User talk:Wham2001/Archive 2

Fascism

I think it is interesting that the definition of Fascism on Wikipedia is described as far right. It seems to me that any group can act fascist? In fact, look at your definition and apply it to how our Democratic Party acts today at the Federal and State level. They are the Fascists! Please be honest with yourself and to your readers and change the definition. Thank you 69.145.131.130 (talk) 01:25, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia is based on summarizing what reliable sources have to say, not on the opinions of its editors. This matter has been extensively discussed at the article talk page and if you wish to revisit it you should do so there, but you will need excellent sources. If you don't have them (and you don't, do you?) please take your political soapboxing elsewhere. Wham2001 (talk) 07:19, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

References

I find the most challenging part of Wikipedia is adding footnotes/references/whatever you like to call them. The new way to enter them manually is not great. Also, the copying an earlier reference is confusing because I want to reference the earlier book on a different page. Please advise. Fran Featherston fafgf@me.com Fran Featherston (talk) 20:11, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi Fran! Yes, referencing on Wikipedia is generally more complicated than it needs to be. For articles where there are multiple references to different pages of a single same source there are three common techniques in use:

1. Copy-and-pasted references with the full information repeated multiple times, just different page numbers. Pros: easy to add. Cons: reference lists become very long, wikitext source code becomes very long, hard to get a complete list of references for the article.
2. Separate bibliography section with a single entry for each source, and short footnotes ({{sfn}} or {{harv}} templates) pointing to the source and giving the page number. Pros: Clean, compact layout, each source appears exactly once, wikitext is short and readable. Cons: easy to mess up the link from footnotes to sources / have missing sources / have sources that appear more than once. Example article: Fascism.
3. Each source appears once in text using named references, then subsequently {{rp}} template is used to give page numbers. Pros: Each source appears exactly once, very hard to have missing sources. Cons: article looks hideous, with convoluted references e.g.^[94]:102, breaks up citation by separating page number from source information, reference list looks ugly when there is a ^{[a][b][c][d][e][f][g][h][i][j][k][l][m]}source with many references. Example article: Smooth newt

I think that style 1. is fine for short articles where any given reference is only used once or twice, and either 2. or 3. is fine for longer articles [although I prefer 2. as you may have gathered]. The convention is that once the original author of the article has chosen a style it can't be changed without first obtaining consensus on the article talk page. The trouble with Betsy Ross flag is that it uses all three styles in the same article! The thing that I spend most of my Wikipedia time on at the moment is fixing articles where there is a mixture of styles 1. and 2., which I usually do by converting to style 2. (i.e. merging the different refs to the same source), and that's what I did on the Betsy Ross flag article.

As an aside, I see that you're sometimes using the Visual Editor. There I really can't offer you advice since I edit exclusively in the old-school wikitext editor: I find WYSIWYG editors like Visual Editor (and indeed Microsoft Word, which is the poster child WYSIWYG text editor) slow and frustrating to use.

So concretely my advice would be:

1. Pick one of the three referencing styles that I list above (there are others but they're generally more obscure / worse).
2. Post on the talk page, pointing out that the existing referencing is a mess and proposing converting to your preferred style.
3. Most likely nobody will object; if they do have a discussion and come to a conclusion (nobody is going to push to keep an inconsistent referencing style).
4. After a week or so change the references to the style that you've suggested.

I'm happy to assist with step 4, as long as you don't choose style 1.

Best wishes, and sorry for the long and rambling answer! Wham2001 (talk) 22:18, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey Wham

Hello wham Comeralas (talk) 21:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the Halsbury cite!

I am not very techno-proficient, and have trouble with the citation templates. Thanks very much for fixing up the cite I added in the Halsbury article. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:19, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Not at all Mr Serjeant Buzfuz – I find fiddling with citation templates much easier than actually writing content... Next time I need to sue somebody for breach of promise to marry I may call in the favour, mind. Wham2001 (talk) 22:13, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Fair deal! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:11, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Thankyou with supplementary goat

You have no idea how great it is when you're trying to fix up a page's references and things are getting messy and then somebody swoops in with an edit like this or this. Thankyou.

— Dave12121212 ◎ 23:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Happy to be of service Dave12121212, and thank-you for adding the references in the first place! And also for the goat: I look forward to spending less time pulling up weeds. Wham2001 (talk) 06:59, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for keeping an eye on my talk page.

Fylindfotberserk (talk) 19:20, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Fylindfotberserk! Man is it good to see you here again! I hope you're doing well. As you can see we haven't quite got the encyclopedia finished while you were away. And thank-you for the kitten – there are quite a few of them running round this page now. I think she will get on well with Dave's goat from the section above. Wham2001 (talk) 07:36, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks man. Kittehs rule.. . - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 08:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Please don't remove things from my talk page

Regardless of if the account posting there turns out to be a sockpuppet. Silverseren^C 18:38, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Silver seren I reverted them on the basis that they were a block-evading sockpuppet, and hence not permitted to edit Wikipedia. But if this happens again I shall make sure not to revert any edits they make to your talk page. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 18:56, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

If it's actually vandalism or something, feel free to revert. :P But if it's regular conversation, then I'd like to be the one to decide if it's removed or not. Especially in this case since I had already replied to them. Silverseren^C 19:33, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this barnstar in recognition of the prodigious amount of Wikignoming you do. It is appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:25, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank-you very much Gog the Mild, that's most kind. Coming from an editor who has written as many excellent articles as you have it means a lot. Wham2001 (talk) 22:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a team effort. If "my" articles appear good, I am aware that a large part of this is due to editors like yourself tidying up my sloppiness. That really is appreciated, and is as important to the finished article as the raw - too often very raw - prose. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Season's greetings and Merry Christmas to you and your family. Have a wonderful holiday season. Cheers! RV (talk) 12:14, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank-you @RAJIVVASUDEV – Happy Christmas to you too! Wham2001 (talk) 14:07, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Your citation edit to Norwich Castle

Hi

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norwich_Castle&diff=1062254030&oldid=1062222841

When another editor changes one of my edits I ask myself why and try and follow what's been done in order to improve my Wikipedia editing skills. I think I see the reason for your edit i.e. to make my citation consistent with existing ones by using the Sfn template. Am I right?

I notice you added a DOI number. I admit I had no idea what the DOI was (but having read around today now have a vague understanding of what it is). As there was no mention of this number in the JSTOR article header I ignored the box on the Citation:Journal template I used. Is the DOI no. generated automatically from the search facility in the template?

How did you get the JSTOR number on the citation? (The citation journal template doesn't have a box for this.)

Having not previously used Sfn, to experiment I tried to put the citation reference to Ann Williams book on the Norwich Castle page by placing the Sfn inline and adding the full reference in the Bibliography expecting the correct link to be automatically made. However, the inline Sfn showed blank in the preview so I didn't publish. I read the use of citations WP:CEFC and WP:CITE but seem to be misunderstanding the mechanics of doing the citations in the Sfn format.

I try and add an inline citation to support my text immediately (i.e. in a single edit) to prevent another editor quickly deleting the text I've written before I've had chance to add the citation separately. I'm able to do this when having the editor open for an individual section within an article using the citation templates. I don't see how to do similar using the Sfn. Do I have to have the entire article page open for editing rather than just one section?

I'd be grateful for any help. Rupples (talk) 17:50, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Rupples, nice to meet you. To answer your questions:

1. Yes, exactly. The way that the sfn template works is that it links to the reference that matches the authors & date specified in the template. If there is more than one such reference then it doesn't know which to link to, so it generates an error. So if a source is referred to using sfn then all of the references to the same source should use sfn.
2. The DOI was actually in the bibliography section already: I didn't add it. The search facility in the citation toolbar can sometimes extract DOIs from webpages; alternatively putting the DOI for an article into the search box can be a good way of extracting the details of a reference.
3. It doesn't, but you can add e.g. |jstor=573107 to the template by hand in the editor after using the toolbar to generate the rest of the reference template. I don't know why the toolbar doesn't add JSTOR links automatically: I think they're very useful.
4. You are correct: when adding sfns, if you want to preview the sfn, you need to edit the whole article instead of just the section in question. I find this the most annoying thing about using them. If you want to avoid having a broken reference but not edit the whole article at once then you can add the reference to the bibliography section and add the sfn in the next edit to the content section. That way you never have a broken reference but you don't get to check the sfn (and they are quite picky: you have to get the capitalization just right, for example).

Hope this helps! Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 21:57, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your help. I did investigate but on this occasion got a bit frustrated with the Wikipedia help pages. I found there was too much to take in. Defeated my limited brainpower! Rupples (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Questions about John Lee page

Hey Wham! Do you work as CD12 staff? I'd be happy to provide a link to the Englander indictment as well as an article about Lee's $75K sexual harassment lawsuit settlement. Curious as to why you feel compelled to remove pertinent information about a sitting City Council member. 2603:8000:1702:5121:4D9A:2382:856A:E608 (talk) 22:35, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi! To answer your question, no, I don't work for CD12, I don't have any connection to LA, and in fact I've never set foot in California. I removed the content that you added because it violated Wikipedia's policy on writing about living people, which states that Contentious material about living persons ... that is unsourced or poorly sourced ... should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion (emphasis in original). Please review that policy before editing Lee's article again. Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For all your gnomish work, and your modesty. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 02:18, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

You're very kind, Joshua Jonathan; thank-you very much! I find that one of the joys of gnoming is reading about topics that one might not have otherwise have thought to dip into, and fixing up the footnotes on your work where it's been carelessly copy-pasted into other articles has opened my eyes to how complex and interesting the history and culture of India is, and how little I know about it. So thank you for that, also. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 19:57, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello

I couldn’t read all of what you wrote but I think I get the jist of it. You’re right. Was being silly and I knew it was silly at the time. As someone who has donated to Wiki not only do I love and respect it, but folks like yourself who keep it good ‘n tidy. My apologies. Jubbajubba1988 (talk) 03:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Jubbajubba1988. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Reversion of Emma Chamberlain edit

Hi there--I saw that you reverted my edit about Chamberlain Coffee. My intention was to emphasize that the brand has expanded into selling more than just coffee (branching into matcha, cocoa, and merch), but upon rereading the edit I understand that the way it was written came off as promotional. I would like to add an amended version of this edit but wanted to make sure you feel it doesn't fall prey to the same issue: "Chamberlain Coffee offers a variety of products beyond coffee, including matcha and hot cocoa, as well branded accessories like tumblers and tote bags."

Happy to let it the change go, just felt Chamberlain Coffee could use more than a sentence of info as it's one of her most successful current business ventures. Cheers! Hoeshelman (talk) 17:43, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Hoeshelman and thanks for the friendly note. I should say right off that there's a distinction between the content being promotional and you making the edit with the intention of promoting Chamberlain – I don't believe the latter at all.

My advice, to avoid writing things about companies (or indeed people, or anything else...) that sound promotional on Wikipedia, is to ask three questions:

1. Is this content supported by an independent, reliable, secondary source? This is required for essentially any content in Wikipedia articles, though sadly we are a long way from having all content properly sourced. In this case, it would demonstrate that a third party thought that the non-coffee aspects of the business were worth including.
2. Is this something that readers would be surprised by? I would suggest that a reader, hearing that an "influencer" (if I may call her that) had started a coffee brand, would immediately assume that the company also sells branded tote bags. So I don't think mentioning it brings much value to the encyclopedia.
3. Does this sound like something the marketing department would write? Here I'm afraid that it does, frankly – I can't think of a phrase that sounds more like marketing than "offers a variety of products".

In summary, I wouldn't include that sentence either, for these three reasons. The sourcing is the key thing, though; if you can find a reliable source (see the page at that link for what that means in Wikipedia terms) commenting on the "beyond-coffee" aspects of Chamberlain Coffee then I think it should be mentioned, just perhaps with a little wordsmithing – if not, then it shouldn't.

Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 08:04, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey there, Wham!

Hope all is well. I had a question that I thought maybe you could answer. I’m a musician with a small following that’ll hopefully soon grow when my new album comes out in May. I was wondering how one (musician in this case) meets the criteria to get a Wiki page? I doubt any known musician made their own and obviously neither will I. Was just curious about it. Also sorry that I didn’t send this via message. I keep having trouble finding it. Feel free to erase after the fact. Thanks! - Louie O. Blevins Jubbajubba1988 (talk) 13:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Jubbajubba1988, and sorry it took me nearly a week to reply to you – I've been busy off-wiki. This is the right place to contact me: Wikipedia (by design) doesn't have a private messaging system but rather this system of public user talk pages. You are indeed right that musicians shouldn't make articles for their own groups etc. – that's covered by the guideline on conflict of interest. Probably most articles on musicians or musical ensembles are written by music enthusiasts who also happen to be Wikipedia editors. The criteria for a musician or band to be considered "notable" (which in Wikipedia-speak means that an article can be written about them) can be found here. As you can see they are quite stringent, and the vast majority of even quite successful musicians or ensembles don't meet them. On the other hand if you enjoy both writing and music there are a large number of articles about musicians and bands who are notable that would benefit from improvement. Best of luck with your new album! Wham2001 (talk) 19:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! + question

Hey Wham2001! Thanks for prettying up the references on the Yakut language page! I have a question concerning this page: Kazakhstan–Russia_relations#Controversies. How best would one condense all of those references to a single one? best, Biktor627 (talk) 20:11, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Biktor627 – you're welcome . For the Kazakhstan–Russia relations article the references are "standard" with <ref> tags and {{cite news}} etc. templates, so the tricks I used on the Yakut language article won't work. There's advice on how to bundle "standard" citations at Help:Citation merging. I wonder, though, whether it wouldn't be better to simply delete some of them? Looking at the Statehood section (which I guess is what you were thinking about) the statements in question look to me as if they could be adequately supported with two or at most three of the best sources. WP:Citation overkill has an extensive (perhaps to the point of overkill...) discussion of why overciting is a bad idea and what to do about it. I would have a look myself but I don't know the area well enough to have an opinion on how reliable e.g. EurasiaNet.org is compared to The Moscow Times. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

I hope that it was "the oddest" was not a bad thing. Small subjects sometimes benefit from in depth treatment. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 21:07, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Not in the slightest @7&6=thirteen – for me one of the great joys of reference gnoming is that it takes me to articles on topics I would never otherwise have discovered. Thank-you kindly both for the cake and for the article! Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 06:46, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Precious

Two years!

Marco Antonio Solis

I added the award and left source for you the bar doesnt look right please fix. thank you. 47.205.241.49 (talk) 17:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying earlier; I saw this comment when I was too busy to look into it, and then forgot to return. I've re-reverted with a comment on sourcing at the article talk page, and I think we should continue the discussion there. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 11:45, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Gewisse

Thank you for sorting out those strange refs. I did try long and hard myself, but it just seemed to go from bad to worser to worsest. So glad someone knows how to deal with them! --Frans Fowler (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

You are welcome, Frans Fowler – rather like the great auk, my wikiwork has settled into a rather limited ecological niche of fixing this sort of problem, and I'm happy flapping around in it. There are instructions and advice about short footnotes at Help:Shortened footnotes (and more at Template:Sfn and Category:Harv and Sfn template errors and doubtless numerous other places I've forgotten), and I'm happy to try to help if you get stuck again – I try to look in at the least once a week or so. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 11:34, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your diligent work

Cleanup Barnstar Hires

Thanks for cleaning up my broken refs! - 03:10, 24 August 2022 (UTC) Deamonpen (talk) 03:10, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

That's very kind, @Deamonpen, thank-you! And thank-you for all the work that you do on Wikipedia's historical articles! Wham2001 (talk) 07:00, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Bartan Bagatur for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Bartan Bagatur, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bartan Bagatur until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Board of Trustees election

Thank you for supporting the NPP initiative to improve WMF support of the Page Curation tools. Another way you can help is by voting in the Board of Trustees election. The next Board composition might be giving attention to software development. The election closes on 6 September at 23:59 UTC. View candidate statement videos and Vote Here. MB 04:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, @MB: I had a look at the election a few days ago when it came up in the watchlist notice and I didn't recognise any of the candidates (except for one whom I vaguely remembered from this debacle). I'm afraid I don't really have the enthusiasm to spend a lot of time working out who they are and which, if any of them, might be any good as a Trustee (or indeed what, if anything, the Board of Trustees does that makes a difference to enwiki). So I shall leave the election to wiser heads who are more in tune with the political workings of the upper echelons of the WMF. In comparison I see the page curation letter as a very simple matter: NPP is a vital process for keeping all kinds of inappropriate content out of the encyclopedia, and is perennially backlogged, so having adequate software tools to support it should be a priority. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 18:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!

I know I sent you some thanks, and I hope this isn't overkill for you, but I am so grateful for your help on Christianization that I just had to say thank you in person - WP version of in person anyway! My sandbox is so crammed full of stuff that I often can't tell what sources I need to fix to use sfn until I actually publish and see what turns red. Fixing that is my least favorite part of writing here, so help with that in particular is most welcome. I am so glad to know someone is watching and caring and showing up! Thank you again. Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank-you for your kind message, @Jenhawk777 – I'm glad you found my edits useful. I was actually a bit worried that I might have been treading on your toes by adjusting the references while you were in the middle of re-working the article. {{sfn}} and friends are rather a pain, but I seem to have found myself a niche here of tidying up problems with it, which I quite enjoy – it appeals to the tidy aspect of my personality and is easier than working on article content proper! I see that there's a little more that could be done with the references so I might go and do that now. The topic is also an interesting one – Fletcher (1997) was my summer holiday book a couple of years ago and I found it really a fascinating read. Fletcher himself struck me as having a fairly clearly religious perspective on the topic, but making a concerted and fairly successful effort to write neutrally in spite of it. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 14:30, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

I am so very glad to have you on board and hope you will stay and continue to "tidy up" after me! Your strength is my weakness, so it looks like we make a good team. No toe treading of any kind, just genuine help.

Unlike you, I am working in my field of study here. I have a degree in world religion from a secular school, and one in philosophy, and some graduate hours in ethics, though I never finished my PhD. So I am a wannabee that writes on WP instead of teaching college. It's fun, and I actually enjoy the research, and it keeps me abreast of my field.

I also find the topic fascinating - and I agree about Fletcher. I try to include the whole perspective of views as much as possible, while avoiding anyone with a clear bias - although I have included McMullen and a couple others with an anti-religion bias - but Wiki says I can use them as long as I identify them accordingly. It is so freaking difficult to find agreement on the majority view that it sometimes seems impossible not to include biases, and all that can be said is "this is undergoing debate!" Minority views are easier to identify, but boy does this ever take a lot of research! I am already at over 200 sources - used - not including all the ones I haven't used that I still had to read, and I am not quite half way through! I try to be so very careful about accurate content, but the details of citations do sometimes escape me, so please continue to keep your careful eye on the article and work your magic! I am guessing it will probably take a month or more to finish this one. It is turning into the biggest redo I have ever done, and I am known for total article rewrites!

Thank you again, and thank you for the thank you for thanking you!!! Ha ha! !! Jenhawk777 (talk) 16:55, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey! Sorry to bug you! I saw you changed some Salzman 2016 to 2006, but there is a Salzman 2016 referenced in the bibliography: (Salzman, Michele Renee; Sághy, Marianne; Testa, Rita Lizzi, eds. (2016). Pagans and Christians in late antique Rome : conflict, competition, and coexistence in the fourth century. New York, NY. ISBN 978-1-107-11030-4.) I think perhaps those need to be changed back. Was there a problem with them? Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:02, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I was not 100% certain about that one. The reference I changed read <ref name="Salzman Rethinking 2019">Salzman, Michele Renee. chapter= Rethinking pagan-Christian violence." in Drake ''Violence in late Antiquity''. Routledge, 2016. 287-308.</ref>{{rp|268-269}}. This is a 2016 reprint of Drake (2006), in which Salzman (2006) is a chapter. The page numbers given in the {{rp}} tag match the "Rethinking pagan-Christian violence" in the 2006 chapter – the 2016 edition is (really annoyingly) not paginated in google books but if we take the page range given in the reference at face value they don't match up. So I made the assumption that the page numbers actually refer to the 2006 edition. Now that I try Google books lets me see page 268 (but tediously not page 269) and it seems to at least partially match the content being supported. So I think it's the correct reference in the end, but please feel free to change it back if you disagree – you are the expert and know very much more about the topic and sources than I do!

I can see that it must be a challenge writing an NPOV article about a topic where there isn't any academic consensus on much of the material. 200 sources for one article is really quite something! I hope it gives you material at least for some subsiduary articles as well... Best, Wham2001 (talk) 08:58, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

You, my friend, are amazingly astoundingly wonderful. That is just awesome. I love that you went through checking all of that in the first place. I will know from now on how careful you really are. This is just great. I can't get over it! Yeah, 200 sources is not unusual for me. I do it to insure a check on any bias on my part. Sometimes prior knowledge is not an advantage. But friends like you sure are! Thank you so very much. Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:10, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

You're very kind I don't always check that carefully, but it seems worth putting some effort in for this sort of case. What I find most frustrating is cases where there is an sfn with a missing source, and I can make an educated guess what the source is based on other articles / web searches / etc., but the source is not available online and I can't quite be sure enough to add it. Still, it is what it is. Thanks again, Wham2001 (talk) 18:40, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Yikes! Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:26, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Removal of sentence from Callan River page

Thank you for your interest in the "Callan River" page, but I would like to comment on the removal of the sentence — “The two cuts were labelled "Callan River (New Course)" on maps of the time, but are unnamed on more recent OSNI maps.” — on the grounds that it "appears to be original research".

I don't really see that commenting on an obvious difference between the two referenced on-line governmental documents can be called research; it seems to me more like consulting any reference to see if it matches what it is alleged to say. Of course, it is a pity that the PRONI Mapping Application requires the user to choose interactively a basemap, location and scale before seeing the maps to be compared. If it were possible to give urls which would directly display the maps to be compared, would you still regard this as original research?

The purpose of including the sentence was (a) to show that the diversion of the Callan (and not simply of the Tall) was foremost in the intentions of the engineers; and (b) to record the history of the naming of these rivers and cuts, something which is still giving rise to ill-informed statements about the extent of water to which the names Callan and Tall apply, as witness the wikipedia pages on the two rivers until last month. Users of wikipedia might expect to find documented resolution of such popular mis-understandings.

Please consider reverting the removal. 31.50.135.104 (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi! Jumping in here as a friend of Wham2001. Read this:[1] which says: Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. If you have a source that states what the sentence states, then it is not OR. If on the other hand, it is a conclusion you reached that is not explicitly stated in a source, it is OR. It's that simple: stated - not stated. You are bound by the sources whatever else you may think or readers may want. Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:20, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Jenhawk777, I completely accept the guideline you quoted, to prevent 2 + 2 appearing to make 5. But the removed sentence does not "combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion". It makes two separate statements, each with its own source. Perhaps it should have been presented as two separate sentences. To my mind, it's no different from saying "he was born in 1850" (birth registry) and "he died in 1900" (death registry). 31.50.135.104 (talk) 11:00, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Jenhawk777 above, 31.50.135.104; if it's not stated in a source it doesn't belong in the article. In this case it sounds like the erroneous content that you removed was also unsourced, so you were correct to take it out. But if no suitable source has commented on something directly then it shouldn't be mentioned in Wikipedia. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 18:45, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, Wham2001, but is an OS map not a source? Would a published article which commented on a map be more acceptable than the actual published map? I do not see anything in wikipedia's "definition of published" which would disallow an archived OS map as a source. 31.50.135.104 (talk) 11:01, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Only a very short answer since I am on my way to work: maps are primary sources which can only be used with interpretation: this makes them almost useless on Wikipedia, which should be based primarily on summarizing secondary sources. A published article which commented on a pair of maps would be a secondary source which (assuming it met other criteria for being independent and reliable) would be a good source to use. You might find the Wikipedia policy on the neutral point of view and the Wikipedia guideline on reliable sourcing (linked) useful reading. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 07:19, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry to keep labouring this, but (as I tried to explain in my reply to Jenhawk777) the "pair of maps" business is a separate issue. It can be side-lined by reducing the sentence to “The two cuts were labelled ‘Callan River (New Course)’ on the second edition OS map (1846–1862)”. Would that be acceptable?

Thank you for your suggested links, and of course "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible" and "Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves" but wouldn't you agree that the above reformulation is just stating an indisputable and publicly-available fact, and even more clearly than before involves no subjective interpretation, or drawing of conclusions, or expressing a point of view? 31.50.135.104 (talk) 19:56, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

You call it a reformulation. Haven’t you answered your own question? Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Jenhawk777 again – if you can't find a secondary source for this I think you should drop it. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 18:49, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Invisible sfn errors ...

Hi, I see you're busy suppressing "sfn errors" in things I've edited, like Barad-dûr for instance; but I get no visible intimation of anything actually wrong. Can you tell me a) how you're seeing these things (and what the "error" might be), b) why they happen? I've not done anything strange that I know of... and c) how to stop it at source, because you are fixing one instance after another (symptomatically, not root cause). Clearly a single one-off fix would be much preferable. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:16, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Chiswick Chap, I agree that a systematic fix would be better in this case. The error is a "harv/sfn no-target error", which makes the article show up in this category. There is an error message, but it's suppressed by default because there are so many false positives (like these ones...) There are instructions for enabling the display of the error messages at the top of the category page, and also a link to a pair of javascript scripts that detect actual errors. Since you work a lot with sfn references you probably want to have the script anyway, and the css change that displays the error messages is good for spotting false positives.

The cause of the "error" is that the error checking code in the module that implements harv/sfn isn't able to detect a reference if it's wrapped inside a template – it can't resolve the template back to the encapsulated {{cite book}} or similar. I think that the best solution in this case is to add your reference templates to the global whitelist. You can do that by making a request here – see mine at the bottom of the page from a few weeks ago as an example. It can be a bit slow, though, because it needs a template editor to make the changes and not many of them seem to watch that page. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 10:36, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:06, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Historiography of the Christianization of the Roman Empire

This article has been retitled. It was nominated for GA twice and quick-failed both times without review. They really hated it! But I think it deserves to be a WP article, and it deserves to be GA - if past experiences are anything to go by. I want to nominate it again - I think I have addressed every comment made - it has now been retitled to better reflect content and has been rewritten to address any and all comments. I think. I hope. I am a little gun-shy with it now. I was wondering if you would do your magic source check and make sure I have everything in order. I am being stubborn and chewing my nails at the same time, but in light of current scholarship, I do believe this article is genuinely noteworthy. If it fails again, I will probably give up on it, and that would make me sad. If you don't have time, it's okay. If you say you will have time down the road, I will just wait. If you just don't want to, that's okay too, just tell me. There will be no hard feelings of any kind. I am grateful for you under any circumstances. Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Good evening! I have had a look at the references in the article and I don't see anything wrong with them. I fixed a bit of hyphen/en-dash mismatch in Praet but otherwise all the sfns link correctly to a source in the bibliography. There are a number of sources without an inline citation but I think that's fine if they're being used as general references? In any case as I understand it that sort of nit-picking is generally reserved for FAC. I've templated up the handful of plain-text references just in case, and done a little bit of copyediting – feel free to revert the latter if you think it's not an improvement (I'm quite tired this evening and am going to wrap up now and go to bed!). I've not read the whole article but the first few sections seemed well-written, perfectly sourced, and clearly notable to me: third time lucky at GAN! Wham2001 (talk) 19:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I hope you had an excellent night's rest and woke today to find this message filled with good wishes. Thank you. After I asked you to do this, another editor came along and added back in to the article material that was deleted last May. He has rearranged and retitled sections and it has improved everything immeasurably - but now the article is unbelievably long again, so I don't want you to feel like you have to read it all. Thank you so much for all you do here on WP - and not just for me. A thousand blessings! Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:14, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank-you as always for your kind words I see that after the additions there is a bit of work to be done on the references again – I'll take a look now. Wham2001 (talk) 13:37, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, I think that the references are (from a technical point of view) fixed up again: they're all using templates, all the sfns have a target, etc. Were I a picky assessor at GAN I might point out that ref #443 to Gibbon (1776) is not attributed. But that's very much your department, not mine! Unfortunately I this weekend's other activities haven't really accommodated me reading a 14k word article – next weekend, perhaps, if the weather is wet... Wham2001 (talk) 15:53, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you again and again. So it looks like the new guy is going around borrowing stuff from other WP articles. As long as he is just making use of the references, that's okay, but if he is copying content without attribution that isn't. I will go ask him. I will find and fix Gibbon. Thank you especially for finding that. I can remove Finlan. There are other refs there. I would like this article to be GA eventually. Overall, the reorganization and the titling are good I think. As to your question about 'third time' I had to go look and see! I love finding the etymology of phrases like that one, but in this case - as in many - no one really knows. There are multiple possibilities, one including the Trinity and one from folk culture, so both and possibly neither one. Thanx for the interesting tidbit! Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:43, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Notes

New Amsterdam judicial system

Yes, not that I had not intended to fix the rest of them, eventually, but I'm actually working on bibliography from the Wikidata side (so actually focused right now on the cites to "History of New York" in particular, which is on Commons now...since it's PD, I uploaded a copy the with the watermarks pulled out, which Cite Q links to, as well as the handle id for the copy at Hathi) instead of the old, dead "Holice Pam and Deb" transcription from the 90s. Since I actually have the scans, that also lets me look up the page numbers and cite the chapter correctly. :) When Wikisource (hopefully) transcribes this, and the Cite Q people finish adding features, it'll be able to sub in the interwiki links to the chapters there automagically. As you might guess, that work is cited from a lot of articles, and I'm actually adding it as a further reading (with the chapter name and page range) and reference for at least the founding date to a bunch of others. Value added for you guys. :)

I have a page at User:Jarnsax/citations where I'm keeping a list of how to cite each volume (they are different entities from the edition, and the work itself, the way WD models biblio). Hopefully, since those actually give properly formatted citations (I'm not just scraping a database into WD, as you can probably tell from looking over there, and I'm not copying enwiki either, a citation on this wiki is very much not a reliable source for the correct author and title of a book, lol) and I'm using sfn and efn, the 'comment' in the code will be enough to prevent complaints about Qids in citations being obscure to editors. I'm not going to fight about using Cite Q with people, tho, if someone wants to do it the other way, hopefully they'll still end up with a better citation just by seeing my description of the book. From what I can tell, most of the complaints about Cite Q are either because of crap data or that it makes the citation obscure in the markup.

This also entails adding the 'infrastructure' for bundling multiple citations to the same book, and for a notes section (I'm quoting what Sullivan actually says about the founding into it). Most of these city and county articles (he has a chapter about each county, several pages long, with a few paragraphs specifically about each town) have a bunch of quotations inserted directly into the references section, which tbh looks like crap. I won't do it that what, I'll LDR the things and do it the right way. CS2 is a pain, tho, but far less with Cite Q where you just toggle the mode. :)

I'm actually making a list, of other books cited in the same pages that use "History of New York", to attack next. I think the one that's worth hitting first is French's 1860 "Gazeteer of the State of New York", where I can also flip though it and add the sections (which are several pages of dense text) to the articles as, at least, further reading for people that have it watchlisted to trawl the crap out of it. :) Jarnsax (talk) 23:57, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

HELP!! Women in the Bible

I have done something and have no idea what I did but it has totally screwed things up! This is one of the first articles I ever worked on, and since it's material is old, I was trying to update it a bit and use sfn's. Well now the external links thinks it's in that list! What did I do? Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:35, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Just passing through, but the {{refend}} from the end of the bibliography had disappeared – now fixed. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 14:58, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Bless you! Thank you so much! Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:20, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Thanks for fixing my SFNP citations MaxnaCarta (talk) 03:45, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

My pleaseure, @MaxnaCarta! Thank-you for the beer Wham2001 (talk) 19:04, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Explain an edit that I made

Hi, I reverted this edit of yours, which, in good faith, assumed that I had made an error. I actually hadn't made an error This edit added, in line 112 ,a new citation for the book of Ardit Bido in English. That's why that reference is referring to the 2021 book, not to the 2015 one. Thank you for your other improvements! Bosuelli121 (talk) 17:20, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Bosuelli121. I reverted you and left a message on your talk page, I hadn't seen your message here. You reverted back the date as 2009 not 2021, I'm guessing as you had just type Demneri 2009 and transliterated the same year. I'll go ahead and change the dates to 2021. (sorry about hijacking you talk page Wham2001). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:07, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank-you both for straightening this out! Best, Wham2001 (talk) 19:59, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you, again, for conveting the Cadet Nurse Corps refererces to snf. I've been massauging the article off and on for the past 10 years in preparation for a run at FAC. The comverstion moves me closer in doing so. Your act of kindness reminded me that I should be doing more of the same. Pendright (talk) 03:18, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Not at all – thank-you for the comprehensive and well-written article! Wham2001 (talk) 11:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Pending Changes Reviewer's barnstar
	Congratulations on being the number one most active pending changes reviewers in the last 30 days! Great work. ––FormalDude (talk) 12:46, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank-you very much, FormalDude – it's really nice to have this sort of work recognized! I was a bit surprised to be top of the list, but I have been making an effort to clear out the older pending changes, and that tends to lead to more manual accepts than the vandalism that fills up the front of the queue. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced additions by a user

Hi, it is regarding this unsourced addition. Hindi is not official per the sources. Please do the needful. Thanks. I'm Fyl by the way. - 117.201.114.216 (talk) 09:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I see that another editor accepted your edit. Pending changes are generally accepted or reverted within an hour or two unless they're difficult for the reviewer to evaluate. You might like to create an account – once you've made ten edits and waited a few days your changes to PC-protected articles such as this one will be accepted automatically. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 11:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Status of Kosovo

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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KOSOVA FOR FRANCE AND GERMANY IS NOT A DISPUTED COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY RECOGNISE IT SO DON'T EDIT THE CHANGES THAT I MAKE , LEAVE YOUR PERSONALE PREFERENCES OUT OF THIS CHECK THE FACTS! Adem Sopaj from the Republic of Kosova (talk) 12:34, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Adem Sopaj from the Republic of Kosova Please don't shout. The very fact that France and Germany don't recognise Kosovo tells you that it is disputed, surely, as a matter of logic? Instead of edit-warring over this you should self-revert back to the status quo version and open discussions at the article talk pages. If you choose not to self-revert (which you really should; see WP:BRD for the best practice guideline), please fix the reference errors that you have left behind – you can find them by searching for "Cite error" in the rendered page and following the linked instructions. Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 12:53, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank-you Gerda 09:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC) Wham2001 (talk) 09:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Your edit on Susan Cabot page

Dear Wham2001, thanks for your edit on Susan Cabot page. I have a epub version of the book in question, i.e. "Wagner, Laura (2020). Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies: 23 Actresses Who Suffered Early Deaths, Accidents, Missteps, Illnesses and Tragedies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland." It was an interesting exercise for me, because I also wanted to learn the pagination of an electronic book [I am a beginner as you can see from my number of edits]. After some time, I reached the page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_numbering#Electronic_documents. This also does not seem to help me much. All it talks about is a "location number" I am not able to open my epub version in amazon kindle, but even those books, I have there, are not showing me any location number [in my desktop computer]. I can open the Wagner book in Calibre, and if you want I can send you a screenshot of what I am saying. Can you help me please? Thanks Neotaruntius (talk) 09:36, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi Neotaruntius, I must admit to a bit of vagueness about page numbering in ebooks myself. I have an elderly Kindle somewhere (I've not used it for a few years) which I seem to recall could show location numbers, but I don't remember how to find them – perhaps it was though the search facility. I'm not sure that they're actually much use to the average reader, though. I did manage to locate the relevant page in Wagner (2020) through Google Books search, even though it is only giving me a snippet preview, and I've updated the article, so I think we are all set. Thank-you for your work on the article, and happy editing! Wham2001 (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Dear Wham2001 , Many thanks for your kind edit and the teaching that you gave me. I realized how I should have done it in the first place. I also searched for the same pages on the net and I could find the page. I already saw that you had referred to page 35 [of the actual book; and not the e-book], which is indeed correct. However unfortunately even this does not convince an average reader of the authenticity of the statement [Sorry, if I am wrong. I am too junior as against you, so I may indeed be wrong]. I wanted the reader to actually see the reference for himself. I tried for about one hour, trying various permutations and combinations shown on this page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bare_URLs. Actually I wanted to somehow put the reference in such a way that no additional reference comes up, and only an outgoing arrow comes in front of your reference. But I could not do that. I have done my best to show the additional reference [in the form of taking the reader to the actual page], but I think it is somewhat unprofessional. Can you please do it better? I will then study your coding and learn. Thanks for teaching me sir.Neotaruntius (talk) 08:53, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

@Neotaruntius, no need to be apologetic – references on Wikipedia are far too complicated! I have made another edit to the article, which I think is what you were trying to achieve? Sorry for the delayed response – I have been too busy for Wikipedia over the last few days. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 07:36, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Dear Wham2001, thanks for your kind post. I visited the page again. I have forgotten that page somewhat, but I believe, we are talking about reference 14, right? It does take us to page 35, and I indeed was trying to do this. I will study the code for this and get back to you. you are a good teacher. Thanks again. Neotaruntius (talk) 07:47, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I am curious

I noticed the error I did on one of my previous edits, but how did you pickup on it so quickly?? Govvy (talk) 12:19, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Imagine me as some ghostly all-seeing presence watching over all editors who use {{harv}} and {{sfn}}? Or, more prosaically, I just happened to be gnoming Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors at the right moment... Best, Wham2001 (talk) 12:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I will just add you to the Wiki-Tecno-Wizard list!! Govvy (talk) 12:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Image upload request

Dear Wham2001: I have two new archival documents to upload to link to the Maki Mirage (MM) page. Can you link these to files for me please? I do not know how to do this. If you could leave me the instructions for this as well, I would be much obliged. Just see the "uploads" for Who-knows-nose, me. See the last two uploads (each one has two versions, original and then corrected under uploads for who-knows-nose).

1. The "GARF doc- for MM Page" please link to the written prose citing Martin's Origin's article, Koreans will be deported except those showing "complete loyalty and devotion" to Soviet power." on the MM page itself. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GARF_doc--_For_MM_Page_Wiki.jpg

2. Then the Geitsman File- GAKhK" please link that to right after Martin's "complete loyalty and devotion to Soviet power." is "the Geitsman letters" these are Geitsman file should be linked somewhere near, if possible, those words. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geitsman_File-_GAKhK-_%22Koreans_Alien_to_Us%22.jpg Thanks, Who-KnowsWho-knows-nose (talk) 03:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC) Who-knows-nose (talk) 03:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Who-knows-nose I gather that you have a conflict of interest with respect to Maki Mirage. I think that you should make an edit request on the article talk page, where somebody more experienced than me will be able to assess your request and act on it. You can find advice and instructions on making an edit request here. Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 06:52, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I have no conflict of interest. I and Rauisuchian have worked on the Maki Mirage page. Rauisuchian has left, I need help with the request above please to link the two photo uploads of Russian archival files to the Maki Mirage page please. This simply a request for help.Who-knows-nose (talk) 07:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Directly editing an article that is based substantially on your own published research creates, in my opinion, a clear conflict of interest, and the Wikipedia guideline on COIs agrees. Having a COI doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't edit the article directly, but that would be my recommendation on how to proceed. If you want somebody else to edit the article on your behalf then you should make an edit request on the article talk page as I explain above. If, however, you want to add the images yourself then you can find instructions here. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 08:17, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Citation formatting question

Hello, Wham2001. Thank you for your edits conforming my citations on the Land Reform Movement article to the existing style. I appreciate it.

I edit in visual, and frankly I'm stronger on content, sourcing, and policy than on the technical side. How do I format my future additions in the style that you have been using? It would be good if I could do this proactively as I make substantive additions so as not to leave work for others such as yourself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JArthur1984 (talk • contribs) 21:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

@JArthur1984 No worries, and thank-you for your work on the article! I don't use the Visual Editor day-to-day myself, but I've just checked, and it is possible to use it to add "Harvard-style" references. Step to step instructions are:

• Click the "Cite" button, then choose the "Manual" tab and the "Basic" option at the bottom.
• In the "enter your citation here" box that comes up, type "{{". This takes you a template search form.
• In the template search form, type "harvp" (for Harvard citations with parentheses such as in Land Reform Movement) or "harvnb" (for Harvard citations without parentheses – these are common in other articles), and click on the template name.
• Fill in the fields that you need (the authors' surnames, year and page / page range at a minimum). You can add and remove fields using the tab on left-hand side.
• When you are done click the "Insert citation" button in the top-right of the box, then click through the remaining dialogues to actually insert the citation and save the edit in the usual way.

Personally I would find this an enormous amount of faff compared to using the Wikitext editor and typing the template out, but the visual editor does at least guide you through how to use the templates. If you get stuck you can let me know and I will try to fix things up. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 07:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this! Perhaps I need to learn text editor, at least enough to be able to achieve this formatting. JArthur1984 (talk) 15:22, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

If you don't mind, could you take a look at my addition on Cadre system of the Chinese Communist Party where I attempted to conform to the existing Harvard no brackets citation style? Although it visually looks correct, I do not know how to link the short form to the initial lengthier citation, such that the reader can hover the cursor on the short citation and it shows the full.

Of course, there's no pressure if this is an inconvenient request. JArthur1984 (talk) 20:39, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

It was close, but you need to include the year as well as the author name in the shortened footnote. I've fixed it (after another user switched back to using {{rp}}). Best, Wham2001 (talk) 13:24, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey, Thanks for editing my article

Their was some mistakes in that article thanks for correcting that. Al Khawazrimi 313 Fan (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

No problem Wham2001 (talk) 09:41, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Cancelling of edits of the 27 July

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Dear Wham2001,

Its really incredible that you censored my contributions to the Ferrari page. The most ironic thing is that you commented your action with "mostly unsourced material".

The page, as is, doesn't reflect the history of the marque and is full of arbitrary interpretations of historic facts and diminutive comments.

Wiki should be open to all contributions as a free encyclopedia and not a sort of personal feud.

Please, have the courage to examine back the content. 151.82.80.197 (talk) 19:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry i'll had some points for you to reconsider the Ferrari article

Dear Wham2001,

I'll had some points in the text that need to be reconsidered as an example. These are all errors. Not only they are wrong in historical terms but they also less than conceal a sort of negative attitude towards the marque. If you comparatively read some articles on Mclaren or Williams here on wiki, you'll find out a completely different approach full of unchecked positive miths, celebrative remarks etc. We all know it is human. We all do these kind of things but wouldn't it be possible at least to cancel out some of the negative and diminutive narration from the Ferrari's page.

I'm italian and I do not pretend to rewrite the article as a briton would do of one of the things he has at hart but i'd like to improve the quality of the Ferrari's page.

That said, it makes me laugh that you have written "mostly unsourced material"....... I'll always have faith in people and usually i'm wrong.

Please, at least, try to reconsider some of the following....

1) In 1960, Ferrari was reorganized as a public company. It soon began searching for a business partner to handle its manufacturing operations: it first approached Ford in 1963, though negotiations fell through; later talks with Fiat, who bought 50% of Ferrari's shares in 1969, were more successful.

Ferrari didn't search for a business partner it was Ford that searched Ferrari with an acquisition proposal. Please reconsider it. The historical battle between Ford and Ferrari started there because of the harsh refusal of Enzo Ferrari to some harming terms of the contract.

2) In the second half of the decade, Ferrari also produced two cars that upended its more traditional models: the 1967 Dino 206 GT, which was its first mid-engined road car,

No, the first MR engined road car was the 250LM of 1963 (the protos and sportscars were already MR engined since the early 60s) that was refused the homologation to race as a GT car in the 1964 season of the WSC and had to compete as sportscar.

3) The Dino in particular was a decisive movement away from the company's conservative engineering approach, where every road-going Ferrari featured a V12 engine placed in the front of the car, and it presaged Ferrari's full embrace of mid-engine architecture, as well as V6 and V8 engines, in the 1970s and 1980s.

The company's conservative approach ???? These are diminutive comments that not reflect the real status of things. And, ironically, are even false. Every road going sportscar, apart from Porsche that had the engine mounted on the rear of the vehicle but used air cooling till the late 90s....., such as Aston Martins, The Chevrolet Corvette etc remained front engined till recently. Would you call their approach conservative?

Please do not follow the usual bad propaganda approach that we see at the movies or in bad books. In 1958, Ferrari and Vanderwell were still dominating the f1 season with front engined cars and the Cooper/Climaxes were already MR engined cars and won only a single race. In 1959, the MR engined cars become unbeatable but maybe that was not due to the position of the engine. The problem was that Ferrari was winning world championships at the time and was reluctant to spend money to change the situation with an unclear winning prospect. When, with the new racing context (rule changes, british monopoly on tires ect) it become apparent that the MR configuration could provide some advantages, Ferrari adopted it and won both in F1 (1961 and 1964 seasons) and in the WSC.

These are even more ridiculous ...

The team's performance improved markedly in the mid-1970s thanks to Niki Lauda, whose skill behind the wheel....

Ferrari saw a long winning streak in the 2000s, largely through the work of Michael Schumacher.....

Have you read the paragraph on Sportcars......

DAMN.... it is always luck..........

Ciao

P.s. we live in a difficult world 151.82.80.197 (talk) 20:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

For anybody following along at home, the edit being discussed is this revert.

I have no objections to you improving Ferrari, 151.82.80.197, but any material that you add to the article – or indeed any Wikipedia article – must be supported by a reference to a reliable, published, independent source, and where an article presents an opinion it must follow the balance of opinion in reliable sources. That is the baseline on which Wikipedia content is built. If there is no such source that supports what you want to say, then it can't go in the article, even if you are completely convinced that you are right and everything that's been written about the subject is wrong. I hope you can see that this is the only way that a crowd-sourced encyclopedia can be written without descending into anarchy. Please check out the links in the previous sentences which describe how content creation works on Wikipedia, and I wish you the best finding sources to improve the article. Wham2001 (talk) 06:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Dear Wham2001,

Thanks for your kind reply. Excuse me if i write to you this long message but try to understand what i mean.

What you are saying may seem agreeable. It may seem laudable if you want to protect the quality of an article by refusing non referenced material.

What i'm saying is that the quality of the article right now is very low. Even if there are references put in here and there to make it seem reliable, the article is wrong in several aspects and it is full of personal opinions and debasing comments that cannot be accepted.

I do not know if you have had time to study the subject at large but, before censuring proposed content, one must be sure to know the subject he deals with. Otherwise, we risk to produce content that is only formally referenced, reliable etc but practically consists of bad propaganda.

We all know that we are building up a narrative and we all know that on planet Earth there's no such thing as a fully reliable and independent source. Every source is dependent on the opinions of the author.

The fact that a source is published does not solve the issue. Different sources are published for different markets, are aimed at different people and follow different "propaganda themes".

If you are a briton, have you ever found an author from your Country that, talking about a national car brand or british motorsport in general is 100% non partisan, does always tell the story as it is, explaining the context out of which something is born and does not sometimes indulge in hyperboles that tell his love of something that he feels belongs to him or his nationalism?

Think about the articles on Mclaren here on wiki that i told you before. Think about the miths on Cooper/Climaxes inventing the MR engine f1 car (see Auto Union before WW2 for example) and their formidable success in F1.

Think to all the miths on the Mclaren F1 roadcar that were diffused on press in the 90s. Would you call that accurate?

We are all humans and, sometimes we are blinded by our passion and love and so we disseminate wrong facts just to celebrate the things we love.

The counterpart of that is that when we find something that we feel does not belong to us, we are striken by envy, by hate and we try to harm, debase, conceal facts and we don't want to concede its success.

If you have time, and you take a look at the Scuderia Ferrari's article, you'll find out that the world F1 titles are separated between titles for the chassis and titles for the engines. The many world titles Ferrari has won in the endurance series have disappeared. You know that there never have been separated titles for chassis and engines in F1. But someone has decided to split them in order maybe to provide british teams with a title of their own...

Also, the fact that Ferrari was running two or more racing efforts at the same time, with their own resources, and with success is never mentioned in the text.

As I told you in the preceding post, how is it possible that in a team of people all the merit for the success would go to a chosen person ( cases of Lauda and Schumacher....) so just that the thing we hate upon has not a share of the merit.

Would it be possible that an entity who races at the same time in F1, F2, sportscars, winning a lot of world titles in the process has always and only luck.....

What are the reliable sources that you can base your arguments on in this case.........

If you think about it, it's like saying that the success of the Mclaren F1 team in the 80s and 90s was all due to Lauda, Senna and Prost.

The people at Mclaren, even if not all geniuses like a certain press loves to make them, at least designed and built the chassis, studied the aerodynamics of the car, allocated the money from the sponsors, managed the day by day of the team etc. A share, not all of it, in this success is probably rightfully due to their work....

Please, when and if you have time, would you like to signal to me the parts of my text where do you think we should add further references (i'm able to provide that) or the narrative parts that you personally do not approve so that we can discuss them and ultimately improve the quality of the text?

Ciao 151.34.105.100 (talk) 08:23, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I've not read this giant wall of text, and I don't intend to. If you have changes that you want to make to the article, make them, supplying your sources; alternatively, open a discussion on the article talk page, supplying your sources. If you think that the sources in the article already have been misinterpreted or are unreliable, open a discussion on the article talk page, explaining specifically what the problems are. If you want your points to be taken on board, I suggest (a) writing concisely and (b) supplying high-quality sources that support your arguments. If you don't have any sources to support your arguments, but instead want to kvetch about how the article doesn't match your opinions, I suggest doing that on social media instead. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 12:11, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok, Wham2001...the problem with arbitrary censorship remains.

Let's try again...

If you refuse to read, it is not possible to know why you decided to block the changes offered on the article.

Again it is not possible to understand why the article's many wrong passages and subjective comments are kept intact as they are.

What high-quality sources support some of the arbitrary interpretations and debasing comments written in the text right now?

As i said, if you choose to protect the status quo of the page, you have to provide valid reasons for that and explain why you prefer the previous version over the change.

That's the discussion instrument that we have and that should be used to improve the article.

Please be open, be honest!

If i add additional references, would you accept the changes or would you instead find another excuse not to change the low quality text that is published right now?

Many passages of the text that I proposed are known facts (based on racing results), biographic material is taken from Luca Dal Monte Enzo Ferrari's biography etc...) and i could continue....

Have you possibly read the alternative version the Ferrari text before censoring it?

It's incomprehensible to me why you act like this.

Again, please be open, be honest... 151.18.138.24 (talk) 11:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I've already told you what you need to do to get the article changed, to quote: If you have changes that you want to make to the article, make them, supplying your sources; alternatively, open a discussion on the article talk page, supplying your sources. If you think that the sources in the article already have been misinterpreted or are unreliable, open a discussion on the article talk page, explaining specifically what the problems are. If you want your points to be taken on board, I suggest (a) writing concisely and (b) supplying high-quality sources that support your arguments. I don't have any further advice to give you. Wham2001 (talk) 17:52, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Change on Rose West

Hello. I received your message about the change on Rose West. I noticed that the link is incorrect, it doesn't lead to a source, but rather a page where certificates can be ordered using a credit card. The editor who originally posted the source must have used an incorrect link, hence me removing it. A link that leads to an actual verifiable source would be needed. I have left the years as they are, though they remain unsourced. Crentonville (talk) 07:21, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I agree that you're absolutely right to remove that reference – even if the link worked it would never have been suitable for use on Wikipedia. Apologies for the revert – though if you'd left an edit summary of "remove broken ref" or similar I would likely not reverted. I've taken the liberty of removing the parents' dates of birth and death – I can't see that they are of much importance to the article and as you say they're unsourced. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 08:29, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Ferrari (again)

Question

Dear Wham,

I've posted this question also on the page about Ferrari.

Is there a way to highlight errors, passages that do not correspond in their content to the cited sources and deliberate pejorative interpretations that do not correspond to historical facts or the already mentioned sources directly into a wiki page.

This could be good if one, in good faith, wants to improve the text.

Allow me a reproach on your behaviour. Reading the posts up here, you seem to behave correctly and being an honest person. I don't know if these posts are true or plainly fake and made up just to appear different from who you really are. According to my experience, you are protecting the integrity of a bad version of a wiki page.

As i tried to tell you before, even in erased posts, if you take up on you the role of arbiter and reject contributed content but do not explain your actions, this cannot be defined an open collaborative platform.

If you protect wrong content that actually does not correspond to the cited sources and remain impervious to a gradual discussion of the specific errors that one could point out to you, it becomes impossible to collaborate and it becomes impossible to improve the content of the page.

Come on Wham 151.18.91.90 (talk) 07:54, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Being naive

Dear Wham,

I proposed some changes to the first two parts in the Ferrari's article.

I've added some sources and highlighted the wiki pages that could be of interest

Let's see now what happens..... 151.18.210.217 (talk) 15:42, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I hope you will forgive me for combining your posts under a single heading and converting the headers to more conventional capitalisation. It's unfortunate that you didn't get more of a response at Talk:Ferrari, though I suspect that had you been more concise other editors might have been more willing to engage. I am not going to engage with you there on the content since I'm not a topic expert and don't have access to the sources in question: my advice was solely to help you get more attention from expert editors watching that page. I'm happy to see that your most recent edit to the article was accepted, and I've replied to your question about how to highlight content that is not supported its associated reference.

My advice continues to be to take it slowly, assume good faith of the editors you interact with, listen to what more experienced editors tell you, and add references to reliable sources for all changes you make. If you do that then you are likely to have a successful and happy editing experience. In that light, I am going to pass over your imputation of malicious intent in the paragraphs above without further comment. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 16:15, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Dear Wham,

Thanks for your kind reply. Please look what happened to the page.

In my previous posts, I wanted only to prove to you that by upholding to a strict formality, you were protecting the diffusion of bad content. You say it yourself. You are not a topic expert but, nonetheless, you found reasons to censor a contribution...

It's obvious that a serene, possibly unbiased, knowledge of the topic shall be a prerequisite of any editing action.

This time another group of editors has taken the trouble to revert back the content of the page to its previous (lacking) version. The fact that this last contribution had already been accepted and was only expanding on known facts, tells you that there must been something malicious going on. As an experienced editor, this could not pass you without notice.

So, counting on your solicitude, we shall solve this last issue.

There must be a way to protect open participation and, to an extent, preserve improving contributions to the text.

In this case, instead, there's a specific group of contributors that, for no apparent reason and with laughable excuses, wants to preserve a bad quality version of the text...

Ciao 151.38.172.227 (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Marisauna's changes look reasonable to me. I suggest that you engage with them on the article talk page, where they have explained in a friendly manner why they made the edits that they did. You'll notice that one of their points – that your changes are not adequately sourced – is the same issue that I've pointed out to you repeatedly. Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 17:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey, Thanks for editing my article

Their was some mistakes in that article thanks for correcting it. Raged Bengali Wiki (talk) 10:49, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

No worries! Best wishes, Wham2001 (talk) 15:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)