User talk:Ohconfucius/archive26

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

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Script-assisted style fixes: Indian cuisine

Hi again. You might want to check this edit and my subsequent edit. It appears that your script missed one. Not that it's the end of the world, but thought you'd want to know about the glitch (is it perhaps because the initial letter was capitalised?). Skinsmoke (talk) 06:58, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks, and thanks for the fix. At the time I wrote the script, I hadn't worked out the best way to avoid false positives in many instances, so the script doesn't attack capitalised words. I will review the way it works at some time in the future. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:19, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject College football

OC, thank you for addressing your comments regarding link policy and best practices to Ryan Vesey on my talk page. If I might impose on you further, there is a young editor aggressively promoting a similar theory in favor of redundant target-specific redirects in navboxes at WT:CFB. I've already cited the relevant link policies, but he's determined to argue the point. The discussion might benefit from an outside perspective such as yours. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks from drawing that discussion to my attention. I have made a brief comment there. Infoboxes seem to have a community-backed exception from 'sane' linking practices that practically allow for link saturation within infoboxes. In addition, the issue referred to – the existence or otherwise of a specific rivalry – seems to me to be a content dispute and one that only touches on overlinking. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Notification of discussion

A few months ago, you participated in a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Did you know about Gibraltar-related DYKs on the Main Page. I am proposing that the temporary restrictions on such DYKs, which were imposed in September 2012, should be lifted and have set out a case for doing so at Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Gibraltar-related DYKs. If you have a view on this, please comment at that page. Prioryman (talk) 21:58, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Concerns and controversies over the 2008 Summer Olympics

US Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both claimed that they would have boycotted the ceremony if they were in the White House.

'irrelevant retrospective posturing'

That sounds more like a criticism of what they said, than my inclusion of it. It is surely worth reporting two major political party leaders' objections. I was astonished to learn of it. Beingsshepherd (talk) 03:39, 15 February 2013 (UTC)Beingsshepherd

• Well, they weren't in the White House, and it's pure conjecture as it wasn't a position that they were pushing in the run-up to the Olympics, and that's what makes it irrelevant. After the election, they can say all they want. In my book, that's ex-post posturing. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

From the original July 16th 2008 Time article:

'This time around, there seems to be little appetite for sticking it to the host country. Sure, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have both claimed that they would have boycotted the ceremony if they were in the White House, but empty China-bashing has long been a bipartisan staple on the U.S. presidential campaign trail.'

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1823561,00.html

Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics: August 8, 2008 (The United States presidential election of 2008: November 4, 2008). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beingsshepherd (talk • contribs) 04:10, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• OK, I stand corrected. I'll revert. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Beingsshepherd (talk) 04:14, 15 February 2013 (UTC)Beingsshepherd

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WP:AE

Arbitration enforcement request was filed here--MONGO 18:54, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Slightly better link. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:24, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikify has been deprecated

Hi Ohconfucious! Just dropping you a note to let you know that {{wikify}} has been deprecated in favor of more specific templates, such as {{underlinked}}. Since the release version of AWB is still automatically adding {{wikify}}, I suggest you install the latest SVN snapshot instead, which has a lot of fixes in it. Thanks, and happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 19:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Formatgeneral

Is it just me or has the script stopped working? I can no longer find "General fixes" in the toolbox while editing a page. Your MOSNUM Dates still work fine. Thanks in advance.--Krystaleen 11:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• That's strange. I haven't touched that script since November, so it mst be systematic. If you haven't used it for a while, it could have been something introduced back then. Anyway, I'll investigate. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 11:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I've reverted to a stable version, and it seems to be working again. My apologies. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:57, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
    • It is now working again, thank you very much! I love your scripts, they're very useful. Thanks again.--Krystaleen 14:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
      • You're very welcome, I'm glad that you like them. I'm always open to suggestions as to what additional features to incorporate. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 14:34, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

F1 drivers

Hi OC. Great work that you do, and I regularly use your scripts myself, so thanks for that. However, I must ask – is there a way you'd be able to stop your script from removing flags from the infoboxes of F1 drivers? Per WP:F1 consensus and WP:MOSFLAG itself (which allows flags for athletes representing their countries, as Formula One racers do) we use flags on their articles, so it's a bit annoying having to keep re-adding them after you've taken them out. Cheers, — Jon C.^ॐ 19:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Firstly, I'm unsure how I would be able to do that except to watch out for 'Formula One' when I edit articles. Secondly, MOSICON says one should not adorn nationality parameter with flags unless there is good reason, and I'm equally unsure that a driver's nationality ought to be emphasised with a flag, bearing in mind that drivers represent their teams first and foremost, so the project consensus is a bit er quirky to me. But I guess that if I dispute that seriously, my talk page isn't the place to do that. So yes, I'll try and be more watchful now that I know this preference exists. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 14:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, it's appreciated. Is there any way you could except the template "Infobox F1 driver" from the script itself? I'm not sure how these things work. — Jon C.^ॐ 14:42, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I can protect an infobox if it is just that. However, in practice, there are usually other templates nested within them that would necessitate counting opening and closing curly brackets, enough to make protection a nightmare for someone of my limited programming skills. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

MOSDATE script

Would it be possible to have another option, which is to respect the current formatting of consistent-dates via detection of either the use xxx date template or the respective category, while moving any non-consistent dates to the consistent format? --Izno (talk) 14:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestion. I currently don't yet know how to write such code, but will investigate it for future improvement. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 14:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Reverted edit to USS Little Rock

Hi again! I have reverted this diff to USS Little Rock for the following reasons:

1. AWB automatically added {{wikify}}, which has been deprecated. Per the section above, please install the latest AWB SVN snapshot, disable the auto tag feature, or manually remove {{wikify}} before saving your edit.
2. AWB added {{dead end}} to a ship index page. I submitted this AWB bug report for this issue.
3. You added {{Use dmy dates}} on an article that is about US ships, which seems to go against WP:STRONGNAT.
4. You removed the interwiki links, even though they don't appear to be included in Wikidata yet.

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:38, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I also reverted your edit to USS Affray because of issues 1 & 3 above. GoingBatty (talk) 02:40, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks. Several points, though:
  • I don't understand what/how I didn't see {{wikify}} on the edit window as a diff?
  • Other than changing versions (I admit I saw your post above but I'm a bit afraid of disturbing my AWB or its settings) but how do I stop AWB from tagging either Wikify or Dead End? Does the insertion come after the module; what if I wrote a regex into the module to remove same.
  • Although in general, US articles should stay in mdy format. But WP:STRONGNAT says "Sometimes the customary format differs from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern US military use day before month, in accordance with military usage". I don't know if you've noticed, but the vast majority of articles about the US military are in dmy, so I don't believe tagging these with {{use dmy dates}} violates that principle?
  • That was manual, and I admit I didn't check Wikidata. In general, I did this for a few and found removal of interwiki links had no effect on the rendered page, so I assumed it was all populated. User:Addbot has started systematically removing interwiki links, on the basis that the job is now done by Wikidata. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! Here's my responses:

• I don't know why you didn't see {{wikify}} in the edit window - maybe you didn't scroll up enough? Try it again (but don't save it).
• You can stop AWB from auto tagging by going to the Options tab at the bottom of the screen and unchecking the "Auto tag" box. See also Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Order of procedures.
• Thanks for pointing out the next sentence in WP:STRONGNAT. I reinstated your date-related edits to the two articles.
• Addbot (and others) check to see if the interwiki links exist on Wikidata before removing them here. The bot is finding articles where some or none of the links are on Wikidata.

Thanks for your continued hard work! GoingBatty (talk) 04:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

• I set AWB to add {{use dmy dates}}. The Wikify tag simply wasn't apparent in the edit window, but I guess it kept on adding other tags, such as Orphan and Dead End that it somehow obscured it for me. Anyway, I'll check out the settings and de-activate accordingly. Thanks for your continued interest in my efforts! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:41, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Date format changes in bibliography

You do realize that you've changed the date format to dmy in a number of book titles that give it in mdy as was common usage during the American Civil War. I generally write using dmy, but I don't like the fact that you're changing the titles of the books. If this is fully automated, can you make an exception for books in the reference, additional reading and bibliography sections?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 09:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

• Usually, data within |title= and |work= are protected, but I did catch one such date occurrence that was hiding inside |volume=, which I have now protected. I've also fixed up some more I missed, and further protected |at=. I'd be grateful if you could let me know where else they could be lurking. Thanks, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 09:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

British English

You seem misinformed as to what this consists of - I suggerst you read Oxford spelling. Johnbod (talk) 05:52, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing me to that. Now could I ask for some context: what specific action of mine caused you to draw my attention to it? Cheers, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:26, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

American date format for American sports articles?

OC, can you explain why you added a DMY date format template to an article about American college football? (Please see here.) While I strongly support your efforts in conforming date formats for consistency within articles, this one is a little bit of a head-scratcher to me. I am under the impression that all American college football articles -- and all American sports articles generally -- should use American MDY date formats. Regards, User:Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:57, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I'll bet it's the same explanation as the #Reverted edit to USS Little Rock section above: WP:STRONGNAT says "Sometimes the customary format differs from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern US military use day before month, in accordance with military usage". GoingBatty (talk) 16:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

• • Yes, it was actually a bit of a toss-up. I think I may have left the team (and team season) articles alone (unprocessed in mdy) for that reason. I reasoned that if it were simply an article about the teams' participation in collegiate football tournaments, I would have left them as it was. The clincher was that this is a trophy in the name of the CiC, with matches played exclusively between the forces' academy teams, thus making this purely military. I think this interpretation would be consistent with using dmy re MOSNUM/STRONGNAT. But if you feel strongly about it, I would personally have no objections to restoring/aligning the mdy dates. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 16:24, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Interesting. I was raised in a Navy family and used the DMY convention as a youngster because I thought it was "cool." As a young adult, I later worked for several members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including a House Armed Services Committee member who was a subcommittee chairman, and was told that DMY date formatting was "eccentric" and/or "pretentious" in civilian communications. Suffice it to say that broke me of the habit in my personal and professional writing. Based on my prior work experience, I can tell you that the U.S. government generally, and the White House in particular, use MDY, with some exceptions, including the U.S. military and some security agencies. Given the context here is college football, a civilian sport with a mostly civilian fan following, and not military communications or history, I would probably be inclined to use MDY for consistency across all CFB articles. Not a big deal in any event. Given my support of your date consistency efforts, I was curious to hear your logic in this particular case. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:47, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Chandra Levy#Requested move

Someone replied to you. You may reply back. --George Ho (talk) 00:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

INRConvert

this edit somehow broke the syntax, has not been reverted still for your inspection! --Tito Dutta (contact) 15:10, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for picking that one up. I was working to fix that issue, but didn't know that one crept past me. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:15, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hi Ohconfucius! Your subsequent edit changed "Human Resources" to lowercase, even though it appears to be part of the official name of the ministry. GoingBatty (talk) 16:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

• That script change has caused too many false positives that I disabled it about half an hour ago. It shouldn't happen again. Thanks for fixing! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ohconfucius (talk • contribs) 11:48, March 4, 2013

• Thank YOU for fixing the article (which I should have done myself). GoingBatty (talk) 18:02, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

• You're too kind. I botch, I ought to fix. I thanked you before I even checked, for I assumed that you had already fixed it, as you usually do. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• In my off-wiki life, I find it's best to leave the data as is when reporting an issue. Sometimes I forget on-wiki that the history of each edit is usually sufficient to show the issue. GoingBatty (talk) 02:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Question about your signature

Hi again! Your signature includes "ping / poke" - should these link to your talk page? GoingBatty (talk) 18:03, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

• Ordinarily it does/should. But when it's a signature on my own talk page, the link isn't made. I don't understand why that isn't the case with un-customised signatures. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 22:17, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

An easy solution might be (which you already know) add #top! --Tito Dutta (contact) 22:28, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Spelling: Theatre District, New York

The move discussion at Talk:Theater District, New York was closed without alerting editors at the relevant Wikiprojects to join in. It has long been the consensus at WP:THEATRE and WP:MUSICALS to spell the word "theatre", in part because theatre professionals prefer this spelling throughout the English-speaking world, and because this spelling is not wrong anywhere, while "theater" is wrong in many places,such as the UK. BTW, I am an American from New York City. Note that nearly all of the Broadway theatres are called "X Theatre". I have re-opened the discussion on the talk page to see if we can get a wider consensus on this issue. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:20, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Clarification request: Discretionary sanctions appeals procedure

The request is archived; however, an arbitrator is planning on offering an arbitrator motion "very shortly".

For the Arbitration Committee,
- Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 14:32, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

I saw what your script can do at David Bergman (journalist) with date fixes and ties and I'm impressed! For the life of me I can't get British spelling down right and I'm so happy someone automated that. Can I run these scripts on pages I edit, too! Thank you,

Crtew (talk) 19:18, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, anyone can. Check out the lead documentation page to find documentation about what the scripts do, and for how to install. Once installed, You can 'test drive' the scripts by opening the edit window of any (for example) US article, clicking on British spelling, and wait for the changes screen to appear (but don't save). If you have any questions, let me know -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Plethora of British elephants ?

Just curious... Why does the UK have "Strong national ties to the topic" of Cultural depictions of elephants? — No big deal, just wondering, ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 23:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• oh, you're right, it does seem s bit curious. The 'TIES' edit summary wasn't deliberate, per se. It's because I'm working from India-related categories, and it happened to be one of the articles trawled up in the net. On Wikipedia, Indian articles adopt British spelling, and dmy dates, that's what TIES actually alludes to here. But the edit wasn't a mistake from the point of view that the article had predominantly dmy dates. Cheers, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Cricket poetry

Hi, I notice that you added {{cleanup}} to the article without a reason parameter. Would you mind taking another look and adding the reason if you remember it? —rybec 04:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, indeed. All that article consisted of were several poems glorifying the sport (Per the article). I don't feel that it should stay in that form, irrespective of whether they violate copyright or not (actually I think that at least one poem might violate copyright). I don't know the damnest about the sport or poetry, but I feel that there could be a lot more development of the subject matter in the article. As it stands, it's a directory, and there would be no meaningful content if the poetry was removed. I would expect to actually see some sort of time line of the leading poets, their works and the context. I would also expect a lot more critical commentary as to its significance, its evolution, some analysis of the poetry itself, and only enough of the poetry itself for the purposes of analysing it. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 10:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Contested deletion of Felix Raj

I have not intended to promote an entity, rather tried to write a biography of a living people. I am a new comer to this Wikipedia World. I have created it as I feel Fr. Felix Raj has a significant contribution in the Education of the State. But if there is any problem with the content, then I would request you to help me editing the content so as to keep up with the standards of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koushik27 (talk • contribs) 14:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

As suggested, I have removed all inappropriate external links. Please let me know exactly which area of the content needs to be edited so as to stop deletion. Please help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koushik27 (talk • contribs) 15:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

• I have removed the deletion tag and replaced it with a {{advert}}, so there is now no danger of deletion. I will try and attract some editors to clean up the article. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:19, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

That would be great. I am thankful to you. Please do the needful and also suggest me if anything can be done from my end so than we can remove the {{advert}} tag from the article. --Koushik27 (talk) 06:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I have edited the content of the entire profile to a large extent and tried to delete all the problematic sentences and words. Kindly check and suggest for more improvement of the profile. --Koushik27 (talk) 05:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Sir,You may remember that you have done a rigorous editing to this article. After that I did not do any major change apart from putting some citation. But, again its giving some message. I am feeling help less to rectify the issue. Could you please help me with this.--Koushik27 (talk) 08:44, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• The "needs additional citations" message box at the top is caused by the {{Refimprove}} template, which may be removed once you are satisfied that the work is complete. I note that you have inserted a number of links, but these have been done in a manner which may cause concern to others. A citation is a book or url reference to support facts in the article, and as such, generic links to home pages is usually insufficient: for example, the page at the url for St. Joseph's College, Trichy does not give evidence that Raj completed his Masters in Economics there; likewise, the link to Vidya Jothi College, Delhi is generic and does not support the assertion that Raj studied a three-year Theology course there from 1989. Then, citations also ought to be inserted in between <ref></ref> tags (like in this example) so that they get picked up in the reference section. For further explanations and information about how to create citations, I would urge you to consult WP:EL and WP:CITE. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 09:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Sir, in India, school or college records are not available online. Only way to verify if to go and check the record physically with the head teacher of the school/cpllege. So there is no way that I could post an url with a prof that Fr. Raj was a student of such and such school/college. But there are certain urls that I have posted can be considered as a solid proof. For example, he is the principal of St. Xavier's College Kolkata can be proved from the college website. In this circumstances, I really have no idea that I do I get rid of this problem. Please suggest. Or else I may give up and let the article go for deletion. But that would be a shame for me as well to many people because every one in West Bengal as well as in India believes that Father Felix Raj has significant contribution towards spreading education across the nation. --Koushik27 (talk) 14:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Citations to printed works are perfectly acceptable. But such citations need to be sufficiently precise (titles, ISBN, page numbers) to allow for the information to be verified. Those generic links are likely to be taken for linkspam, and removed. Like I must have done previously. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for comment at Com Tam, would you mind also commenting on the Fork proposal below? Many thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:43, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Gross

Hi ohconfucius,I really appreciate your work on articles but we have been updating boxoffice figures in crores at bollywood articles.I hope you have seen this too.Thanx---zeeyanketu ^discutez 10:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks. I've indeed been cleaning up crores, and the Indian commas. The problem is 'crore' and 'lakh' are fairly local to the Indian sub-continent and it isn't a concept that is known in the rest of the English-speaking world. The concepts of 'millions' and 'billions' are much more universal, and should be preferred for the encyclopaedia. On the commas, the Indian system causes significant confusion, and not only to myself. WP:MOSNUM specifies that the comma separator for large numbers should be spaced at every three digits, so the Indian commas are not compatible with WIkipedia's overall guidance. Thanks for your comprehension. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

It is ok,Actually the most reliable source we have been using [here] provide figures in crores.Anyway,you are absolutely right.Thanx for giving all the info.Take care..:)---zeeyanwiki ^discutez 05:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's important for verifiability that the information is there. When it gets onto Wikipedia, it's solely be a translation issue. Cheers, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Money Money Money

Of late, I have seen that in Indian articles, you have been changing the currencies from Indian to international, eg: ₹40 lakh (US$48,000) to ₹4 million (US$48,000). I do not think this act of yours is fair, for two reasons: India's currency does not use the term "million", plus the mentioned sources do not use them as well. The film Karnan 1964 has a budget of 40 lakh as sources say, but they do not say 4 million. i am not cursing, i just believe u are going against what sources say. Kailash29792 (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comment. I don't see how you can say we're going against sources by writing "4 million" instead of "40 lakh". The relationship is clear and well established, and the translation process is mechanical. However, the lakh and the crore are terms that are only used in the Indian sub-continent. To treat them as if they are just as easily understood as the million or billion in Wikipedia articles goes against commonality. This creates an unnecessary brain-interrupt at best; at worst, it would cause the reader to divert from the article to find out what 'crore' or 'lakh' mean. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Kailash, hi, and thanks for your contributions to the English WP. Lakh and crore are not much known outside the subcontinent, and while you might find them in an English-language dictionary, they don't help our readers. This is the case whether the readers are native speakers of English or second-language speakers (unless they happen to be knowledgeable in Indian matters). I support Ohconfucius's edits in this respect. Please remember that India-related articles on en.WP are not just for Indians, but for all of us. You're welcome to discuss this further; I'll watchlist this page in case. Tony (talk) 02:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

To continue, that is why I use the INR Convert template, which represents the Indian currencies from international point of view. I think that should settle it. Kailash29792 (talk) 03:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, the templates add a conversion to the USD, but I still reckon using 'crore' and 'lakh' is confusing. When I first came across the terms, I thought they were units of currency, until I looked them up. They still cause me brain interrupt every time I have to work out just how many zeros of the local unit they represent (only a little bit less disruption now that I've verified the translations for so many of my own edits). Note that I'm not actually removing the templates; I'm merely recalculating them wrt billions or millions. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I've initiated a discussion at the Manual of Style here. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Grain

Re the (closed) RM you said:

I don't see much utility for an article on the ingredient, for there really isn't all that much to be said about it. The paragraph of text above covers it all. Having that paragraph located within the body of the article would suffice, IMHO. The dish (and its potential variants) is what the gastronomes are interested in, and it should be properly called 'Cơm tấm'. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 06:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

No, everything you say is true. However the content is there and its now difficult to find for anyone interested in animal feed and industrial brewing, breaking it out would allow cats in the grain/food trading area to be added. Hatnotes will prevent any misdirection. Seems worth doing to me, but I won't do this if you still think otherwise. Cheers In ictu oculi (talk) 05:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not vehemently opposed to such an article if it could be further developed as a topic in its own right. But I believe that the utility of talking about broken rice alone is very low; we've done that already. There may be a use in having a sub-topic 'broken grain' (for all of it seems to have a similar fate), but there is greater affinity of any broken variety with its related 'whole' variety. If there is sufficient content that 'broken grain' could be developed, I could envisage a redirect to the relevant sub-section in 'grain'. But obviously, the content would be need to be an important addition or would be encyclopaedic and notable, and sourced. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Good points. I'll have a closer look at whether there really is anything significant in sources about broken rice as opposed to any other broken grain before doing anything. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Kareena Kapoor

Hello Ohconfucius! I noticed that a few days back you had made some changes on Kareena Kapoor. One such change was how box-office figures were reported using the Template:INRConvert. Initially, I had it that way, but during the article's FAC it was suggested that we report figures according to the country's national currency terms; e.g. lakhs and crores. The USD equivalent (most of them in millions) is provided beside the amount. I just wanted to know your opinion on this matter. -- Bollywood Dreamz ^talk 02:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hello, you may have noticed some of the comments/concerns posted to this page on this issue (there are two threads above). I note what you were told to do in the FAC, but in general, the FAC seeks adherence to the MOS, although there probably was no precise guidance at the time. Also, it seems that the FAC discussion was dominated by editors also from the sub-continent, who favour the use of lack/crore. In response to the second query I received above, I posted a request to the Manual of Style asking for views, and the discussion so far seems to favour using the more common 'million' and 'billion'. You are of course welcome to participate in that discussion. Thanks for your attention. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi,Ohconfucius!,the standard are million & billions of course but i am just wondering when most of the readers(definitely Indians) will see these figures,they might be amazed at first sight as they are more familier with lakhs and crores.So,a little issue although it is my personal thinking only.Thanx---zeeyanwiki ^discutez 20:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that for many of the articles, the readership is surely 'local'; only the more internationally known topics would attract readers from outside. Like you, many from India/Pak will undoubtedly be surprised at not seeing crores and lakhs when describing figures. On the other hand, readers from outside the Indian sub-continent will be equally if not more surprised that a WP article will prominently use such words that would involve them doing much looking up. Nevertheless, Wikipedia's job is to cater for the wider audience; India and its culture would benefit from exposure, their Wikipedia articles would potentially appeal a greater number of 'Western' readers and others around the world. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:28, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Zeeyanwiki, the benefit of India-related information on the English-language Wikipedia (as opposed to Indian-language Wikipedias) is that many readers are not from India, and have no idea of the unique counting system. I presume that millions and billions (in English) are well understood by Indians who are consulting an English-language site. Is this the case? Tony (talk) 14:01, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok,that means native English speakers are not familiar with lakhs and crores.I am not aware of this and yes all Indian users recognize millions and billions who are dealing in English.Thanx---zeeyanwiki ^discutez 17:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

MOSNUM dates script

Hi,

I've been having a discussion over where the likes of {{use dmy dates}} belongs in a page, and it was pointed out that your script prepends it to the article wikitext (thus putting it at the very top). Is this a design decision, or just for the sake of not having to do complicated regex stuff to inject it further down? Cheers. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:38, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

• Chris, it's a mixture of both. Of course, if I use AWB, I can put it at the top or at the bottom, but it's more complicated for me to code it as each page has different elements. Incidentally, we've been discussing this at the template talk, and it seems that there is a consensus of sorts for not changing the placement. We can of course discuss this further, if you wish. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:23, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
  • D'oh, I should have seen that discussion. I'm not sure it's a big enough issue to warrant another discussion if I'm the only one disagreeing, though I'm likely to still move the template down if I'm making other edits to a page. Thanks for the reply. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Jan z Jani

For You information, I have forwarded issue of spelling to Dispute resolution notice board. Best regards, camdan (talk) 17:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

continued controversy

You commented at a WP:RM regarding Jan z Jani, and the subject was later brought to WP:DRN... Two things:

• First: I placed a reference on Jan z Jani describing the Medieval Latin/French/Dutch origins of that spelling of the name with sources. Please review.
• Second: Apparently, after days of hearing User:camdan telling me my opinions didn't matter be I was (according to him) "uneducated" and that my contributions to the discussion were without value, he's now asking at WP:AN#Article ban request asked that I be banned from editing or participating in anything remotely related to Jan z Jani...and all because I responded (once) to call him a półgłówek after his three-day tirade of abusive belittling comments directed at silencing me. If you'd like to comment there, I'd appreciate it.--ColonelHenry (talk) 06:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
  • <sigh> throwing a tantrum because he can't get his way. Makes me wonder just how old camdan is. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

sandbox

Sorry, but I am not seeing any templates in your sandbox; just something about South-Asian numbering system. BollyJeff | talk 16:25, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, that little box with the rupee sign to the left. It's technically not a template at the moment, but can be moved. I'm hoping something like it can bridge the gap between the 'know' and the 'don't knows'. Cheers, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 23:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, so this is just something that could be added as a note to certain articles (in which case we could still use crore?). I thought you were trying to make a template similar to INRConvert where you could input the number followed by the input unit and the desired output unit. For ex: (10 | c | m) for 10 crore, show in millions. BollyJeff | talk 01:06, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know enough about dynamic templates to do that. But I reckon that once we have consensus, coding such into the existing {{INR Convert}} template (or defaulting its output to [mb]illion rupees) should be relatively simple job. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:20, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Australian english

Please note when editing Australian articles - British english is both redundant and wrong. Thanks sats 15:59, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

hell youve done heaps that are wrong - please reconsider your geographically or contextual challenged edits - there are quite a few that need re-editing to correct!! sats 16:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

If you are not going to reply - and you are going to put 'British' rather than Australian English in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ohconfucius/list/todo - I honestly think someone should in WP:AGF consider blocking you !!! - unless you are going to revert your edits yourself... sats 16:08, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

OK - mediation or no, in WP:AGF - you have just gone and scripted a large number Australian articles incorrectly - what are you going to to do??? Look at what you have done - British where it should be Australian.... are you sure you should be doing this sort of script work if you cannot even recognise that Australian english is a viable entry - when you are putting British in? I strongly suggest you stop. sats 16:16, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• WTF is the matter with you, and why are you so fucking aggressive? You give me less than ten minutes to respond, and then you accuse me for not replying? What a nerve! Articles are being tagged on the basis of 'British' spellings that are common with most commonwealth varieties. Please read the template or script documentation. Anyway, other than the tagging of 'British English' that you are objecting to, What examples have you found that are "both redundant and wrong"? -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 16:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I have said WP:AGF and had no response - if you wish to call that aggressive, that is your call - and

commonwealth usage is irrelevent - we have - Australian english (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Use_Australian_English) (not British) is required between your edits of:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911%E2%80%9316_Australian_drought

through to

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars

where it is releveant to Australian subjects. The one which I referred to as redundant and wrong - which I changed before I realise you were using a script and doing so many per minute was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANU_Research_School_of_Pacific_and_Asian_Studies.

I woulkd have thought if you were running a script that you could stop before 10 minutes... If you enjoy swearing at other editors over such an issue, why do you do scripts? You have to actually admit mistakes and learn from them, otherwise I do not see why you should be using them. cheers sats 16:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there are no differences in grammar and only one difference in spelling between AusEng and BrEng: program vs programme. And the latter is still acceptable in AusEng, although I'd correct it if I came across it. So what are you concerned about? Why not start agitating to get the union jack off our flag? That would be more meaningful. Tony (talk) 01:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

As some would say to a comment like that 'No Comment' sats 01:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sats! Besides that you would prefer {{Use Australian English}} instead of {{Use British English}} in the article, could you please give some examples of where incorrect spelling was introduced and visible to the readers? All of us want to be sure that the experience for the reader is correct. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• SatuSuro: I don't think you have set yourself, or me, a reasonable timeframe for responding. You posted the first message a '59 minutes, the next one at '04. In trying to reply to your message of '08, I was caught in an edit conflict with you know who. The non-specific nature of your complaint, the apparent urgency you had engaged in escalating to 'dispute resolution' even before I had the chance to respond suggested to me a certain aggressiveness, your pronunciations of AGF notwitstanding. The quickfire messages from you were the last thing I saw as I was about to close down for the night, and I suspect you were probably way past your bedtime too! ;-) Now if all that you object to was my offending your nationalistic sentiments, I apologise. The tagging is not to upset Aussies. The template is not visible on the face of the article and is only for me to track spelling variant corrections. I do think I had carefully stated that on the template and script documentation. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:04, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

OK - thanks for responding (well past my bedtime I assure you) - I am somewhat concerned by

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Use_Australian_English

I do not think that a personal script item and text becomes part of something like that in normal practice the author - in the template reads very odd... I am suprised your werent ever challenged over that

1. the sheer volume of already existing articles with Use Australian English (17,000 +) is part of my reason for being irritated at midnight... adding Use British English to another set (unless you are planning to convert the 17,000 as well (which is a mere pinprick on the http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Australia 115,000 +) seems to be counter to good practice in wikipedia, and regardless of whether your disclaimers claim (which I would seriously question) I would see local usages, engvar notwithstanding, as being things to be acknowledged, and not designated 'British'. Also I would suggest we jump off personal talk pages and show our hand at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board - sats 02:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• I initiated the project to address 'national varieties' of spelling by writing the script and designing the mechanism for maintenance. As such, describing myself as 'author of the script' is wholly appropriate. The credit for the large number of articles tagged belongs to Dl2000 (talk · contribs) alone. In fact, he has been sweeping up articles of various nationalities which have been tagged 'British' (sic), and changing the tagging appropriately. Occasionally, users may use one of my scripts, but on the spelling issue, there are only the two of us working it. Hope that answers your question. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:44, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Question - has anyone ever questioned your British english project? How did you respond? It would be good to see something at the Australian Noticeboard in view of the questions raised there. I remain totally unconvinced that it is a valid project to put British despite your disclaimer. Has anyone ever challenged that? sats 02:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• Don't let me stop you from being anything you want; I guess there will always be a first time for everything. The 'project' started in 2010. Correspondence on the script can be found here. As to legitimacy, given that its aim is wholly compliant with WP:ENGVAR, I don't seem to recall any controversy about it at all at all. Any discussion, if any, will be found at WT:MOS; there may also be some discussion at the relevant template talk page. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses - it would have been nice - if you had fronted up somewhere like the Australian noticeboard and explained the reason as to why Australian english no longer exists as a user category... it would provides some important reference point for Australian users to understand why the change is happening - which is well out of the internals of a template or in the darker regions of the wikpedia machinery so to speak. Silence and 7 articles a minute simply excites a range of unnecessary components of reactions that can vary according to the individual. sats 03:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• I haven't the foggiest why Australian english no longer exists as a user category. I don't much care about it, as it falls well outside my area of operation/interest. I don't actually edit 7 articles a minute. I work in batches, and when I'm ready to clilck on 'save', articles they get saved at that rate every time because of the batch effect. It's important to note that I spend a lot longer in between checking and making minor tweaks. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - well at least in the end you ended up on the Australian noticeboard (as asked) and even if you cannot help yourself add the odd 'non-issue' and 'storm in teacup' rejoinder comments, your presence there is appreciated - regardless of the extent that you misrepresent me, (haha I say)... and second guessing and reading your knowledge of Australian culture, I wouldnt be suprised - considering your uninformative user page that you were one yourself - hhahaa sats 01:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't profess to be at all knowledgeable about Aus or Aussie culture, I just enjoy writing scripts and tweaking them to give the maximum effect for the minimum effort. I apologise if I misrepresented you; I'm sure glad you didn't make a stink about it, like some would surely have done. I do hope we can come to some modus operandi that doesn't compromise productivity too much. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The initial reaction at midnight was a bit alarmist, my apologies. Too much time is wasted on this place with people trying to do things for their little ego, or clique and friends against the greater good - in the end you indeed upholding what the late chairman maos critiques of american cultural imperialism were doing... making sure that wp is not a reflection of dallas-centrism. Your productivity I would not like to interfere with again in the short term, apologies for that. Your very early history on your user page give me a sense that you have struggled against lesser mortals in date and spelling issues for far too long... sats 02:33, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad we're now dealing with the matter amicably. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to understand what I'm doing. You may have noticed that I have gone back to the {{EngvarB}} tag, which is a lot less of a red rag; I hope that will allow the work to proceed in a calmer fashion. BTW, I have no recollection of how we ditched 'EngvarB' in favour of the 'Brit' tag, but the 'Aus', 'NZ', 'SA' tags grew from there, rather uncontrollably, in my view. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:42, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

OK after all that (who said anything is ever resolved in this place) - I must say that in the view of WP:TIES in the edit summary and seeing clearly very Australian subjects with a Brit english tag is still quite off putting, regardless of the inherent better good for the larger picture. I suppose it wont be long before a script/bot minded Australian considers a small change  :) sats 08:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey there, I see you're still tagging British English on Australian articles. There seems to be pretty clear consensus against that at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board, can you please stop the tagging (please just stop adding the ENGVAR British template, the copy editing work is greatly appreciate) until this gets sorted out. Thank you in advanced. Liamdavies (talk) 10:59, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Since when did that noticeboard rule WP? Tony (talk) 11:39, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Script edits

Hi Ohconfucius. I noticed that you have been editing a number of Australian military history biography articles with a script. While I appreciate your efforts in ensuring the articles comply with style and MoS, I just wanted to note that a number of the edits have incorrectly identified designations of military units as being dates (such as in this edit [1] of Clarence Jeffries that changed a several titles, including '9th Brigade' to 'ninth Brigade'). This has happened in a number of articles and I just wanted to point it out to you as it is a little bit of a pain to change them all. That said, thank you for your helpful changes. :) Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 06:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• OK, I'll go back and fix them, and adjust my script. Thanks, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Further to the question about edits, re Aubrey Koch, do you not consider the Notes to an article to be a list, and therefore the abbreviated date format to be appropriate? FWIIW, that is why I chose to do it that way, and no other editor has questioned that process.Lexysexy (talk) 09:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You are correct. But to explain: the overwhelming majority of WP articles are a mix of dates with abbreviated and full months. The Koch article is rather rare in its date formatting. I do acknowledge that the formats are consistent among the date categories: the publication dates are uniformly abbreviated and the retrieval dates are uniformly in 'full' months. I actually have no problem with that per se, only that my script actions will uniformly default to the 'full' month for productivity reasons. I will revert my date expansion. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 10:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Sir.Lexysexy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:40, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

J150W

I remember that cow-jumps-over-the-moon picture - I've been here before!
Howdy Ohconfucius! I saw your change of

"===Statue of Dame [[Roma Mitchell]]<ref name=Mitchell>Dame [[Roma Mitchell]]</ref>==="

to

"===Statue of Dame Roma Mitchell<ref name=Mitchell>Dame Roma Mitchell</ref>===",

and I wondered: "Why?" (Not the "===Statue of Dame Roma Mitchell" to "===Statue of Dame Roma Mitchell" bit. I don't agree, but don't care.)
It's the "<ref name=Mitchell>Dame [[Roma Mitchell]]</ref>" to "<ref name=Mitchell>Dame Roma Mitchell</ref>" bit. What purpose does it serve? (i.e. I don't see that it serves ANY purpose.)
And going one level deeper than your change, I don't see that "<ref name=Mitchell>" serves any purpose, either.
Your thoughts? Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:55, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• The unlinking I am executing is to comply with WP:HEADINGS, which states: "Headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked". You're right – I don't know what purpose the faux citation serves there. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

(Sigh of contentment.) Isn't it nice when other people agree with your opinion? Pdfpdf (talk) 15:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• Indeed, but then there's the person who put that there in the first place. ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Star Trek Into Darkness

Hi ohconfucius! Regarding this edit, could you please add Star Trek Into Darkness as an exception to your script that changes capitalizations? There was a huge discussion on the talk page about whether "Into" should be capitalized, which was picked up by the media. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

• Got it, thanks. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:59, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Further discussion:[2] --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:09, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. GoingBatty (talk) 14:03, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I had absolutely no idea there was such a kerfuffle... -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 14:54, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Changing what look like dates in reference names

as at Gil Merrick here. Not convinced that changing the names of named references is generally something we need to do at all, but using AWB or script to change one, apparently because some of it happens to look like a date fragment (?), does seem particularly pointless. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:22, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks. You're right, it is indeed pointless. But unlike with my script, I missed it because the date conversion code I wrote for AWB does get applied to references contrary to expectations. The important thing is that this format change was done to all the ref tags. It would have been several more keystrokes had I had to cancel them. I'll look out for these in future, regrds, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:38, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

No probs, cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

EEC: Difference between revisions

There is no more link for Italian, French, German, and others in the text of European Economic Community, at Members. And in the box, Languages (9 in 1993) [show] is hidden. --Schwab7000 (talk) 14:47, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks, I see they have been relinked now. BTW, do you think any of them, including especially 'English' really needs to be linked? ;-) Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 14:56, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Kareena Kapoor

Please discuss before making such drastic changes to the article! The article went through several reviews before reaching FA status. What you deem as "trivial", "crap" and "non-biographical" is important. I know you're trying to help the article, but please stop removing important information! -- Bollywood Dreamz ^talk 03:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

• Ejected to the article talk page

A request for Kahaani

Hi! The article Kahaani is currently in Peer review. It is an article on an Indian film. If you have time, can you please have a look at it? Of course it will benefit from your script-assisted editing. However, what I was hoping is actually more than that. Any help on prose improvement will be extremely beneficial. The prose is the most critical issue that prevents many India-related article to get featured status. Thanks to the reviewers in peer review, the prose of this one is getting improved. Additional help from an editor otherwise not aware of the topic would be very helpful. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 14:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Wow, thanks a lot for your help. The copy edit is greatly appreciated. I just hope that you can go through the whole article for copy edit. Again, thanks thanks thanks a lot.--Dwaipayan (talk) 12:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

To answer your question in one of the edit summaries, yes, Ghosh was one writer of the film, alongside Kala. Indeed it is not clear from the credits who wrote how much! Was it completely collaborative, or, just a bit addition here and there, we do not know.--Dwaipayan (talk) 12:50, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Changing date formats in direct quotations

as here, is a specific exception to MOS:DATEUNIFY. "Date formats in quotations or titles should not be changed, even if this causes inconsistent formats in the same article." cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:32, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• Of course, you're absolutely right. I'd say that the quote was too long that I didn't realise the date was part of the quote. Thanks for fixing it. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 08:53, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, could you help me by fixing the refs on the Disappearance of Helen McCourt article, Thanks.--BabbaQ (talk) 14:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

If you find the time please help me fix the refs on Roger Kibbe, and if you want a challenge then take one these three articles that I found with the same refs situation. Blossom Tainton-Lindquist, Gladys del Pilar and Kayo Shekoni. Thanks.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:10, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Have a nice weekend!.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

You too! Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:29, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible ArbCom appeal?

Hiya. God knows you probably don't want to hear from me about this, but I was wondering whether you would want to consider appealing the Arbitration ban from Falun Gong, which is at this point over six months ago, the time that was indicated then. Yeah, I know, I haven't myself done a damn thing about it in the time period, but I do think that there is a chance that, sometime, one or more clearly problematic POV pushers might also be returning or showing up for the first time, and it would very definitely be useful to have as many rational voices available as possible. Also, considering the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident is currently undergoing FAR, and you were probably the best and most useful person in getting it to that level in the first place, I think it would be very useful if you were given the chance to address at least that article. I know that frustration and disgust for other editors is, more or less, to be expected regarding this particular content, and that most people would prefer to avoid that. But I also know that you have been invaluable in the development of a lot of the content we do have, and hope you would at least consider maybe subjecting yourself to a little more harassment from FG advocates once in a while. John Carter (talk) 19:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation page is not currently undergoing FAR. TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 20:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

You are apparently right, because the request doesn't seem to have been official in some way. But the article assessment data I get on the article page itself says, "A featured article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Currently undergoing review of its featured status." Maybe someone should find out, if it apparently isn't under review, how to remove the last sentence from the assessment summary section which shows up when someone using whatever bot or add-in I have indicates it is on the top of the article page? John Carter (talk) 21:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks John, for the reminder. You will probably have noticed that I've mostly recused from content editing, preferring the relatively 'calmer' MOS compliance auditing. I would like to appeal, if only to return to 'good standing'. But I've had it with Arbcom even though 'the worst' arb (IMHO) is no longer in the star chamber. Of course, I'd like to be able to once again edit my rant page, which I believe I'm technically prohibited from doing. But I think I'll leave it for a few more months, to show that I mean what I said about turning my back on the topic. I'm sure some will (although perhaps you may not) be pleased to hear it, but I've honestly had it with POV-pushers on that topic and they can have their way as far as I am concerned. I don't intend to get involved with any of the 'new' editors, even if it's what they truly are ;-). I hadn't figured that the 'self-immolation' page would be so radically shifted in favour of one 'party' and against the other without serious detriment to the quality of the prose – dilip, asdfg nor any of their contemporaries would have been able to achieve that. It probably won't be delisted as a FA for reasons other than POV, but I would wonder who will be around to scrutinise that aspect, and to do so without it degenerating into a predictable ruckus? The PRC is making the mistake of not simply ignoring them, making this a point of controversy at every turn; I've made that mistake before, but I'm not going to again. Despite all the trumpeted health benefits of the sect, I will ignore the practice as being deleterious to my well-being.

  As a corollary, it has become obvious to me that only those involved with the group in one way or another (usually pro, for they are large in number, and quite relentless in advancing 'the cause') are ever likely to edit the topic, so it is forever doomed to conflict (if the opposing side its there) or POV problem (without opposition-buttressing). The only way for the sect to be seen for what it is is when the PRC unbans them; then and only then will they dissolve into insignificance like the rest of the Chinese democracy movement. But that's about as unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future as Chairman Mao's image and those tacky propaganda slogans ceasing to be a fixture in Tiananmen Square. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

• You may, unfortunately, have a point in saying that the FG supporters are much more likely to edit than general editors - I think that tends to be the case in pretty much all the broadly "religious" content around here. I am trying to establish lists of articles in other reference sources, which I think is probably one of the best ways to ensure NPOV, and I think I have found at least a few articles in other reference sources relating to FG and related topics. They are, admittedly, a few years out of date, but they probably are a good way of indicating what NPOV would really be in this material. Unfortunately, I have gotten myself more than a bit burned out regarding POV pushing in religious material, and I agree with you that this subject is among the most likely targets for POV pushers overwhelming the neutral editors. I do have access to Highbeam and Questia databanks now as well, and I think they have some reference material relating to FG as well, as well as other "Qigong" topics. Also, if nothing else, I think that it might help you to have the ban lifted in the event you would ever want to edit that topic area. Someone has proposed a new project for Qigong at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals, and I regret to say that there is a good chance the ban might be considered, to a degree, to apply there as well. You've done a very good job on some of that material as well, and I have some reservations about POV pushing and pseudoscience there as well. If you were to request the lifting of the ban, I would certainly support you strongly, because you do seem to me to be one of the few really even remotely NPOV editors around here with a real interest in the topic, and we definitely need as many of those as we can get. John Carter (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks John. I'll re-evaluate my inclinations in June, and I'll let you know if/when I intend to appeal. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Meghnad Saha

Was it really your intention to blank the entire article on Meghnad Saha? It has been over 3 weeks now since you blanked the entire article and during this time the article has been unavailable to the readers. It would have been better if you had left a message on the talk specifically saying what the violation was, or better yet just corrected the violation rather than blank the entire article. If I follow the link on the current blanked article it shows that the sentence "After B.Sc. came M.Sc. and once again S.N. Bose was his classmate" has been copied from "Saha and His Formula" by Venkatraman. Is this the only copyright concern or is there more? Best, JS (talk) 16:57, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

• I would admit that not the entire article is a copyright violation, so perhaps the copyvio blanking is a bit drastic, but that's the way the template works. When I read the article, my suspicions were aroused by the style and tone, so I ran a Gsearch using several strings, and found the similarities too stark. I found: "After B.Sc. came M.Sc. and once again S.N. Bose was his classmate" came from Venkatraraman (pg 3). I don't know how much more there is, but where there is one plagiarised sentence in an article, there are usually plenty more. For your information, there is also "Meghnad got involved with Anushilan Samiti to take part in freedom fighting movement", which is lifted straight out of Venkatraraman (pg 5), and there may be more lifted from this source. And apparently huge chunks were copied from this attributed source. I'm not sufficiently interested in the topic to want to go researching it. However, if you can help clean it up, that would be great. You may do so by following the instructions on the template. It may include, inter alia, removing the offending phrasing, and proceeding with a rewrite whilst assuring that there are no more such instances of unattributed copying, or attributed copying for that matter. But I would advise against removing the tag without having resolved the problem. Bearing in mind the scale of the potential problem, and the legacy violation, I suspect the best way forward may be a complete rewrite. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:15, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The link that you gave for comparison huge chunks leads to a whole bunch of matches such as:

behari ghose he offered lecturerships to both saha and bose in 'the department of mathematics' in this college but because they could not get n bose with president rajendra prasad saha was appointed lecturer in 'the department of applied mathematics' in 1916 in the university college of science (4 words, 20 characters)

between him and raman and eventually raman announced in bangalore 'the founding of the' indian academy of sciences this was unacceptable to saha who on record chandrasekhar wrote “…in 1919 only three years after 'the founding of the' general theory of relativity saha and s n bose should (4 words, 19 characters)

I don't think you believe that the use of phrases like "the department of mathematics" and "the founding of the" is plagiarism.

A better way to go about it is to set the parameters at more reasonable values, for example 10 for words and 25 for characters (instead of 4 and 13 as you used). Even with these increased parameters there may be similar text that is acceptable, for example, quotes or a phrase like "won him the griffith prize of the calcutta university in 1920".

I would say that rather than blanking an entire article and letting it remain like that for weeks or months, it is better to just remove the plagiarized material. Also note that it is possible to blank a section than an entire article.

JS (talk) 22:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

• Please note that even after taking into account the quotes, of which there are rather too many, IMHO, there's still this:"Its main objective was to disseminate science amongst the public.The Association started publishing its journal called Science and Culture. On receiving, a copy of the first issue of the Journal, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was impressed and he wrote: "The appearance of Science and Culture, which is verbatim, down to the faulty comma after "on receiving". This wasn't picked up by duplication detector, but still tends to confirm my initial suspicions that this article is riddled with copyright violations. The onus is now on you to clean up the copyright violations. You may then unblock the article. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 05:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I see that another editor has restored what appears to be a non-copyright violating version of the article. I may at some point return to the article and add information. Thanks, JS (talk) 18:39, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying. MRG is one of the in-house editors with great experience in copyright matters, and I'm always grateful for her help in these situations. This is a learning situation where she has shown what to do when I come across the same problem in future. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:13, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright violation is a serious issue, and I would like to thank you for your work on this article. Best, JS (talk) 04:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Question about installing scripts

Hi Ohconfucius! I have a new Windows 7 PC running IE9 and Firefox 20, and tried to install your scripts in User:GoingBatty/vector.js, but the links for your tools don't show up in my toolbox in either browser. I've cleared the cache and rebooted, but no luck. Can you tell if I'm doing something wrong? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

• Funny, I've loaded your vector file and the scripts appear in the sidebar. What's more, the MOSNUM and Sources scripts appear to be functioning as they do in my habitual setup. FYI, I use NT and Firefox 20. Try replacing the entire contents of your vector with the following line, then reload your cache:

importScript('User:Ohconfucius/control.js');

The 'one-touch' buttons will run a composite script – one-click to launch MOSNUM, delinking and a formatting script (some from my testbed). -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:56, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I think this might have been stupid user error on my part. It's been so long since I've used the tools that I incorrectly thought the tools showed up in the sidebar when reading an article, whereas most of them only appear in edit mode. Are you recommending control.js to be used now, or are you still testing it? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:02, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Some script buttons, like the dashes script, can be accessed whilst in read mode. Not mine, yet. And no, I'm not recommending control.js, only offered it as an alternative that I know works, that I and one or two others are using for convenience purposes. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:42, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Script edits and start date templates

If your script is removing {{Start date}}, as in this edit, then it is broken, Please fix it, or report it so that it's author may do so. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

• I believe there might be an error of logic in your assertion. It's hardly broken. Before my edit it used to display 'Construction started 1727', now it displays 'Construction started 1727'. I removed a template that does not seem to serve any useful purpose except consume processing resources to compile. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:08, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The template serves an important function for accessibility, please accept that, or read more, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Gerda, did you mean to include a link to further reading? I'm interested to know about the accessibility issue here. Tony (talk) 13:37, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

In a nutshell, a date that shows day and month separately is good for calculations, comparisons, and in all cultures, the start date template shows that it IS a date, even if only a year, - my understanding, - for further reading ask Andy, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:57, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply so far. But you have to pardon me for being thick: the infobox into which that template was placed was {{infobox building}}, and the field populated was "construction started". The "data" involved was a four-digit number within a range and consistent with it being read unambiguously as a year. AFAICT, the only difference between the two being a resource-consuming {{start date}} template that seems to serve no useful purpose, and a year isn't a date. There is nothing about accessibility in the template documentation. I know about the {{birth date and age}} template – I don't remove these as I am aware there are calculations involved. So I fail to see the fuss in this instance. Or why I should "fix" it. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 08:46, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

There is more to Wikipedia than what sighted readers see on the screen. Your "seems to serve no useful purpose" is incorrect; the template's functionality is well-described on its documentation page; and an RfC found widespread for its use. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that there is a bot request to automatically add more {{start date}} templates being discussed. While I don't have a opinion on whether this template should be used, I wouldn't want a bot and a script battling each other. GoingBatty (talk) 19:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't want that either. The bot is guaranteed to win. ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:39, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I've now refined and tested the line of code, so the template within such a parameter should now not be disturbed by my script. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Links

In the discussion about the Bach cantatas (2010, I believe), I suggested not to link soprano, violin and others, but consensus was to link. Why should a contemporary piece such as Zeichenstaub be treated differently? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:08, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I do have a problem with the patchy issue that results from lists of classical instruments. I'm inclined to solve this problem by removing them all from the script. What do you think, OC? Tony (talk) 07:12, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think anyone disputes that 'violin' is a common term, and I know you agree with that principle, as such this word is well covered by WP:Linking. Editors may argue about what to link at individual articles, but such local discussions can never trump general consensus. Now one might argue about linking or not linking certain components in a 'series' which may become patchy as a result of selective unlinking of common terms, but I would definitely not try applying a local consensus at the Bach cantata to another article. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:16, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

We saw as a result that violin was unlinked, viola linked in the same scoring list. That doesn't make sense to me either. Shouldn't we think of readers who don't know what a violin is, anyway? They come from all over the world, not just UK and US, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:25, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

If we took that argument further, WP would become a dictionary. But the first pillar makes it clear that this should not be the case. In many contexts, I'd avoid linking violin, since every child of six knows what it is. The more you link, the more you dilute the high-value links, particularly in music articles where more technical dimensions benefit from strategic linking. Tony (talk) 08:06, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Did I say above that I was for not linking? - But if we do, violin the same as viola, please, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:30, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, there's definitely no patchiness as a result of my edit of Zeichenstaub; all the instruments in the infobox are 'clean'. I had to manually do the viola in the infobox and omitted the one in the body. Now corrected. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 08:32, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! (My answer was for Tony, who sounded like I took an argument further.) - The word "clean" has a ring of "lifeless" and "empty" at present, sorry that is personal, see history of User talk:Dreadstar, compare top of my user, - I miss the one who created the greatest award I know, a year ago and remembered, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:17, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Gerda, perhaps I should have clarified that I'm often unsure whether all or none is best in any particular context. Tony (talk) 10:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Name of Lu Lingzi

Hi! I found this edit. The name had been discussed at these talk page entries: Talk:Boston_Marathon_bombings/Archive_4#Chinese_names_of_Chinese_dead_and_injured and Talk:Boston_Marathon_bombings/Archive_4#Chinese_text_warning (in this one I explain why the Chinese name is included)

Lu Lingzi's name is mentioned elsewhere in the article (Boston University scholarship and reactions to her death in China)

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 17:23, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, thanks for letting me know. What I objected to is the clutter. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Ok. I wish there was a better way of indicating the Chinese characters and readings, but a single character in her name is different between the traditional and simplified character sets (if they both were the same there would only be a "Chinese: So-andso"), and the pinyin is generally indicated separately and not in the text. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:11, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
    • IN fact the character isn't hugely different between both writing systems that it would be unrecognisable to both. But as she isn't the main subject of the article, I think this is sufficient for the purposes of identification and verification. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Error with "Fix sources" script

Hi again! When I tried to run the "Fix sources" script on Michael Jackson, I received an error in regex execution. Could you please give it a try to see if it works for you? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:40, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

• It does that occasionally, because the script is long and complicated. When it works on a big article like MJ, it might well stall. I haven't yet found a way of banishing the error messages, but it's not usually indicative of any serious problem. Just press continue until it fully executes. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:47, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Early life of Pope John Paul II

Hello, I've started the merge proposal discussion. Could you put your reasons for proposing it on there? Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 17:03, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Script fixes breaking an image filename

Just a heads up that this script-assisted fix of yours broke an image which had the date it was taken as part of the filename. The script you were using added a comma. --McGeddon (talk) 15:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'll get that sorted out. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:15, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

List of dancers

Sorry, I was wondering if you could redo your +11 edit on this article since I was doing multiple fixes resulting in an edit conflict? I apologize for the inconvenience. I wasn't finished with the article and didn't think someone would make changes that quickly. Even though there are more minor fixes needed, I am finished with working on it at this time. Thanks very much! :) [3] 99.129.112.89 (talk) 15:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

• Done. My original produced only very trivial changes. I have worked the article some more. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

AWB

Thanks for you support, I hate to play the 'bot does it to, why foul me' card, but I just did. And Yobot made the edits after they raised issue to me, so I wish we could get this #4 ruling matter straightened out because what is approved for operation and what causes human editors to receive criticism is a weird double standard. But I'll try again later. Check the awb page for the proof though. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Mao's wiki page

Hi can tell me why you deleted my revision on Mao's page?--Madeintibet59 (talk) 04:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• I already commented on the article's talk page. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi

When you got the time please take a look at the refs for Valerie Aflalo, Annika Jankell and Oba Chandler. Much appreciated.--BabbaQ (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Could you take a second look att Oba Chandler I found two refs (28 and 60) that was non-formatted. Thanks again.--BabbaQ (talk) 11:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

This is usually due to Reflinks not being able to read the reference metadata for some reason, and may need to be done manually. I'll do that tomorrow, as well as giving it a light copyedit. Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I've nearly completed the copyedit. If you don't agree with any of the changes, in particular any of the text removals, please reinstate as you see fit. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi again! In this edit to Valerie Aflalo, your script added |language={{sv icon}}, which is displayed within {{cite web}} as "(in (in Swedish))". Per Template:Cite_web#Title, could you please have your script add |language=Swedish instead in the future? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:19, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ohconfucius, I like your edits at Oba Chandler and don't see any need to reinstate any of them. The article has now been FAC nominated. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 21:02, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Fix sources script changes link in blockquote

Hi Ohconfucius! When I tried running your "Fix sources" script on Boy Scouts of America membership controversies, it changed [[Scout method|Scout Method]] to [[Scout method]] within a blockquote. Is that the intent of your script, or is this a bug that should be fixed? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:33, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

• It is intentional, and I believe AWB has this as a general fix. The link should render as direct a link to the article, without misleading piping. I don't see what reason there could be for upcasing or downcasing that is different from the article namespace. Of course, I'm open to arguments to the contrary. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Yep, Scout method, the Scout method, seem abundantly identifiable. WP:MOSCAPS says the WP avoids unnecessary capitalisation. Tony (talk) 04:02, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
    • On the contrary, AWB doesn't change the text within <blockquote> tags - see WP:AWB/GF#HideMore. Is there a part of MOS:QUOTE that you're interpreting to be contrary to "The wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced"? Maybe if the capital M in "Method" is considered a typographical mistake? Just want to understand before I make an edit. I think the script makes a lot of good changes to the article, and I want to understand this one part before kicking off the script. Thanks for all the work you do to make it easier to fix Wikipedia! GoingBatty (talk) 05:12, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
      • I would consider these changes, like downcasing prepositions in titles or changing from curly to straight quotes, do not affect the 'fidelity' of reproduction. The quoted text can still be found using search engines when performing string searches. Of course if I'm wrong, I'll gladly make that line of the code case sensitive. Unfortunately, Jenks24 who seems to have a better view of this than me, isn't very active these days. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 09:32, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
        • As best I can tell, the BSA uses Scout method. This one is not in the BSA style guide, but it is used on their web site. --  Gadget850 ^talk 14:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
          • Tony & Gadget850 - While I agree that we should use "Scout method", my question was about changing the text in quotations that show how other people choose to capitalize it.
          • Ohconfucius - Thanks for your reply. Now that I understand, I ran the script on the page. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:59, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Script error?

I saw that this edit introduced two errors (April–June 02) -> (April–2 June) and (July–Dec 02) -> (July–2 Dec), when the original values were referring to 2-digit years. I have manually changed the page to reflect this, the message here is just a courtesy notification. Thanks, C679 11:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you. That particular way of writing month-year combination is not compliant with [[WP>MOSNUM]], hence the error. The script thinks it is a day-month combination. I already made numerous manual corrections to manager history sections to accommodate, but must have missed that one. I already raised the issue at WT:FOOTBALL a month or so back. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Article intros

I note that you have changed some Faye Wong album articles today, to say e.g.

Fable (alternatively Legend) is the translated title of a 2000 Mandarin album by...

I think this is wrong, as the article is not about the title of an album, it's about an album. I also disagree with the removal of pinyin altogether.

The preceding version said

Yùyán (Chinese: 寓言), sometimes called Fable in English and Japanese sources or Legend, is a 2000 Mandarin album...

I think the page should start with the current article name. Pending resolution of this, I suggest

Fable (alternatively Legend, Chinese: 寓言; pinyin: Yùyán) is a 2000 Mandarin album by...

Would you be willing to reinstate the deleted pinyin & linktext along these lines? – Fayenatic London 16:24, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm OK with your suggestion. Let's try it. Problem is, 'Fable' isn't even a title but an unofficial translation of one. But I don't like the linked text. I never have, and I don't see the point. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 16:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The point is that people can see what Wiktionary says the words mean. – Fayenatic London 18:23, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Two cents - Apologies

Hi there CONFUCIUS, AL "here",

regarding this message to User:GiantSnowman (please see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GiantSnowman#Situation_.28.3F.29), i did not contact you today because i had already done so last year (hope you are not implying i did not message you altogether because it is not true, just can't remember the date, i messaged you and urged you to participate in the WP:FOOTY i brought forth, which you accepted). My main concern was regarding User:Tony1, and i mentioned you for comparison purposes.

Regarding the word "beef", obviously it's an overstatement, we only had a difference of opinions, not a beef or run-in of any sorts, hence my apologies for poor wording. Last but not least, yes i understand what overlinking is in most of its nuances, but i also know that ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL is one thing and DEFENDER/MIDFIELDER/FORWARD/GOALKEEPER are positions occupied by ASSOCIATION FOOTBALLERS, we need to differentiate between both in my humble opinion, no matter what. Three in a row (SPANISH FOOTBALL DEFENDER - with the respective wikilinks? - i never used that one, i wrote in the past "SPANISH FOOTBALLER who plays/played as a DEFENDER", then upgraded to "SPANISH professional FOOTBALLER who plays/played as a DEFENDER", thus eliminating any overlinking.

Attentively, sorry again for any inconvenience - --AL (talk) 17:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

If you don't mind me asking why, what do you mean by "My ears were burning" in Snowman's page? Puzzling... --AL (talk) 17:08, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• English expression. It means you are aware somebody is talking about you behind your back. ;-) I was a little upset to see me referred to twice on the same admin's talk page in the space of the same number of days. I think I understand where you are coming from. I also understand you were referring to Tony, because I have him on my watchlist. So as far as you are concerned, you believe links to both 'association football' and 'defender' are essential... But football is only the most popular sport across the globe, and I'm at a loss as to why we need to clog up the lead with such a link; that for me would place the position as the most important. And as 'Defender (association football)' already specifies the position in the context of the sport, it was relatively easy to decide on its importance. Can you offer any solution to this what seems to me to be obvious overlinking, then? Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 17:20, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• Hi guys, regarding the intro to articles, ideally it should read something like: "is an English [[association football|footballer]] who plays as a [[Defender (association football)|defender]]" - nationality not linked per WP:OVERLINK, and 'footballer' and 'position' as two seperate links. That make sense? GiantSnowman 17:39, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oh, your years are burning means that :) We have a similar one in Portuguese too, did not make the (auditive) connection...Yes Confucius, i concur with Snowman as far as the lead goes (please read his two cents immediately above my message). Regards both --AL (talk) 18:53, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I see 'association football' often used piped from 'football', suggesting that some do indeed use it to gloss this potentially ambiguous term. I'm open to accepting I'm in the minority in believing it shouldn't be linked. But once again association football is by a very long way the number one most popular sport across the globe, making it well within my definition of a "common term". So, although it's directly and highly relevant to the topic, I would still question why we need to clog up the lead with such a link. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 19:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• I repeat man, as Snowman puts it: nationality not linked per OVERLINK (i don't agree with that but i have to abide by), footballer and position of X or Y footballer as two separate links, not just one, because they are two separate items. Can't be more clearer than that, maybe Snowman (an admin/user much more versed in WP technicalities than myself) can shed extra light on the subject. --AL (talk) 21:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Bundesliga

I see where you're coming from - apart from in English, the name is Bundesliga. GiantSnowman 17:41, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• but I presume you would agree that it isn't known as 'fußball-Bundesliga'. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I would have assumed good faith if you had not just moved the page but also fixed the name in the intro, amended the links in the associated templates and requested a move of the associated categories. Without that, I m sorry to say it looks like just another editor who wants to push his/her opinion. But never mind now, you ve done the right thing and initiated the request move process. Lets see where it goes. Just a piece of advice, leagues like the Regionalliga, Oberliga and so on have counterparts in almost all German sports and, in my opinion, disambiguation is needed. Keep well, Calistemon (talk) 21:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm so sorry I gave the impression I was trying to press home a point. I just thought it would make sense to do one thing at a time. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. It looks like your requested move to Bundesliga has a solid majority. That will mean the 51 season articles will have to be renamed, too. Additionally 3500 player articles will have their category moved, should the categories be brought in line. My only concern is disambiguation. Not everybodies favourite sport is football and somebody else could reasonably assume that the category:Bundesliga players should contain ice hockey, basketball or handball players, to name just the most prolific of Bundesligas. I still would favour a more precise disambiguation like Category:Bundesliga association football players. I don't mind the Fussball gone, your argument there is sound, but the name of an article or category should still be clear enough for people to find the Bundesliga they are looking for. Take care, Calistemon (talk) 05:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

• Seems sensible, I'm fine with that. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Please help

Dear Ohconfucius, could you please check the talk page of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_Robinson_(bodybuilder) and help to achieve fairness in materials put on article about Robby Robinson? I would like to hear your opinion if you also support that within a couple of days an article about a famous bodybuilding legend turned out into an article about a ... I do not even have words. All the previous contributions were deleted, not only those from me, and new ones are presented so misleading that people who know Mr Robinson and his life and achievements will never believe this is an article about him. To eliminate the previous misanderstanding, I transferred the opinion of concerned person, without any actual connection to me. Thak you. RRWM (talk) 00:06, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and thanks for getting involved, Ohconfucius. This problem has been escalating and needs some experienced hands. Andrewa (talk) 02:50, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Dear [Ohconfucius], I would like to apply for your help concerning Robinson's article once again:

1) Users Brocach and BarrelProof have recently deleted the REMI-Award for Robinson's DVD Built and inserted wrong information about his book - deletion of REMI after humiliating editing humiliation attempt on REMI
- can these people really make decisions that an official prize that even also has a page on Wiki that this living person was awarded is not worth mentioning in wikipedia?
- can they make parallel humiliating comments about every entrance from person's biography, that are visible for all the readers of the article?
I mean, REMI was not a small award, it is given to films, and BUILT is just a DVD, but special, like a TV film - on one side. But even if it is about small achievements of Robinson from school, is it allowed to parallel write humiliating comments? Who is allowed to decide what is importrant in the biography of living person?

2) my latest contribution to Robinson`s article was also deleted, see my contribuition about creation of Robinson's memoirs deleted by BarrelProof
- Are materials from autobiographies/ memoirs and blog/ articles of living persons allowed to be used for wiki-article?
- do you also find, the citation of the review on Robinson's book from nomination committee of Writers' Digest has pure "promotional character"?

3) Comments of editors Brocach and now BarrelProof not only on Robinson's Talk page but also in summary lines to their "contributions"
- is it allowed that the editors of the article permanently publicly insult and try to humiliate the living person, the subject of the article?
- are they allowed to continue to work on the article?
All their discussions are publically open in internet, and they act as official representatives of Wikipedia. Since I am new here, I do not know, if here is any observing institution helping to avoid that wikipedia articles look like ground school kids dirty chat and do not directly descriminate and insult people, at least those that are the subject of the wiki-article?

4) could it be a kind of sabotage from Robinson's haters to force the managers of Robinson to apply to close the article?
Is it possible to avoid it?

5) What should I do with the direct insult towards my wiki-user from Brocach that the BarrelProof tried to hide by irreversible removal, see this direct insult

I hope very much, you will be able to bring some clearance in this subject, since I can see you are a very experienced wikipedian,
Thank you very much RRWM (talk) 22:15, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

FYI, a reply to some of this can be found at User talk:In ictu oculi. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Happy to discuss these crossposted claims by RRWM at the talk page for Robby Robinson (bodybuilder). Brocach (talk) 00:18, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

FYI, mentioned you in discussion

FYI, I've mentioned you in discussion at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1 due to your recent formatting and copyediting to the article. — Cirt (talk) 04:03, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks! FYI, it was picked up by notifications. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:09, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Ah, okay good. Perhaps you could have a look at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1? :) — Cirt (talk) 01:56, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Ohconfucius. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).
Message added 22:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Not directly a talkback, but please add a comment. ;-) mabdul 22:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

two column references for a single citation

I reverted your change to the reflist since there is only one citation. Frietjes (talk) 17:09, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

• You are right. It's better that way. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Thanks for your feedback, although I clearly disagree. If I did something as egregious as that I would want someone to notify me, and ask me to "please stop". The only way we learn from each other is by constructive criticism. Apteva (talk) 02:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Birth place in birth date parenthetical?

Hey, OC, I need some help. As you are an editor who does his best to use standardized formatting per MOS, I am hoping you have the time to help resolve a small dust-up over the proper formatting of the lead section of Wikipedia biography articles per MOS:BIO. I encountered User:Raymarcbadz for the first time today when I removed the birth place from the birth date parenthetical of several Olympic swimmer bios per MOS:BIO. Ray reverted the removal of the birth places without edit summaries, so I left a comment on his talk page explaining the applicable Wikipedia-wide formatting standard. He deleted my comment and reverted my edits again. I have left a second explanatory comment on his talk page, but I can see this is going nowhere. I am not looking for admin intervention; I am looking for a third-party opinion and reinforcement of the standard formatting. Would you mind reviewing the situation and, if appropriate, leaving a comment on Ray's talk page? Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

You mentioned me. Sorry if I can. I've started to fix something on my articles involving swimmers from Florida Gators. Yes, indeed. I've reverted the removal twice, until Dirtlawyer1 justifies my reason. That's why I don't want to revert it again for the third time, I'll just do it on my own to prevent any third-party opinion and vandalism. It's hard for me to focus already on my scope and limitations about Olympic athletes. I hope you understand my situation. Thank you. Raymarcbadz (talk) 03:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

This, like anything else, is not something that anyone should be edit warring about. There are some people who it makes sense to put the location of birth or death inside the parentheses and others that it does not. This is not something that I could find any guideline about, and in my opinion does not need to be addressed anywhere. The place to discuss it is on the article talk page if anyone disagrees with the formatting. Apteva (talk) 03:55, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful advice, Apteva. Before speaking further on this subject, may I suggest that you carefully review the examples of properly formatted lead sentence of bios provided by MOS:BIO and the explicit guideline regarding the exclusion of the subject's birth place from the birth date parenthetical per WP:OPENPARA? Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Apteva, you seem to be arguing for the application of some "local consensus" for the matter at hand. The MOS is a series of guidelines that are expected to apply to all articles. While editors are not all expected to know or apply the advice therein, they are certainly not expected to revert them where another edit seeks to apply them. In the absence of any guidance, local editors may agree on what to adopt. But where there is a guideline in place on a particular style matter, there can be no claim to 'local consensus' because MOS cannot be "trumped". Regards, -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:58, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

There appears to be a battleground mentality going on at MOS over the last few years that is not helpful. Someone puts something into an article that someone disagrees with. Second someone rushes over to MOS and adds that to the example. First someone continues to ignore the MOS because it is a guideline. Third someone edits MOS to say that MOS is written by the Third Reich and must be applied to "all" articles, and adds the word "all" to the MOS. Yeish. Totally out of control. But in many ways laughable, still. Apteva (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't deny there is battleground mentality manifest by some people over certain topics or articles, same as I don't deny frequently coming across ownership tendencies. But as to what you imply goes on at MOS all the time that "First someone continues to ignore the MOS because it is a guideline. Third someone edits MOS to say that MOS is written by the Third Reich and must be applied to 'all' articles, and adds the word 'all' to the MOS." You sound extremely authoritative about the goings on at MOS. I have experienced many an instance of heated discussions, and many insertions are reverted per WP:BRD – hell, I've done a few myself. It may be laughable if perhaps you can prove it by showing me more than one set of diffs of such behaviour that has been condoned? -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:54, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Not really. MOS edit warring has curtailed a lot this year. Hopefully that will continue. Apteva (talk) 17:12, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Backing up a little bit, in MOS:BIO there is the sentence "Birth and death places should be mentioned in the body if known, and in the lead if they are relevant to the person's notability; they should not be mentioned within the opening brackets." This may have been intended to mean "within the date parentheses" as is often customary. If so that is in my view, bad advice, as for some people, that is the most practical place to put that information. This is under discussion now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#POB in WP:OPENPARA. Apteva (talk) 15:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I happen to agree with the guideline, as I don't see that being any optimal placement except in very rare instances, such as a person who was executed in a country not their own, or a mountaineer who died whilst on expedition to the top of Everest. Putting the birth and/or death location in the opening sentences, even within parentheses, just contributes to the clutter in the busiest part of the article without any significant benefits. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:54, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not the place for that conversation. But yes, that is the optimal location in some instances. The place to discuss the guideline is on the guideline talk page, the place to discuss a variance from the guideline is on the article talk page. Countless MOS editors have confused the two. Apteva (talk) 16:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

No, I was going to reply to you to that effect. But I decided that I would indulge you with a reply to the comment above as a courtesy. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 16:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Talk:The Situation (TV personality)#Requested move

I have voted for an alternative instead of "support" or "oppose". You may change your vote to an alternative if possible. --George Ho (talk) 17:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

FYI, when I run your "Fix sources" script on The Situation (TV personality), I noticed two things that you may want to improve:

1. It changes [[Time magazine|Time]] to [[Time]]
2. It removes the link to [[New York]], but not the link to [[United States|U.S.]]

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:10, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know why it's doing that, so I need to check the code in more detail. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:36, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

If it helps, the script also changes |publisher=New York Magazine to |work=New York on Christie Brinkley. GoingBatty (talk) 20:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is very helpful. The work target should be New York, per our conventions. It suggests that there may be wholesale failure to run function Ohc_redo_pipe in subscript3. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:42, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Although I just realised that New York was never a pipe to be made <duh>, now included. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:58, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

It was my intention that the sources script would be link neutral, and I don't recall there being any code to unlink New York, especially from '|birthplace='. Hmmm... -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:01, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The script now works great for Christie, but still wants to change [[Time magazine|Time]] to [[Time]] within a reference (no citation template). GoingBatty (talk) 02:35, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thanks very much for all of your help with successfully getting Freedom for the Thought That We Hate to Featured Article quality. I really appreciate the assistance in getting this article about freedom of speech to FA. — Cirt (talk) 23:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think I did very much to deserve it, but thanks very much anyway. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions for Fix sources script

• Hi Ohconfucius! When I run your Fix sources script on Windows 8, it will successfully change |work=ZDNet|publisher=CBS Interactive → |publisher=ZDNet,
  

but it changes |work=[[ZDNet]] |publisher=[[CBS Interactive]] → |publisher=[[ZDNet]] |publisher=[[CBS Interactive]]. Thanks for your continued work on this script! GoingBatty (talk) 18:38, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• Done. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:34, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I refreshed my cache but the script is still behaving the same way. Could you please show me where you made this change? GoingBatty (talk) 12:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It's a generic line of code that ought to remove repeated instances of '|work=' '|publisher=' and '|location='. I had it avoid any intervening square brackets, but it now should avoid only the pipe symbol and the curly close bracket. I'll have another look at it and test it in the morning, but your expert eye might spot something I missed in the meantime. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:26, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks like you changed it so it's not avoiding square brackets in the first parameter, but it's still avoiding square brackets in the second parameter. I updated the Windows 8 article by removing the brackets from only one instance of CBS Interactive, so now if you rerun the script you should be able to see the difference. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, spotted, Batman! Now fixed. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:47, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Works great now - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Also, in the "removing publishers for periodicals" section, could you please change the two instances of "Gannett Company" to "Gannett(?: Company)" so it will remove |publisher=[[Gannett]] from articles such as Ringo Starr? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:27, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• Done. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 12:34, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

It appears that you've fixed one link of code so it will remove |publisher=Gannett, but you didn't make the same change in the subsequent line of code so it will remove |publisher=[[Gannett]]. GoingBatty (talk) 12:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done - Thanks for updating the second line of code - updated Ringo Starr perfectly. GoingBatty (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

If you want to change the two instances of |Cond[eé] Nast Publications to |Cond[eé] Nast(?: Publications), that will get rid of one more publisher in the Windows 8 article. GoingBatty (talk) 02:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Just put that into my test script; will migrate in due course. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• When I run the script on Graff Diamonds robbery, it tries to add |location=London to a reference that does not use a citation template. GoingBatty (talk) 13:46, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

For the 'London' addition, I get 'British history"]. London Evening Standard. 11 August 2009.' becoming 'British history"]. Evening Standard (London). 11 August 2009.'. I don't see any additions of |location==London. Is that what you meant? That is entirely normal and intended. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:26, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done - Your edit to the article looks great. Don't know why I was getting |location=London when I tried it. GoingBatty (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

That |location=London is an intermediate state that suggests partial execution of code. I don't get that with either MacOS or WindowsNT. Can you maybe try that with Firefox instead of IE? -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe I was using Firefox, but I can't replicate it now that you've fixed the article. I'll let you know if I come across another one. GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

sigh

I thought we have been through all that ages ago - and the australian noticeboard and things... sats 08:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

if you need a detailed explanation - any article in the Fremantle area that gets a B rather than an Au engvar is going to be reverted as the QR coded signs and general aspect of articles that are eligble for the Freopedia project would look really dumb if they had british english tags when they are of an australian location... unless you have a better idea - btw - you are most welcome to attend the the Freopedia launch - whereever you may be... if that is insufficient explanation - most pleased to provide more if you need it... sats 08:35, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, blip. I saw Notifications light up twice and I thought you had reverted me twice. I see you actually left my second edit intact. Apologies for that. But don't you think it's a bit drastic to revert me wholescale when you could have simply changed the tag, if that was the only thing you had an issue with? -- Ohc ^{digame / ¿que pasa?} 08:42, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

haha (edit conflict) didnt realise what a sensitive ed you were - I was going to edit rather than revert - but I have 2 jack russels and only 2 hands (at this stage)...(before edit conflict) - haha - never apologise - youre on wikipedia :) - as for lights - you aint seen nothing yet :) - my notifications thingo has me seeing things already... as for querying - please feel free to check me anytime - I have no problem for answering the issue - getting up dmy and an engvar thingo on arts is important - but very specifically I have any issue that might get in the way of the freopedia articles integrity... cheers for the mo, and gracias for your understanding... sats 08:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't usually return to an article I've just edited on a gnoming run, and Notifications has the adverse effect of drawing attention to reverts. What's more, as I usually have multiple edit windows open, the effect gets multiplied. Ho hum... Back to the grind, and don't let the dogs get you barking mad! ;-) -- Ohc ^{digame / ¿que pasa?} 08:58, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

hahah ask my fellow freopedia wikipedians i am already anyways - the throwing the golf balls while i sit editing is enough to drive them (the dogs) and me mad its all too late :) - ciao sats 09:05, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Prefer not to have the repeated "hahah", which could be laughing at your respondent. Yes, the spelling change was incorrect, and no, you should revert all of the necessary clean-ups in the edit, but just fix the spelling and leave a note here to that effect. Tony (talk) 09:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I would defend you for some of your talk page intrusions Tony, but not always - obviously you are not a dog owner sats 09:46, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

User talk pages are not 'private' by any stretch of the imagination. As to your second point, please see User:Tony1#About_me. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 09:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Tell me - you should see the size of some users watchers lists - it like some people seem to attract so much attention they get into the 100's of talk or user page stalkers... re the dog - cripes something that big would be much easier to handle compared to a jack russel. Also I tend not to venture into user pages to find out their imtimate details - I take them at face value as to their behaviour on talk pages - that usually says enough sats 10:02, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

UK Miners Strike

A few days ago I added Arthur Scargill to the "See also" section of the article on the UK Miners' Strike. On 9 May that reference was removed, apparently by Ohconfucius. If it was indeed this user, can s/he explain why this was done? It seems to me that anybody reading an article about the UK Miners' Strike would also be interested to read about Arthur Scargill. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.45.192.9 (talk) 17:01, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

• from WP:SEEALSO: "As a general rule the "See also" section should not repeat links which appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes.". I believe the name 'Arthur Scargill' does indeed appear in the article, and is linked already, thus obviating the need for the special mention in the 'see also' section. I trust that addresses your query. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 01:45, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect Engvar

Why have you tagged so many South Africa related articles with a British English template? It's a tedious process to change them all back to South African English because you did a whole bunch of other edits at the same time. Please don't do that again. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• I trust that you have already read the template documentation. It would have be nice to have been thanked for all the hard word in systematically aligning the date formats and removing all the horrible American spelling from those articles instead of simply being admonished. But I'm a big boy and I'll live. ;-)

  FYI, nothing needs to be "changed back" because none of the articles were tagged before I got there, and had there been any nation-based templating, none would have been switched to 'British' in any event. I deliberately 'neutralised' the templating hoping that it would ruffle the fewest nationalistic feathers as possible by using the {{EngvarB}} instead of {{Use British English}}; I am aware that it redirects there however. Let me think of another approach.

  I'm sorry I created such tedium for you. You might be relieved to know that this will be done in due course: Dl2000 (talk · contribs), who has a similar MO to me, specifically does a lot of this type of nation-based tagging and re-tagging, and will come around before long. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 14:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Umm, along in due course? Anyway, might be a while to catch up on any switching of the {{Use South African English}} updates, given other priorities in play such as countervandalism, repairs, even the occasional new article. Anyway, perhaps a better strategy would be to designate and apply the EngvarB template for British-form English variants (which could be applied to subjects of Australia, South Africa, India, etc) which might be switched to a more specific national English template over time. {{Use British English}} would only be used if a specifically British English style and vocabulary would apply e.g. not on South African articles. That approach might help with some of the Engvar template disputes. Anyway, gotta whack another vandal... Dl2000 (talk) 02:26, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    • @Dl2000: Yes, indeed. I've just been thinking about differential use of redirects to achieve that. The increasing frequency of complaints from nationalists is getting tedious. They are now even objecting the {{EngvarB}} template, no doubt by virtue of the fact it's redirect to {{Use British English}} – I kind of foresaw it when I posted to your talk page on the explosion of the tagging variants. By perhaps merging the 'Use XXX English' into EngvarB, articles can still be tagged according to their national code of English whilst centralising the repository of articles with British-form English variants maintained by the script. Sorry if I implied that you may not have other priorities – "In due course" and "how long is a piece of string" often go hand in hand. ;-) -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 02:38, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

---

Please note that {{EngvarB}} is now independent of any British English templating. Its own categorisation also independent of British (or indeed any other) English variant categorisation. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:06, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi

When you have the time please help me with the refs on Emmelie de Forest. Much appreciated. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 14:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Whitelisting

Are u good at "Whitelisting" sources? If yes, the online source for Galatta.com is blacklisted even though it is notable. Pls whitelist it after seeing this discussion. ---- Kailash29792 (talk) 14:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• No I'm sorry. I would not profess any expertise in that area. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:22, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

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