User talk:Ohconfucius/archive23

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1:33 PM, Thursday April 25, 2024

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The Penguin Cabal

User:Ohconfucius/Globes

Talk page archives and miscellaneous Spot the typo ;-) (storefront at 242 Des Voeux Road West, Hong Kong Island) Exchanges specific to my Engvar script are also archived at User talk:Ohconfucius/EngvarB.

A barnstar for you!

	The Teamwork Barnstar
	Hey, I just wanted to thank you for your work in the Cadereyta Jiménez massacre! It was a pleasure working with you. Keep up the good work! ComputerJA (talk) 21:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

• Much appreciated. I must return the commendation on your open approach and willing acceptance of the efforts of others. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 00:35, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

AE

Please see here.[1] I'm sorry about this. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 03:56, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Duplicated regex menu entries

Hi. I'm importing several of your scripts (thanks for providing them) and notice that various menu items in the toolbar are duplicated. I think this is because each script imports m:User:Pathoschild/Scripts/Regex_menu_framework.js. I have started a section about this at m:User talk:Pathoschild/Scripts/Regex menu framework#Import just once. --Mirokado (talk) 13:34, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Script error

Extra spaces Your script work is inserting normal spaces after non-breaking spaces and before ndashes for some reason. Please amend it so that it's no longer doing this. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

• thanks. you found an interesting error stemming from the dashes script, which is not one of mine but which I use. I've never totally understood the rationale of when a space is inserted, or when an em- or en-dash is used – I merely rely on the script output. In this case, it's almost certainly due to the script interpreting the "&ndash string" as its component characters and not as a hard space. You're right that there should never be a soft space immediately after a hard space as this ddefies the point of the hard space. I've adjusted for it in my formatting script. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:46, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• No problem I don't know if this helps much, but per WP:DASH, a non-breaking space should precede an ndash, but mdashes should be non-spaced—that is, they should run right up against the text as they are here. Non-breaking spaces are used so that you don't have an ndash hanging on the end of a line with the relevant text on the next one (of course, this is precisely the function of all non-breaking spaces...) I'm not sure if that clarifies anything, but there you have it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:21, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

3RR

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Homunculus (duihua) 05:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Redirect script

Could you run such a script on my mark (i.e. the next time I notify you) at the articles beginning with "List of township-level divisions of"? The articles of the entries at these lists may be deleted en masse soon, and I don't want my moving work (to make titles conform with WP:NC-ZH) to go up in flames. Thanks much GotR ^Talk 17:14, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I understand what the issue is, or what you want me to do. But let me try: Let's say that for List of township-level divisions of Hebei, there are hundreds of townships listed, such as Youfang (油坊镇). You are anticipating that these 'Youfangs' will be deleted en masse, and you would like me to use a script to create redirects to 'List of township'. Am I getting warm? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, you are. Once I am finished, I would like you to fix all redirects on that page. That is all. GotR ^Talk 17:37, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• I think I get it... So I will open up each of the individual pages listed in 'List of township-level divisions of Hebei', erase the content and make them redirect to the former. Should I actually be redirecting articles section by section, into the most closely related County or District article? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:42, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think you get it, yet. Sorry for my failure to elaborate. In the past month or so, I have moved many of the articles listed at List of township-level divisions of Hebei to conform with the new guidelines at the Chinese naming conventions. However, I have not fixed most of the corresponding links, and they need to be corrected to their current titles lest my work is wasted upon deletion of these articles. For example, within the list, [[Longguan, Chicheng County]]→[[Longguan, Hebei]]. I hope that explains everything.
• The articles themselves should be left intact.
• I am now done with Hebei, so please run through it. GotR ^Talk 18:18, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Date format script issue

Hi Ohconfucius! When I try to use your date format script on Spider-Man in film, it wants to change each instance of "21st Century" to "21st century". In this case, "21st Century" refers to the 21st Century Film Corporation, and therefore shouldn't be decapitalized. I have a similar issue on the 20th Century Fox article. Could you please tweak your script? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:48, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

• Oh, I see the problem. 21st Century (capitalised) is used as shorthand for 21st Century Film Corporation or 21st Century Fox. My script anticipates any trailing capital that would catch these latter, but it seems there's no way of avoiding the plain vanilla '21st Century'. I'll just have to disable it altogether. Shame, though, because it's also one of the most commonly incorrectly capitalised terms in wikipedia. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:06, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, must it be disabled? The C is a not-uncommon error in running prose, and we do examine the diffs and pick up the false positives. This is a rare instance. Tony (talk) 02:10, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

That's what Batty did, clearly. It's true that the downcasing is still likely to benefit most articles whilst causing this glitch in a much smaller of number of article predominantly involving the film industry. But then there are a lot of articles within the scope of the latter. Even within film articles, chances are that '20th Century' or '21st Century' are used normally and ought to be downcased. How often are these used as abbreviations for the corporate names? I can write all sorts of safeguards into the script, but I need a solid pattern of "dos and don'ts" (what letters or characters to change and what specifically not to change) to work from. Any ideas for a workaround would be appreciated. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:16, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to skip the downcasing on articles that link to 21st Century Film Corporation or 20th Century Fox? GoingBatty (talk) 02:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It may be technically possible, but my limited knowledge unfortunately does not enable me to do that. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:30, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Space suit

Thanks for cleaning up Space suit! Good job, much appreciated. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 07:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

• it's a pleasure. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Comics realted articles

Hello,

Just a heads up, but the method you are using to "clean up" articles is making a hash of things with the comics related ones. The "#" used in identifying comic book issues - Superman #250 - is correct, "No" is not.

- J Greb (talk) 11:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

J Greg, hi, I'm almost certain that after a long and careful debate about two years ago, the community decided that the hash is trash, and that an alternative such as "No." is required. many readers won't process the hash easily, especially if, like me, they're not an in-house comics person, don't you agree? Tony (talk) 11:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

• I had understood that the hash sign was clearly deprecated in our manual of style. Maybe I should raise the issue there... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

IIRC Tony that was within the area of citations. If it was beyond that, please point me to the discussion. - J Greb (talk) 21:30, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Also... WP:HASH seems to have had the exception note there a while... - J Greb (talk) 21:38, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

3RR

[2] The Sound and the Fury (talk) 15:39, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

• I applaud you for the sheer economy, timing, and changeover. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:32, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Was there any policy or procedural provision, or established convention besides that, for your action to remove my remark under Ferox's? The "comments by others" section in other AE posts seem to be full of good-natured (or not) back-and-forth between concerned parties. And in what way did the remark appear to you as soapboxing? The Sound and the Fury (talk) 03:34, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

• You're supposed to stick to your own section for Arbcom matters. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:07, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Did you look at the "Comments by others" sections in the other AE posts there? They are directly above and below ours. The "Comments by others" section has a lot of response and counter-response. Given this, the impression created of your deleting mine (calling it soapboxing, which you have not justified) obviously does not appear very good. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 04:20, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Another date format script issue

When I ran your Body dates to mdy script on Britney Spears, not only does it change dates in references, but it makes incorrect changes such as |accessdate=2012-05-15 to |accessdate=May 1, 20125. Could you please make the appropriate tweaks to your script? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

• I mistakenly copied something over from my test script. It's now fixed. As to the displaced day, I'll look into it. Thanks. PS, I see that you've met Gimmetoo! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:16, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm - I logged out of Wikipedia, closed my browser, cleared my cache, and I'm still getting the same issues. GoingBatty (talk) 05:04, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I changed my test script instead of the production one. It should be fine now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:21, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Works great now - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Anchor text edit (Bermuda Bowl)

Hi, Your recent edit[3] replaces hyphens with dashes inside anchor text, which is not good because it breaks any existing links. This may be a problem with script you maintain. If "somebot" is responsible then we need to report it.

When I asked about this Template talk: anchor, I mentioned AWB, but now I attribute only the preceding edit to AWB so I have not reported to "AWB folks" as other editors suggest in that discussion. --P64 (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

P.S. One of those editors will check by script (and might show me) whether any incoming section link currently exists. If you know of a helpful tool I will appreciate that, and make fewer anchors in the future. --P64 (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Let's not completely discount the problem with the hyphen itself. Although it is part of an anchor, and thus otherwise invisible to the rendered text, it remains a WP:MOSDASH violation. As to the part of my script that changes hyphens to dashes, it's something that needs to be signalled to the author, who is unfortunately not active. He hasn't responded to a number of minor issues for quite a few months. If this continues, someone will need to take over the maintenance of the script, which is otherwise an excellent tool for 95 percent of errant hyphen/dash styles. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Format general script

Your script remove the space before a category sortkey. Based on Wikipedia:SORTKEY, this is done on purpose to place it as the first article(s) on the category page. Please tweak your script. --Ivan530Talk 01:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

• I have checked that my script does not act on the {{DEFAULTSORT}} template or any of its parameters. I must presume you are referring to this edit, in which the space was removed from the sort in the category. But note that for that article, the default sort is already present, and would take precedence over the " Video Games" piped into the category. I'll try working out a suitable change in the script. Thanks for your notification. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:07, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I thought you fixed that one before.... In any case {{DEFAULTSORT}} sets a default sort key, which can be overridden by any specific sort key, such as " Video games". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
    • I've made a change to the code and it shouldn't mess with spaces inside categories any more. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:06, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Dates and images

Thanks for all work you do in fixing dates etc! But you should change the script to not change dates in filenames, se [4]. Thanks, The User 567 (talk) 12:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing that one out. In fact, file names are usually protected, but it seems that an unhealthy proliferation of templates, each one with slightly different syntax, that is causing the problems. I will add that syntax to my script protection. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:58, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes - we are told that this type of proliferation will never cause problems. Rich Farmbrough, 01:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC).

Adminhelp

The following text needs to be placed at the bottom of this section as soon as possible (better from edit mode, the part enclosed by the blockquotes). Thanks for your assistance. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done T. Canens (talk) 16:34, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Extended content

;Editing at Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident As soon as I learnt that it was up for TFA, for I saw the nomination, I got working on it immediately and frantically. I suppose that I could have nominated it for FAR instead, but I thought it could be cleaned up. I<span class="plainlinks"> shepherded the article through FA with the help of asdfg12345, Jayen466 and SilkTork. Once that was done, I had set out to improve the other Falun Gong articles but soon felt frustrated by the endless [[WP:LAWYER|wikilawyering]] and insistence on cherrypicking of sources – they would repeatedly insist that certain sources that they called "high quality scholarly sources", generally favourable to Falun Gong, to be used. Bytheir apparent definition, such sources include Porter, Ownby, Schechter, Gutman, Amnesty International (I have no problem with the former two, but please note that the latter three do not enjoy the same status as serious research – Schechter is a journalist who is staunchly pro-Falun Gong, and Gutman works for Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a political lobbyist). They also fond of quoting from Divid Kilgour, a Canadian parliamentarian who has made a name for himself for "exposing" alleged [[Kilgour-Matas report|atrocities committed against Falun Gong practitioners]], and will often use his website for information. Of course, they will also quote from various websites affiliated with Falun Gong. As I will demonstrate below, they would also systematically seek to remove critical mentions of Falun Gong, and seek to marginalise those sources (even those that can be defined as truly scholarly) that indicated scepticism of the movement. I had already grown disillusioned by the constant attacks, abuse and [[WP:TE|tendentiousness]] from some parties whom I had identified as Falun Gong SPAs and who are all now effectively banned from the project for [[WP:Advocacy|advocacy]] and [[WP:POV pushing|POV-pushing]]. I stopped editing Falun Gong articles towards the end of December 2009, and took the articles off my watchlist in approximately after the 'self-immolation' article incurred a [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&offset=20100220012810&limit=36&action=history&tagfilter= bout of attacks] from an obvious Falun Gong sockpuppet. I performed a number of reverts and then stopped editing. </span> <span class="plainlinks">The filer of this AE noted that "several other editors knowledgeable on the subject" had worked on the article since I walked away. An analysis of the edits to the article shows that the list of illustrious names includes, in decreasing order of number of edits, PCPP (no edits after 29 January 2011), AnnaInDC, Homunculus, Zujine, Asdfg12345, Ohconfucius, Jayen466, SilkTork, Dilip rajeev and Olaf Stephanos. As we all know, Asdfg12345, Dilip rajeev and Olaf Stephanos were given indefinite topic bans as Falun Gong SPAs in 10 November 2011, whilst PCPP was given a topic ban for edit-warring.</span> Until PCPP was topic banned, there was a degree of counterweight to the thrust of Falun Gong editors, but his "effectiveness" was always limited because he was heavily outnumbered. Since then, the article has enjoyed a ratchet effect of pro-Falun Gong edits. Here follows an analysis of the edit count to the article since PCPP's topic ban.<p> {| class="wikitable" <hiddentext>generated with [[:de:Wikipedia:Helferlein/VBA-Macro for EXCEL tableconversion]] V1.8<\hiddentext> |- style="font-weight:bold" valign="bottom" | width="227" height="13" | Username | width="48" | Edit count |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|Homunculus}} | align="right" | 4 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|122.176.209.225}} | align="right" | 3 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|Aronlee90}} | align="right" | 3 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|SilkTork}} | align="right" | 3 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|124.183.76.34}} | align="right" | 2 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|Jayen466}} | align="right" | 2 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|Dilip rajeev}} | align="right" | 1 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | {{User|Zujine}} | align="right" | 1 |- valign="bottom" | height="13" | Other editors with 1 edit each | align="right" | 15 |- style="font-weight:bold" valign="bottom" | height="14" | Grand total of edits from 30/1/2011 to 26/3/2012 | align="right" | 34 |} <span class="plainlinks">As soon as PCPP was "out of the way" four days later, Homunculus seized the opportunity of ratcheting the POV in favour of Falun Gong thus: In the first of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&offset=20110309122954&limit=4&action=history three edits], he performed a radical shift in the article's balance. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ohconfucius/sandbox&oldid=494745854 This] is a rearranged version of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&oldid=417037117 version 417037166] by Homunculus of 05:55 (UTC), 4 March 2011 The complexity of the edit as well as the one below, and the existence of material undescribed changes such as deletions of adequately sourced text unfavourable to Falun Gong make for a highy opaque edit; it could be contended that the edit summary is '''misleading'''. Observe how the NPOV balance has been radically shifted [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&diff=494745854&oldid=410758201 compared] with the previous version: #"Liu's neighbours" was changed to "neighbors and those acquainted with Liu", although none of the latter were mentioned in the source #Mention in ''Time'' that 'four of the self-immolators were seen in flames, with their hands held "in a classic Falun Gong meditation pose", drawing a complaint from the Falun Gong movement' was cleanly excised #Removed Sisci's comment that "the sect first tried to deny the episode and then argued that it was staged by the government " #Removed ''Time's'' criticism that the movement had been caught off-guard, and its leadership's damage control proved to be inadequate #added quote that: "there are desperate people in China (and elsewhere) who will do anything for money" #attributed quote which according to reliable source said " "certain disciples had some extreme interpretations [and thought] we are going to resort to violence", swapped in unsourced or possibly primarysourced material. #removed NY Times' mention that "one of the self-immolators was able to "fluidly perform" Falun Gong's signature slow-motion exercises in front of Western media." #excised all mention of Jensen and Weston's criticism of the Falun Gong in their scholarly work. In a later edit, the last one in the above list, Homunculus further radically shifted the balance of the article. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ohconfucius/sandbox&oldid=494726003 this] is a rearranged version of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&oldid=436986484 version 436986484] by Homunculus of 04:37 (UTC), 30 June 2011. Observe how the NPOV balance has been radically shifted [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&diff=494726003&oldid=436915436 compared] with the previous version #Neutral media caption lengthened and biased in favour of hypothesis #advanced a hypothesis that the self-immolation participants were paid actors, without attribution and without sourcing #exponential increase in weight given to the False Fire analysis #excised unfavourable mention by Hong Kong NGO [[Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy]] and Xinhua News Agency report. #Downplayed "Beyond the Limits of Forbearance" and excised view of Østergaard In preparing the article for the TFA, I performed [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&offset=20120403052116&limit=140&action=history approximately 100 edits]. In order to limit controversy and to provide for a highly transparent audit trail, my edits were accompanied by appropriately detailed edit summaries, in marked contrast to what has been seen hitherto. Using a previous [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&oldid=339875216 'good' version] as a reference, I made changes to restore some deleted material and address the obvious NPOV failings of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tiananmen_Square_self-immolation_incident&direction=prev&oldid=484656933 version extant]. How an article on such a polemic topic managed to become a [[WP:FA|Featured Article]] has to be somewhat unique case in the annals of Wikipedia, and I believe I have a right to be proud of this achievement. In my eagerness to have the article cleaned up in time for TFA, I only paid cursory attention to their moans on the talk page, knowing that to do so would only bog me down with further lawyering – I ploughed on believing that, after all, the version of an article that has reached FA status has to be somewhat defendable, especially from those determined to undermine its equilibrium for their own agendas. However, an [http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/cgi-bin/usersearch.cgi?name=Zujine&page=Tiananmen+Square+self-immolation+incident&max=28&server=enwiki eleventh hour struggle] by another suspected Falun Gong meatpuppet somewhat frustrated my effort, and the version that appeared on the front page was, for me, an embarrassment. --<small>[[User:Ohconfucius|<span style="color:Black;font:bold 8pt 'kristen itc';text-shadow:cyan 0.3em 0.3em 0.1em;">Ohconfucius</span>]] [[User talk:Ohconfucius|<sup>¡digame!</sup>]]</small> 14:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Ohconfucius (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

The block is clearly punitive. I stopped doing what I was accused of doing well before the 3RR warning was placed. There have been no reverts for in excess of 48 hours. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Accept reason:

Indeed, days had passed since the infraction, and this was unnecessary. The AN3 report that led to this had gone stale and should have been closed as such. -- tariqabjotu 18:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Falun Gong arbitration

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Falun Gong 2 and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, T. Canens (talk) 10:28, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment

I commented here something you should probably know about. However, this will be my last comment about this case. Sorry for some of my previous comments if they seem unfair. Good luck! My very best wishes (talk) 20:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for your notification. Although you said I inserted "blatant propaganda", what you said is fair comment, although a bit strong. I suspect that you see the "propaganda" being advanced by "the other side". ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:25, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for misunderstanding. Actually, I believe you are very good and generally neutral contributor. Yes, perhaps you made a few POVish edits recently, but I do not think this requires attention of the Committee. But unfortunately no one listen to me. My very best wishes (talk) 19:15, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's see what TSTF has to say. If he doesn't submit evidence, neither will I. But if he does, and there is every indication that he will, I will be forced to launch a massive counter-attack. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

If he submits some evidence (which is not going to be very strong), your best strategy is probably point-by-point rebuttal. He shows a diff to prove that you did something wrong. If you think this diff could be taken by arbs seriously (most of them probably will not), just explain in non-confrontational manner, why exactly you made this edit or comment. Do not fell to the trap of incriminating another editor in retaliation: this is exactly what arbs expect from both of you. If you do that, then your own evidence (if it does not prove much) can be interpreted as a proof of your alleged "battleground mentality" and be a reason of your sanctions. This is my advice. But of course this is entirely your decision what to do. Good luck! My very best wishes (talk) 03:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Cheers. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:18, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps I was wrong. After looking at this followed by this, it does not look good at all. My very best wishes (talk) 04:42, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Removal of odd spaces

In this edit you remove some spaces in the reference templates, but apparently quite inconsistenly. Why do you remove spaces only in front of dates and not in front of titles, urls etc? I'd rather prefer you kept it the way I've been trying to maintain it. __meco (talk) 16:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• There are actually several different scripts I run on article in one edit. One deals with dates and another deals with references. I will need to look at the inconsistent formatting there in both scripts. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok! __meco (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

George V

please don't use capitals after a comma, and the change in the infobox is clearly not helpful. DrKiernan (talk) 07:47, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

• OK, thanks. I have that fixed now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2 opened

An arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 16, 2012, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Lord Roem (talk) 04:22, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Editing problems

• [5] This edit appears to change the clearly predominant style; article has more than 100 refs
• [6] [7] Likewise, though these have fewer refs
• [8] This edit has an evident bug

You also have not got back to me as promised [9] , nor did you address [10]. What's up? Gimmetoo (talk) 04:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

[11] When I look at the version prior, I see a lot of dates in yyyy-mm-dd format in the 146 references. Some of them are accessdates (which I've just normalized), but it looks likely to be the majority form even for the publication dates. What principles did you use to select the format? Gimmetoo (talk) 15:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• It's called a pifomètre. Of course, I don't go around counting the occurrences of the various dates – I may be anal retentive but not to that degree – I do a preliminary visual scan of articles to evaluate whether I want to process each one on my work list. Through this triage, I am largely able to keep away from articles where at first glance there are an overwhelming preponderance of ISO dates. For this article, I did do a double take with reference to the 'original' version when examining the diff but decided that the change was warranted. (continued below). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I've talked to you about this (briefly), too, and I'd like to propose a compromise that might work: Standardize dates in article text, but do not change accessdates (and other template input) if they are already in YYYY-MM-DD format. My reasoning is that WP:MOSNUM states: Year-initial numerical (YYYY-MM-DD) dates (e.g. 1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and should not be used within sentences. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness. Since accessdates (and other non-article-text dates are not, per se, sentences, and year-initial dates work very well in these places, why not leave the template-input dates in year-initial form?

Any thoughts? — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 16:30, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

What about publication dates [12]? Gimmetoo (talk) 16:34, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely! I should have been more specific but I couldn't recall all the xxxxxxxdate names. If I could, I would tell the script to avoid accessdate, date, archivedate (and any others I haven't listed).

But we really need to see what Ohconfucius thinks about the idea... — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 20:56, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• For quite a while, I made no distinction between publication dates, access dates and archive dates. But if there is a MOSNUM consensus, it is that publication dates should be in a 'more readable format', and accessdates can be in ISO if there is consensus. I only started making that distinction when Gimmetoo started challenging me about changes to accessdates. Yes, I am nore likely to change publication dates.

  Whilst the editor consensus/desire for ISO dates in the reference sections is often quite apparent in, for example, certain pop music articles – which are meticulously maintained whenever I visit/revisit – it's not the case with the vast majority of articles. Articles with a mix of dmy, mdy ydm, ymd and ISO are the rule rather than the exception, and I find these just stunningly sloppy and crying out to be harmonised. But you may ask 'why a single format?': it's mainly because of work efficiency. I don't give myself too many decisions to take for each article in my desire to keep errors low. For me, the urge to align the dates to a single format is as irresistible as the compulsion to eat chocolate cake for many people. I don't feel the strong urge to touch articles where a quick glance doesn't reveal any date format inconsistencies. I daresay that with my heightened sensitivity in this matter, if I don't find any particular date mix obtrusive, chances are that few others would, but the state of 'The Hobbit' triggered that response. I don't deny that existence of a very significant number of ISO dates, but note that in addition to quite a large number of dmy dates, there were about 30 mdy dates in this 'dmy' article.

  Sure I can adjust my script not to process ISO dates henceforth, but that would be like picking up the big pieces of litter and not sweep the floor or hoover the carpet. I believe that the mix of different date formats, not just their number, is the strongest indicator that there is no consensus for date format. And I would certainly not equate consensus with 'majority date format'. My strong hunch is that if I now went around putting all body dates to dmy or mdy, and reference section dates to ISO, my talk page would be inundated with complaints. Instead, there are constant requests at Dispenser's talk page to incorporate default dmy or mdy date output for Reflinks, and more than a few people have expressed appreciation for what I do. It's rather telling that two/three people (for the avoidance of any doubt, I'm not referring to UncleBubba) frequently banging at my door about one edit or another which may have had dates format changed against what they feel was a consensus date format. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Do you think you would have received any complaints if you had put all the reference dates (publication and accessdates) in The Hobbit into yyyy-mm-dd format? I don't think so. I suspect if you always aligned formats for the text, pub and access, to whatever was the majority for each, that you would get few complaints. In March 2011 you promised not to change dates in the accessdate field (User_talk:Ohconfucius/archive18#Accessdates), yet you continued to make edits like [13] (August 2011, changing style of article with refs predominantly in yyyy-mm-dd); I've noted other articles where the dates were completely consistent, and still you changed them. What are the criteria by which you decide what format to use in an article? Gimmetoo (talk) 03:50, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Nor do I. In reality, >99% of people don't care. But I believe that I will start getting complaints if I did it universally as you suggest, not to mention the complication to each 'script decision' for each article – potentially 8 different dates in various positions, giving up to 16 permutations. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

If you followed the majority formats, you would still get some complaints, but think about it - what would those complaints likely involve, and more importantly, what wouldn't they involve? They wouldn't be complaints that you changed an article that editors had been maintaining and that was 95% consistent except for some refs that haven't been edited yet. Normal editors who are aware of this stuff do not normalize every date and citation format on every article on their watchlist on a weekly, or even monthly, basis. It's just not high priority. Gimmetoo (talk) 23:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

As I said above, making the distinction for each of the body dates, publication dates, access dates and archive dates and treating each group separately complicates the treatment process for negligible tangible benefits. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 23:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

So what are you proposing? That you continue removing yyyy-mm-dd formats as you have been? When we had the big RFC about yyyy-mm-dd formats in references, and it clearly supported retaining them, that should have been the end of your removing them. The tangible benefit of going with the majority format for each class (3 classes) is that your date "alignment" would retain editors' decisions; it would also be objective and scriptable. Gimmetoo (talk) 00:23, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm proposing to leave them as one. Few people care enough about specific dates or class of dates, and through efforts like WP:GAC and WP:FAC, editors only care about consistency within articles. Dates will naturally gravitate towards mono-format in the references section one way or another, and whether you like it or not. You should just accept that fact. As I said, I'm busy enough doing cleanups, and writing and maintaining the dates script without even having to consider your idea of treating three groups of dates. If you strongly feel the urge, and I believe you sincerely do, please feel free to develop, beta and maintain such a script yourself. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:54, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Do you ever put all the dates in the references (pub and access) into yyyy-mm-dd "mono-format"? FA and GA writers generally recognize the range of styles used on the Wiki, and generally respect other editors' style decisions. The general operating principle is that if someone has already developed the article with a particular style, there is negligible (if any) benefit in changing it. (I don't think, for instance, that an article written in APA style would get changed to something else by FA and GA; one of your edits I linked above involved an article with publication dates written mostly in APA style.) I could write an advisory script that gave stats on the numbers of date formats for each type. My question is, if I did that, would you use it, and how would you use it? Again, my goal here is to figure out some practical operating guidelines. Gimmetoo (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but usually the decision tree is 1/whether to treat or not, 2/dmy or mdy, 3/Engvar or not, 4/full or partial. I can't handle more than than that without slowing the process. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 23:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

So? Would you use an advisory script, and would it change anything you do? Gimmetoo (talk) 04:51, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Advisory, no. But if data mined by such a script would allow the preparation of lists that could lighten that heavy front-end triage, that would be good. But note that many articles have adopted the 'wrong' format per WP:TIES (US articles with exclusively dmy dates, and UK articles with only mdy dates) but these are in the minority. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:02, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

How would that help anything, if you would refuse to use the information? Gimmetoo (talk) 21:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I just don't understand what sort of information you feel and imagine you can extract. Maybe you can be more concrete. I would be interested in any information that would help me with the initial triage. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:17, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

If you had information like: body: mdy 1, dmy 3, ymd 0; pub: mdy 1, dmy 18, ymd 53; acd: mdy 8, dmy 5, ymd 55, would that change anything you do? Gimmetoo (talk) 13:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

As I said, I hope to simplify my decision-making when selecting the script functions by using a pre-sorted worklist of articles. I don't see how your proposed information helps me or could be exploitable. The tolerance of ISO accessdates in the reference section may exist, but there's no equivalent tolerance in archive dates or whatever other date parameters that may exist elsewhere in the reference section. So I don't see how to implement on that basis other than the 'all or nothing' ISO we are talking about. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:34, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

And I don't understand how what you said is relevant. If you have a list of articles, such information would often indicate right away what to do with each article as you load it; this is the information you 'estimate" to make decisions already. And yes, the archive dates and publication dates can be in yyyy-mm-dd formats. Gimmetoo (talk) 17:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

• Gimme, the "complaints" seem to be coming from a narrow band of programmer-types who find it easy to read those gobbledy all-numeric code-like dates. Most English-speakers—the normal folk we write articles for—can't read them. To make matters worse, they cross athwart US and other styles, so you have think carefully about whether the middle numeral stands for a day or for a month. 2001-01-02 ... 1 Feb or 2 Jan? Tony (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Tony, you're really not helping here. If Ohconfucius and I can come up with some guidelines on how to do this stuff in practice, it will be an improvement for everyone. But if you really find numbers difficult to read, then should we perhaps get rid of all numbers in dates, today, this day, the day following the thirty-fifth of May? Gimmetoo (talk) 23:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Visually, the combination of two digits plus a 'month' string in words is what flags a date for most people. We only ever see constructions like 'thirty-fifth of May' in some legal documents, nowhere else. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 23:50, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
      • Now this is so far off-topic. Gimmetoo (talk) 00:23, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
        • Well, do excuse me! I can't think who brought it up... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:10, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
          • Oh, I see! You were being ironic when you suggested using 'thirty-fifth of May'. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:11, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Tony, I'm a programmer-type and am quite familiar and comfortable with ISO dates. While I do think they have some uses in reader-facing text, such as for newspaper dates in short footnotes, fact is most people are uncomfortable with them and have trouble reading them, so Ohcon's really on pretty solid ground flipping them to a readable formats. Seems that most of the 'guidance' to retard such efforts amount to rationales for badgering people. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

To me, YYYY-MM-DD is simply the most efficient international date format available. That Americans are not used to all-numerical date formats (which most of the rest of the world uses) is not a reason to remove them from this global, international encyclopedia. Nanobear (talk) 01:49, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Were you aware that Tony isn't American, nor was he merely speaking for himself? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:22, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

More editing problems

[14] In this edit, it looks like you removed most of the accessdate fields. Is this a bug, or something else? Gimmetoo (talk) 14:42, 8 June 2012 (UTC) [15] More. You need to stop and fix whatever this is. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:52, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

• I'll look int oit. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

• I wish you had looked into it and fixed it before continuing; the same thing occurred over 24 hours later with your edits Audition (Glee) at 16:32, 9 June 2012 (UTC) when using your Smalleditor account. You also inappropriately remove wikilinks in the "|work=" field of the "cite web" and "cite news" templates. The fact that you did not notice the accessdate field continuing to be deleted when you should have been specifically looking for it is disturbing. The phrase "Retrieved on 2011-08-10" disappeared from the article you treated before this one, Auckland Grammar School, and both articles were edited after you'd made a major change to Smalleditor's vector.js file. On your Ohconfucious account, Texas Tech Red Raiders football had the same problem less than half an hour later. I've fixed Audition (Glee); it's your responsibility to fix these two and any others you've harmed. Whether you intend to or not, the result is that you are systematically removing important information from many articles. If you are unable to be more careful with your tools, you should strongly consider not using them. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

• Your script is still removing accessdates. See WP:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Date delinking. Gimmetoo (talk) 18:12, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

• You are still removing accessdates [16] Also, why did you make this edit: [17]. Before your edit, the [18] had about 60 access dates, and I only see 4 in ymd format; the clear majority are yyyy-mm-dd. Why did you change it? Gimmetoo (talk) 11:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Several of the arbitrators have indicated they would be interested in reading your comments about the clarification/amendment request above. I think it might not be a bad idea for you to offer some sort of comment there. John Carter (talk) 22:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Participation expected

Please note that your failure to yet comment substantively at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Date delinking has been observed and commented upon by multiple arbitrators. We make every effort to hear the side of an editor who is being accused of wrongdoing, but you have had time to do so, made an edit to that section which does not address the substance of the user conduct complaint, and continued to edit elsewhere on Wikipedia.

This is a reminder that one of your next edits to Wikipedia needs to be to respond substantively and in detail to the alleged problems laid out on that page. If you fail to do so, and return to making date-related edits to any article before the above matter has been resolved, you may be blocked until such time as you are able to participate appropriately. It's my sincere hope that that will not become necessary, but previously, editors have attempted to avoid engaging in conduct dispute discussions as a way to avoid sanction. Again, I'm hopeful that your wikibreak is unconnected, and that we can see your full and appropriate participation once you return. Jclemens (talk) 17:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Date script

I'm really sorry to bother you mate; I absolutely love your script but for some reason it has stopped working for me. I can't tell you why, either – nothing at my end has changed, same browser, same settings, same everything. I can't even tell you when exactly I last used it, but I definitely did on 31 May. Anyway, when I press "ALL dates to dmy", for example, I get no response. Indeed I get no response from any button. Do you have any troubleshooting tips? (The dash script does still work though, funnily...) Jared Preston (talk) 19:58, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Ohconfucious has been editing the script lately. It may be broken, or your browser may be confused. Try clearing your cache so the scripts reload. Gimmetoo (talk) 23:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Working fine for me. Tony (talk) 00:20, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I relocated a block of code from one part of the script to another, thinking it would be an inert change. However it wasn't. I've put it back for now, I've tested it and it now works again. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:51, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Ohconfucius. It's working again now after clearing my cache. Yay! Jared Preston (talk) 09:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Great! Let me know if ever you need anything of the script. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

It stopped working for me even after I tried clearing the cache. —Vensatry _{(Ping me)} 07:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Falun Gong 2 evidence submissions

Please note this supplementary information regarding evidence submissions from drafting arbitrator Elen of the Roads. All parties submitting evidence are reminded that claims must be supported by diffs at all times. For the Arbitration Committee, Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 19:32, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Falun Gong Logo

In your header file, did you want your Falun Gong Logo to link to your rant about Falun Gong pages? Clicking on the logo doesn't take you to the rant. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 14:07, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Me now

I can't get the date script to work no matter what. I uninstalled and re-installed, cleared cache, logged out, logged in. What next? Radiopathy •talk• 00:53, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

• Apologies for that: I updated the script, and it seemed to chug along well enough when I tried it after updating. Yes, I could see all the buttons, but the engine was running on empty. Try clearing your cache again now. The script is close to my test version; it may have some bugs, but at least it works. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:41, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Still dead. Or at least it is for me, again, I'm afraid. Jared Preston (talk) 13:43, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Me, too.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:42, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

• I've found the problem, and fixed it. It should now work if you purge your cache and try running the script again. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:51, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

License tagging for File:Li Wangyang.jpg

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To add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 08:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Falung Gong 2 evidence phase deadline

This is a reminder that all evidence in the Falung Gong 2 case should be submitted here by Saturday the 16th of June. For the Arbitration Committee Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 15:23, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up Arista Networks

Much appreciated, people like you who help keep WP to high standards really impress me. Keep up the good work! Tsunanet (talk) 08:08, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Thank you for your encouragement! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Confucius Institutes DRN thread

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Concerns and controversies over Confucius Institutes". Thank you. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 16:57, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

&nbsps;

Is there anything in the MoS that says we should or shouldn't be using &nbsps; for dates as your date formatting script seems to be removing them.Jason Rees (talk) 12:41, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

• The guideline is mute on the use of nbsp for date strings except in conjunction with the endash. In practice also, very few people use them. They aren't useful except where editors want to stop a line feed by default. For my script to make sure that all dates are converted to the correct format (dmy/mdy) I have no choice but to remove them. I think its actually preferable to have the occasional 'inappropriate' line feed than dates that are misaligned. Regards, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Problem with MOSNUM script

Hi Ohconfucius! When a user ran your MOSNUM script on The Beatles in this edit, it incorrectly changed the title of a news article within a {{cite news}} template. Could you please tweak your script so it ignores dates within the |title= parameter? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:01, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

• Strange. Thanks for spotting the error! It's been like that for a week now. I don't know why I did what I did, but the protection for |title= is now back on. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:46, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The script stopped working for me even after I tried clearing the cache. —Vensatry _{(Ping me)} 13:15, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I can't work out why. It's working for me. The malfunction may be due to conflict with another script. One way to further test this hypothesis would be to deactivate all but the MOSNUM script, and reactivate the other ones one by one in succession. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:04, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

• Alternatively, you could replace the content of your vector file by the following import:

importScript("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smalleditor/vector.js");

--Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:17, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

One of your "style" changes was to a file name, which made it invalid.Gigemag76 (talk) 00:56, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks, I made a note of it. I think it's been fixed in the interim, as I can't seem to reproduce the error. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Arctic fox

Just noticed that this edit changed a file name from File:Polarfuchs 1 2004-11-17.jpg to Polarfuchs 1 17 November 2004.jpg which makes the image vanish. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 07:27, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks. It's the same issue Gigemag76 pointed out immediately above, and I think it's been addressed. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:29, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't read that high. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 07:49, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

LOL. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:56, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Fix news sources error & suggestion

Hi again! When I run your Fix news sources script on Adidas, it tries to add an extra |location=India parameter. Also, it would be nice if the script changed |publisher=youtube to |publisher=YouTube. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• Things like that, I've been meaning to fix. I've now aligned it to my test script, which has those fixes, and a few others. Thanks for the feedback. Regards, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:26, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the India error. Hope you'll consider the "youtube" suggestion sometime. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:37, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Now updates. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:43, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm - tried purging my cache, but the script isn't capitalizing YouTube on Adidas. However, it is adding an extra space after |work=The Indian Express. Thanks for your continued work on this (and all your scripts)! GoingBatty (talk) 03:52, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

That's because I wrote it to change only for |publisher=. Now sorted, hopefully. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The space insertion is now also sorted. I think the script is overdue for a rewrite. I'll get to it when I have some time/motivation. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Oops - sorry for reporting that your script wasn't fixing |work=youtube after asking you to only fix |publisher=youtube. The space insertion is fixed for |work=The Indian Express, but not for |work=The Independent (see Fifth Beatle). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:37, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I do admit that there's an issue, particularly inconsistent application, with some of the location insertions. These were originally intended to identify and disambiguate journals where their origins were not immediately clear from their titles, particularly as I had the script remove certain links to the articles of those journals. I'll fix it in my general rewrite; I'll probably do away with the insertion of locations. Your veiws on what the script should fix, and how, will be appreciated. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I had no issues with the addition of |location= - just didn't want extra spaces to be added. GoingBatty (talk) 02:16, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

When you rewrite the script, could you please make sure it doesn't change the {{Listen}} template? In The Beatles, it tries to remove the quotation marks from |title=, which is fine in references, but not for song titles in {{Listen}}. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:16, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Useful to know, thanks. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

...and in Brave (2012 film), it wants to change |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] to |work=[[Variety]], which is a disambiguation page. GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

In my last substantial changes to the script, I was trying to take two steps, making the unlinking function a separate one. What it does to 'Variety' is obviously incorrect. Chances are, there will be others. I'll go fix them. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Better, but now it replaces |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] with |work=Variety| - the extra pipe should be removed. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:04, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I was still fiddling with it. I'll stop for ten minutes. What does it do now? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:14, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Now it's back to changing |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] to |work=[[Variety]]. GoingBatty (talk) 15:21, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I've tweaked the code now, and it should change |publisher=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] to |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]], but have no effect on |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]. Tell me if this does what is intended... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:40, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I confirmed that it now doesn't change |work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]. As for what's intended, I run your script primarily to change |publisher= to |work= and don't mind that the magazine is linked, as long as the link is correct. However, your documentation states: "The references section is often dense with distracting links that I dislike seeing links other than the cited source article there, unless perhaps it's a very obscure journal." Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi again! Could you also please change the script so it does not remove the quotation marks from the |title= parameter of {{Extra music sample}} and {{Extra musicsample}}? (see "And I Love Her") Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:36, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

It could be a little complicated for me to code the exemption for this template, so I'll need to think about how to do it. You probably realise that |title= parameter inside the much more common citation templates inserts the double quote marks, and people quite frequently put superfluous quote marks there, hence the code. It seems that the title fields within {{Extra music sample}} and {{Extra musicsample}} are usually meant to have double quotes, and it would probably make better sense to have the 'music sample' templates insert these by default so that they behave in exactly the same way as the {{citation}}. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:57, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Good point - I've made the suggestion at Template talk:Extra music sample. And I just noticed that the instructions at Template:Listen state "Do not use quote marks around song titles", so your script is correct to remove them. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:04, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

While it's usually correct to change |publisher=Rolling Stone to |work=Rolling Stone because it refers to the magazine title, I don't think it's correct to remove |publisher=Rolling Stone if the |work= field has a book title. (e.g. "With a Little Help from My Friends"). GoingBatty (talk) 16:40, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oh, is it a conflation issue? There's no mention of RS acting as publisher as such; It seems to run special editions like the one you cite above, as opposed to publishing books or other related series of literature. It also has other special editions entitled for example 'The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time'. I think it's still correct to use Rolling Stone in |work= (to italicise), and it seems to me appropriate to use |title=The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time for the title of the edition (instead of what we usually do, which is use title to denote the title of a given article). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:32, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I think your edit is a nice creative solution to the issue. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:40, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Bo Guagua

Apparently the same vandalizer as the one in zh-wiki, doing the same WP:POVPUSH...those paragraphs seemed to be machine-translated.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Music related infoboxes

Hi Ohconfucius! Excellent work you have been doing over the past several months addressing overlink issues. I have however been meaning to mention to you, that both Template:Infobox musical artist#genre and Template:Infobox album#genre tell us that music genres within the infobox should be wikilinked. Though my personal preference would probably be to have no genre links at all, I know that whenever they are removed, someone else will always rush right in to re-link them... and most often with an ambiguous link. Would it be difficult to tweak your script to ignore the genre param in these infoboxes?  -- WikHead (talk) 12:13, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• The script isn't yet sophisticated enough to do that. As it is, I only unlink main genres 'pop music' and 'rock music', but none of the sub-genres, and yes, I notice that they get relinked again quite quickly that it's annoying. Tell you what... I'll simply disable the unlinking of said genres until I work out a way of being more selective. Thanks for the feedback. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:53, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your reply. The last thing I'd want to do in this case is suggest that you were doing something "wrong"... because I think you do a pretty fantastic job. The trouble lies in what others frequently do so quickly behind you. Ambiguous links can easily be fixed of course, but only if the re-linker hasn't taken that opportunity to completely alter the genre field to their own point of view... which is something that also occurs quite frequently. Because of the ongoing genre-warring problem that Wikipedia is faced with, I tend to support anything that does not draw attention to infobox=genre. Thanks for your understanding and willingness to work around this. Have yourself a great day Ohconfucius, stay well, and happy editing! :)  -- WikHead (talk) 00:45, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
    • I appreciate your comments. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

One last request regarding Falun Gong

I believe it may well be very useful if you could establish some form of connection between the Confucius Institutes and Eastern Europe and/or Russia in the Arbitration hearing. I believe that the editor My very best wishes had previously used other names, including Biophys, and that he had been sanctioned in some way as a result of an earlier case regarding the Eastern European mailing list incident. I think it might be in the best interests of the community if you were aware of anything which might relate the Confucius Institutes to, for instance, criticism of Eastern Europe and/or Russia. I haven't myself personally actually directly checked to see what exact sanctions, if any, the editor has previously been subject to, but it certainly be of interest to the ArbCom if his actions might be in some way seen as a violation of previous sanctions. John Carter (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Indeed, Biophy's interest in this was interesting as it was surprising. Even leaving aside his complaints against PCPP, his contributions to the case at large seemed skewed pro-Falun Gong. Now that he's been participating in stirring the shitstorm at FLG2, he's done a disappearing act on us. The most immediate connection between Falun Gong and the Eastern Bloc I can think of is what I mentioned here. I'll have a delve to see if there's anything else that could point to something more untoward. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:32, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I do not want to be seen as someone who disappear to avoid something. That's why I undid my notices and returned to editing. Of course if you want me to be more actively involved in FG case (which is now on Workshop stage), I do not really mind. As about the alleged connection, I am sure that everything is related to everything in this world. Thanks, I do not really see any problems here.My very best wishes (talk) 15:41, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I've already retired from editing Falun Gong articles and have abandoned the Arbcom case, but I did note your "retirement" was peculiar. You have a certain knack of causing confusion, it seems! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:44, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. My very best wishes (talk) 15:46, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Donald Tsang

Please do not undo changes made in good faith. The RfC around the use of title on the Donald Tsang biography has been closed by an uninvolved administrator. If you have any grievance, please take it up with the closing administrator or pursue dispute resolution. Unhelpful changes like the one you made two hours ago can invite editing restrictions. — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 16:04, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

The above sounds pretty much like a threat. There's nothing in the close that suggests that the title should be expunged throughout, just in the opening sentence of the lead. You had already taken pains to remove it earlier, "pending discussion". What you just did was to go beyond that. And I protest vehemently. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

You are free to protest on the administrator noticeboard or on the talk page of the closing administrator. — Nearly Headless Nick {c} 16:23, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Which one of your transgressions? ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

• It has to be your edit summary accusing me of POV-pushing which I'm most offended by. So that' surely has nothing to do with the closing admin. I'm not even remotely aware of what POV I'm accused of pushing, let alone that I'm doing it. I'm just disputing your interpretation of the close applying to the 'Sir' in the infobox. So if you can't be civil and not launch personal attacks in your edit summaries, please don't even visit my talk page. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:04, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Ayumi Hamasaki edits

There were a few edits on Ayumi Hamasaki that you've made that I don't quite understand. Specifically, can you explain why you removed accessdate tags from some references, and why you dewikified linking to the articles for pop music, rock music, Twitter, MySpace, and the publications/works linked to from reference tags? Trinitresque (talk) 14:50, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

AC case

I commented there, having seen that some of the evidence proffered is as non-neutral as some of the article. Tony (talk) 23:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

YEAR in date

When selecting ALL dates to mdy (or dmy), the date script strips [[YEAR in X|YEAR]], making it simply YEAR. Such links are sometimes problematic, but are often perfectly legit, especially at articles related to X. This means you can't use the script at an article with such links unless it happens to be easy to cut the link out and paste it back in after running the script. -Rrius (talk) 04:23, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, that's because misleading pipes like these are discouraged by MOSNUM. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:01, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Ohconfucius. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2/Proposed decision.
Message added 22:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

NW (Talk) 22:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe personal exigencies have been stopping OC from coming online. Tony (talk) 00:26, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Understood. But, if they should persist, particularly after the Arbs post some questions they say they want to ask of the parties, it might be a good idea to relay that directly to them. John Carter (talk) 00:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. to all. I'm not sure what I've been called to clarify. I already mentioned I don't intend on participating any more in that forum, no disrespect intended to the arbs. I think I've said all of what I intended to say. To that end, I'm posting here instead of there.

I'm no lawyer whether figuratively or metaphorically, but an ordinary editor who wants to see both the letter and the spirit of WIkipedia's pillars upheld. I have been transparent if occasionally brusque with two Falun Gong SPAs who have frustrated me and others by their faux civility, and angered by their expertly use of legal and rhetorical devices to obfuscate, deny, deceive, blame, provoke, and to cast aspersions on or otherwise discredit their (FLG and their own) critics often without actually appearing to do so.

All that aside, I have some very pressing personal matters to handle at present. Email me if there's anything really urgent. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

An old AfD you contributed to

Could you have a new look, four years later, at OpenClinica LLC, formerly Akaza Research? --Orange Mike | Talk 16:26, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Falun Gong books

Well, I've at least started a page for articles on books relating to Falun Gong at User:John Carter/Falun Gong books. I have only done one book so far, but hope to be adding more material presently. Anyway, I know that the articles will need a lot of work, so if you have any knowledge of particular books, or access to material on them that I haven't shown, I would be more than grateful. John Carter (talk) 17:15, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Sgt. Pepper straw poll

There is a straw poll taking place here, and your input would be appreciated. ~ GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:16, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

• Link to Survey (should take between 5-10 minutes): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8FQ6MM

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:27, 11 July 2012 (UTC)