Archive 1 Archive 2

Weights & Measures

Hello, Getsnoopy. I'm afraid I don't know what is meant by an rfc, or what might be needed in closing it. I hope I haven't been treading on your toes. I simply judged that the lede was not summarising the article, and suggested a new version. If you want to brief me on a project, I'm happy to consider it, but I don't claim any specialist knowledge about the world of international weights and measures. Valetude (talk) 21:46, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valetude: Ah, I see. An RfC (Request for Comments) is just a formal way for people to propose a change (to a page or to a Wiki policy) and request others to comment on it to determine how much support there is for it and whether consensus can be reached. The one I linked to was one about whether "IBWM" is an acceptable abbreviation of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. The RfC decisively shows that everyone except for the person initially proposing the change was against it. It just so happens that the same person is being fussy about me closing the discussion since I was involved in it as well (due to supposed bias), so I was soliciting others to close the discussion for me. If you're uncomfortable with the process, that's fine; I'm happy to ask someone else. Getsnoopy (talk) 06:51, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
Checking the thread on the Talk Page, it seems to be a long-running debate, and I'm not sure I have anything much to contribute to it. Personally I feel that a standardised abbreviation is appropriate to an international body, but I note some entrenched views to the contrary. I reckon I would be out of my depth on this one. Good luck anyway. Valetude (talk) 10:14, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

British raj

Does Lexico have:

2. spec. In full British Raj. Direct rule in India by the British (1858–1947); this period of dominion. Often with the. Also in extended use: any system of government in which power is restricted to a particular group. The British Raj was instituted in 1858, when, as a consequence of the Indian Rebellion of the previous year, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (proclaimed Empress of India in 1876). In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states, the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh) (cf. partition n. 7c).

1857 Times 3 Aug. 5/6 We have just seen a translation of one of the most infamous articles against the British Raj, which we have seen published. 1879 Times 8 Dec. 9/3 The downfall of the British raj was only a matter of time. 1908 Daily Chron. 21 June 4/4 The Indian agitators who represent the British raj as the author of the plague. .... 1987 N. Sibal Yatra I. 6 Paramjit had written to her saying that the British were pulling out of India and that the Raj was coming to an end. 2006 Daily Mail (Nexis) 6 June 17 I've yet to hear him address the democratic deficit which subjugates the English to rule by a Scottish Raj.

Like I said, they've used my language. Why then are you wasting my time with inanities? Seriously. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:06, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: No, because that information doesn't add to merely wanting to know the definition of the "British raj". Like I've said twice already, Lexico doesn't have historical usage information because that's not what the goal of it is, but it derives from the same content that the OED derives from. At this point, you are wasting my time (let alone yours) by quibbling about meaningless intricacies of the Oxford product lineup, not me. Let it go. Getsnoopy (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Undiscussed page moving

Hi, you seem to be on a unilateral page move binge. Please use the proposed move templates to ascertain whether the proposed move is controversial. If no one speaks up in ..... I think the guideline says 7 days... then its deemed uncontroversial. See WP:BEFOREMOVING NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:10, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy: Yeah, I guess it was quite a few pages. There is a policy against the use of contested vocabulary if it can be avoided, which includes impact. The controversial guidelines only say that if I think it's controversial, I should ask around, which I don't really think it is. Either way, WP:BOLD states that it should be fine; if someone finds it problematic, then they will say something about it. Thank you for letting me know though; I'll try to tone it down. Cheers. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
The MOS is not a policy but a guideline which is silent about the word "impact". The precise subsection you link contains a sublink where we find the caution about the word "impact". However even that does not say what you seem to think it says. The admonition against using this word is for the verb form. The title to these article you have been changing uses the word as a noun. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:38, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
@NewsAndEventsGuy: Indeed. Firstly, each of the topics have multiple effects on the environment, so it doesn't make sense from a purely grammatical sense there. But more importantly, even as a noun, the word means "strong/marked/violent effect". Having that as a title is a sort of charged/leading title, since it assumes that the effects are strong or marked. Not all of the effects on the environment by, for example, aviation are strong or large. This is especially problematic when many of the lead sentences of those articles read, "The environment impact of X is significant", which is just a tautological sentence. Encyclopedias like WP should be neutral and balanced in their wording; hence, my edits. Getsnoopy (talk) 19:34, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
If you care to do so, by all means, use the proposed move templates and start a discussion at article talk where other interested eds might participate as well NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:51, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
PS please don't ping me when in an established discussion. It's appreciated, but it makes busywork.... I already get notified via my watchlist, and so the ping just takes up time for no reason when I turn off the redundant notification. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:54, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
Sounds good; will do. Cheers. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:51, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Font Name

Hello, I am sorry of this isn't the appropriate way to reach out to users to ask for certain pieces of information. Please let me know if that is the case here. I just wanted to know the name of the font that you used to create the image on the Hindi text-image on this page, which you seem to have uploaded on this here page on 19 October 2020.

Thank you very much. PargenderNari (talk) 12:26, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@PargenderNari: I think this is as good a place for those discussions as any. IIRC, it's a font called Adobe Devanagari that's available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Cheers. Getsnoopy (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

September 2021

  Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to move pages to bad titles contrary to naming conventions or consensus, you may be blocked from editing. In the discussions above, you were told to stop unilateral behavior, you were proven wrong besides that, you gave some pointlessly vague hairsplitting equivocations but said you'd stop, and yet you didn't. You are on a semi-WP:ROBOTIC WP:IDIDNTHEARYOU agenda. Now, stop. Just stop renaming articles! You can add this to the list of things you need to back off from, in order to not be blocked again. @Swarm: you have dealt with this mentality here before, and this one very narrow issue has been about three threads on this page alone, so I'll ping.Smuckola(talk) 18:02, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Smuckola: I actually entirely forgot about the thread above, so that is my mistake. But that is fine, I will stay away from changing article titles. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

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Please help publishing my article on Well known Hindu saint

Hi, Its been more than 2 months, my draft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Swami_Avdheshanand_Giri is still under review. I listed it on Hinduism project but no one seems to be active there. The draft was declined and rejected by an account blocked for sockpuppetry and was also accused of vandalism. I have recieved some help from other editors but it is still a draft. Could you help me? Thanks Shatbhisha6 (talk) 18:57, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Shatbhisha6: Hello. I'm not sure how you found me, but I'm not really active on that project. But it seems like your article doesn't exist already, so I'm not sure why you couldn't just create the article yourself. From the draft, however, it seems like there are a couple of declined messages on it, so I'd say address those concerns before it being ready to be published. Cheers. Getsnoopy (talk) 04:17, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
@Getsnoopy i found you through wikipedia help page active editors or administrators section. The decline messages were given by a user who was blocked globally for being a sock. The concerns raised by others have been duly addressed. Seek help on what more can be done? Shatbhisha6 (talk) 04:39, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
@Shatbhisha6: I see. Why not just create the article yourself? You should be able to just search for that title, and when it says it can't find it, just click "Create new page". Getsnoopy (talk) 05:25, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
@Getsnoopy: It is created by me, and is in a draft form, it needs to be reviewed and published. Thanks Shatbhisha6 (talk) 07:01, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Article title discussion

Please see this article discussion over at Talk:Alu tikki#Article title. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 00:36, 16 May 2022 (UT

Liberland Article Removal

Dear Getsnoopy, I have seen that you had in past contributed to the Liberland Wikipedia page. A user has recently suggested the deletion of that page. If it isn't too much trouble, might I ask you to comment on that discussion? Yours sincerely Michalptacnik (talk) 14:19, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

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We are not required to use ISO country codes as discography chart column abbreviations

There is no requirement to do this. It may be required when we abbreviate country names (as in template coding) in other areas of Wikipedia; it isn't for discography columns. WP:DISCOGSTYLE is widely followed despite not being a formal guideline, and also, WP:NOTUSA applies—we don't abbreviate the US to "USA". Recognizability (SWI for Switzerland, for example) trumps ISO formality at least when it comes to column abbreviations in music areas of Wikipedia. Thanks. Ss112 12:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I didn't know about that topic-specific MOS page. But the issue with that, of course, is what is "an abbreviation" for a country going to look like? "SWD" could be a valid abbreviation, which applies to Switzerland as well as Sweden. When I first saw "SWI", I had no idea what it was and had to hover over the link to see where it linked to or what the tooltip said (my first thought was Swaziland, frankly). WP:NOTUSA doesn't apply in this case because the text is not in prose, but a special case of codes/abbreviations (it would make sense if the context was going from "Norway" to "Nor." or the like, for example, but in this case, it's "Norway" to "NOR").
I didn't change it because it was necessarily a requirement, but that the inconsistency lent itself being standardized with something as ubiquitous as ISO. As for recognizability, everyday people deal with ISO codes on a daily basis in the sense of country-code top level domains (ccTLDs; e.g., .ch for Switzerland). As such, that would be far more recognizable to people than an ad hoc abbreviation "SWI". Granted, it would be a fair point to argue that it's the alpha-3 code in this case rather than the alpha-2 that most people are familiar with, which I could be convinced by if it was suggested that we use those instead, but I think consistency is important. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Regarding reverting edits solely due to lack of edit summary

I am a huge proponent of informative edit summaries, yet even I can admit that it's not good form to revert edits solely due to lack of edit summaries; please review WP:FIES for more analysis of this. I've also reverted unexplained edits, but typically in situations where the edits run afoul of accuracy rather than perceived consensus. In addition, edit summaries that have no actual content and require editors to open the diff to see what happened are just as bad as no summaries at all, again per WP:FIES. For example, I had to open this diff to figure out what exactly is going on with all of this reversion business because the edit summary was useless, and given that discussion is regarding a topic that occurred on some other page with only one other editor, I admit that I'm still not sure what exactly is going on here. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 07:38, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, I admit that my original edit summary could've been better, but the reversion of it without explanation is bad in this case because it's an issue of misleading the user / misrepresenting facts. It's not bad form since it being an issue of "perceived consensus" wasn't the only reason; the reason for that edit, which is a clarification, was originally discussed on the page itself (and a corresponding edit was made in its Etymology section as well). Someone in the discussion later mentioned that it would need to happen on the accompanying names page, since that's where the details about it would suitably go, and reverted the change in the Etymology section. Now that the accompanying page has been edited, the main page is now somewhat in conflict with it; hence, the edit. Getsnoopy (talk) 07:58, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate the background. To help resolve this, can you provide a diff or an archive link to the previous discussion mentioned in originally discussed on the page itself (and a corresponding edit was made in its Etymology section as well) on the Talk:United States page where the informally term was discussed? That's a good example of the context that would be legitimately helpful in edit summaries, particularly if you're directing editors to adhere to one specific version. Wikipedia lives and dies on verifiable content, including our own diffs. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 08:08, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Here are the discussions I found:
The rest of the discussion happened on the subpage. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:48, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! That's helpful. My view after reading those discussions is that there were quite a few issues bundled together, and I feel that the outright use of the word "informal" wasn't quite settled. As for the names of the United States article, any discussion there has no bearing on the main article; indeed one of the points of subarticles is to go deeper into issues that the main article doesn't necessary need to. I'm going to re-read those discussions once more, and may bring this separately to Talk:United States and make sure that I acknowledge those discussions as well. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 18:38, 10 September 2023 (UTC)