User:TeleComNasSprVen/The Piggy Bank/9¢

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January 2011

AfD removal

What was the idea behind this edit of yours? You removed from the day's list of AfDs an AfD that I'd laboriously prepared. -- Hoary (talk) 11:43, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Perhaps it was an edit conflict? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 15:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Well OK then. (These things happen.) -- Hoary (talk) 15:44, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Malak Koura

I removed the prod tag you placed on Malak Koura, as the article cannot be prodded due to a previously contested prod in September 2010. Compliance with policy/procedure is the only reason I did this; I have no prejudice against opening an AfD. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 17:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Template:Requested move

Could you explain this edit to me please. You don't seem to have updated the documentation and the edit log doesn't do a very good job of explaining why you think it's necessary so I have no idea why the change was made. Dpmuk (talk) 14:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, that was a result of a requested move I made at Wikipedia talk:Article titles and I needed to open a second parameter to specify what needed to be moved, rather than the page itself. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 02:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

re: Page history

Several reasons. First and most importantly, non-admins also care about and play a role in sorting out and maintaining articles. The pagehistory frequently offers valuable clues and can help us reach consensus on the best result for the encyclopedia. Locking those clues away to admins-only is a disservice to the good but non-admin editors. Second, pagehistories are the primary way that we maintain the attribution history required under GFDL. That attribution history must remain reasonably accessible to all readers. So again, locking it away to admins-only gets us in trouble.

There's also the issue that deleting a pagehistory hides it even from the admins. Yes, I can look in the deleted pagehistory but that's an extra several clicks and an extra view that I have to think to look for. It's too easy to forget.

Continuing the attribution thread specifically in the context of redirects, in many cases the redirect is the only record of change in the page's title. From the point of view of the encyclopedia, page titles are content whose attribution must be maintained just like the attribution of page content. Now the rules did change a few years ago when the MediaWiki software now was changed to record a pagemove in the moved page's history. But that did not used to be true. For redirects more than a few years old, there is a chance that the redirect is the only place that future readers can use to find that history.

Of course, none of that applies to attack pages or other forms of vandalism. We have no obligation to preserve or protect bad-faith edits (nor the pagehistory documenting the vandalism). But that doesn't match the situation in the recent series of RfD discussions.

Hope that explains more about why pagehistories are so important. Rossami (talk) 02:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

You asked a couple of different questions. Let me try to break them apart. Please correct me if I misinterpreted any of them.

1. Does [the attribution requirement of] GFDL apply to non-notable articles that have been deleted?
   • No, mostly. Content that has been completely removed from the project and has no reasonable probability of being restored does not carry an attribution requirement. The challenge with "non-notable" content is that, unlike vandalism, sometimes it's status changes - a non-notable subject becomes notable either in it's own right or marginally notable enough to merge the content into some other article. Either of those could re-trigger the attribution requirement.
2. Does GFDL apply to any cross-namespace redirects (both current and past-deleted)?
   • Yes if the redirect was created as part of a good-faith pagemove. This is a big part of why it's so important to keep those redirects for the pages which were created before the software allowed the separate namespaces.
     Note: There is an exception for redirects which are clearly confusing. Several years ago, we had a serious problem with vanity articles in the mainspace. AfD (then VFD) was getting flooded. For a while, the preferred solution was to simply move the vanity article to the creator's userpage. It avoided all the overhead and delay of a deletion discussion. Well, a number of users then began gaming the system and deliberately made their userpage look like articles and cross-linked as if they were articles. Readers would follow a link and if you didn't notice that the pagetitle included "User:", you could be easily taken in. So the cross-namespace rule was instituted to fix those deliberately misleading redirects. At the time, the only separate namespaces were User, Mainspace and the brand new Wikipedia space. Any redirect from the Mainspace to User was presumed to be malicious and speedy-deletable.
     Over time, more namespaces were added and some editors assumed that the rule against Main->User redirects applied globally. That simple CNR rule got twisted and expanded beyond it's original intent and a subset of editors developed a position that all cross-namespace redirects were evil. The current position is an uneasy truce with old CNRs being maintained and new ones generally discouraged but individual decisions depending heavily on who happens to notice which RfD discussion and who happens to close the case. Our consistency on this point is low.
3. What about the opinion on the RFD page that "deleting redirects is cheap since the deletion coding takes up minimal disk space and use very little bandwidth. In general, there is no harm in deleting problematic redirects that do not contribute to improving the encyclopedia."?
   • That is a distortion of the original position that "redirects are cheap" which stems from an early argument that we should somehow 'clean up' pages in Wikipedia because it would save money. Several of our developers weighed in and corrected the debate, noting that deletion (as currently practiced - in the early days, we really had hard deletes) merely tags a page and pagehistory as hidden from the general public. Deletion does not remove any records from the database, gets us no server space back, has not measurable effect on bandwidth and reduces no one's workload. Arguments to delete a redirect because it's 'expensive' are invalid.
     Your quote is an obvious extension - while deleting saves nothing from the database, tagging something as deleted adds very little to it. So neither should we argue to keep because deletion is somehow 'expensive'. Cost is a trivial factor in both directions.
     My counter to the quote above is that it's irrelevant. Problematic redirects should definitely be deleted. No one disputes that. But there does have to be some showing that a redirect is, in fact, a problem - that is creates some harm or confusion that must be remedied. If there is no harm and there is even a slight benefit, then the project is better off simply ignoring the redirect. Deletion may be cheap but leaving it alone is even cheaper and while you and I may not see value to the redirect, we should err on the side of trusting the judgement of the original creator until there is evidence to the contrary.

I apologize for my rather long-winded series of answers. I hope this helps. Rossami (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

No need to apologize; I find your "long-winded series of answers" rather enlightening actually. Sometimes it helps me to take a step back and look at the big picture, and try to remind myself about the value of redirects in general. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 21:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, TeleComNasSprVen. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Database reports.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Three questions

Hi there! I have three questions:

1. This "=November 2010=" header on top of this page, is it really needed?
2. Even above that, a note reads: "OMG! It's RickK: [[ User:RickK". Was does this mean? Seems like a disconnected, nonsensical statement to me.
3. Are you aware of the Wayback Machine? It's usually a good idea to check for a copy of a dead page before removing the link.[1]

Happy editing, theFace 19:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Responding in order:

1. The header isn't necessary, but it's a good way to organize my messages when I choose to archive them (you can see my archives at the top of this page).
2. Back when I was trying to adjust to a wiki lifestyle, I found some interesting history about a vandalfighter named "RickK". You're welcome to take a look at his userpages and find out a little more about him, and why many revere him as an administrator.
3. Yes, but I don't check it quite often. The Wayback Machine is usually used only for checking archives of old pages, and sometimes a dead link is recent enough that the archive.org website doesn't automatically catch them. In other words, the machine is not that reliable. It's also bad practice to put an external link in the body of an essay or article anyway; they usually go at the end, under the "External links" section (see the manual of style for more details).

I hope that answers all of your questions! Best, :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 22:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Note

I finally re-redirected the cross namespace redirects "XXXX election(s)" you nominated in November to list-like articles for disambiguation purposes. Rich Farmbrough, 01:26, 19th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

On Verra

You didn't complete the AFD. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 04:56, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOTFINISHED? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 04:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

a request

I reverted this edit as it complicated my normal routine archiving of all the discussions on my talk page. Could you please refrain from this kind of edit in future? Geo Swan (talk) 21:48, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I'll try not to touch other comments in the future. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 22:28, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion for rozen maiden characters

discussion is available for the list of rozen maiden character's talk page on how we should resolve the issue.Bread Ninja (talk) 08:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot-substing of Template:Welcomelaws

I noticed that in this edit you added {{substituted|auto=yes}} to Template:Welcomelaws. The bot will not substitute the template at this time, as that template currently has 745 transclusions; the bot will normally not subst anything with over 100 transclusions to prevent it being used (accidentally or maliciously) to mass-substitute templates that should not actually be substituted. To get the bot to start work on it, you can have an admin add it to the exceptions list at User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force or you can subst the existing instances by hand. Anomie⚔ 13:51, 24 January 2011 (UTC)