburg too. Not to mention minor things like straightening out citation templates that specify Associated Press as 'author', or New York Times as 'publisher'. Or fixing uses of the {{alternate links}} template that redirected readers to less useful destinations e.g.{{alternate links|1978 Hall of Fame Bowl|Hall of Fame Bowl|title=Hall of Fame Bowl}}.

But of course none of these improvements count for anything beside my monstrous crime of removing superfluous states from major cities in some tables.

Colonies Chris (talk) 15:11, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Chris, I appreciate all your work here. None of my objections with some of your edits diminish from the value of others that are uncontroversially beneficial. I see your point regarding the redirects. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:24, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I see another editor on this project has just reverted a list of my recent changes - including indiscriminately reverting many of the changes I described above and that you claim to value and consider uncontroversial. I'm done here. I'm not going to waste any more of my time on this. You can revert the whole damn lot (thousands of edits over many months) for all I care. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:45, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Merging city/county links with state links

I noticed that on several articles on my watchlist (such as this one, for example), you're merging a link to a city or county with a link to a state. What's your rationale for doing so? There's nothing in WP:USPLACE about that, and I wouldn't really consider US states to be well-known enough not to require a link; in my experience, non-Americans (and even many Americans) aren't familiar with a lot of them. Is there a style convention I'm not aware of, or is it just a personal preference? (If the latter, it seems like the sort of thing that should have more discussion if that hasn't happened already.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:03, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

TheCatalyst31, WP:OVERLINKING explains this one. In your example, we don't need a wikilink to Charlotte County, Virginia and to Virginia. The former, more specific link is sufficient. However, there are some related issues with Colonies Chris's recent editing that need to be explored. See the section above this one. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 16 October

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the 2015 Tennessee Volunteers football team page, your edit caused a redundant parameter error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

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College Football locations

I've noticed you've changed a number of the college football locations from an abbreviated state to listing the full state. Most of the articles follow the former (ie Tuscaloosa, AL, not Tuscaloosa, Alabama). Any way I can convince you to undo all your edits so we go back to the most prevalent form (Tuscaloosa, AL, Nashville, TN)? If you'd like to use the full state name, discuss it on the talk page, and if there is agreement, I'd hope you change all of them to be consistent......Pvmoutside (talk) 13:26, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Best way to cover DC cannabis topic? Your input requested

Please see here: Talk:Initiative_71#Rename_to_Cannabis_in_Washington.2C_D._C..2C_split_off.2C_or_what.3F

Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 23:19, 8 November 2016 (UTC)