User talk:RexxS/Archive 35

Merging Template:Infobox person/WD and Template:Infobox person/Wikidata?

We don't really need two versions here, so it would probably be best to merge them together so that we just have one that uses WikidataIB. Any objections / preference for merge direction? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I have no objections or preferences. Tom Morris and I created Template:Infobox person/Wikidata just as a "proof-of-concept" that an infobox could be populated from Wikidata. Things have moved on since then. I created Template:Infobox person/WD specifically to demonstrate the concept of an "opt-in" infobox that could simply replace {{Infobox person}} without affecting any articles until fetching Wikidata was enabled at the individual article. Ping me if you need any help with whatever merging you do. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:43, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm slowly working through this. One issue is that Module:WikidataIB doesn't support a date format like Module:Wikidata does - would that be easy to add to it please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Mike: The getValue call uses the wikibase API to return dates without any of the previous issues, so it's going to be the best route going forward. However, as you know, all the dates returned are in dmy format with BCE as suffix for dates before Christian era. What would be useful is a function that converts dmy into mdy as well as offering BC instead of BCE, as it could be reused elsewhere. I'll write one and incorporate it into getValue, so that getValue can be called with an extra parameter indicating date format and BC/BCE, thus replacing the separate call to getDateValue. I'll let you know when it's done. --RexxS (talk) 11:39, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

[Update] @Mike:. It's probably finished now. In Module:WikidataIB, I've added the new function to convert date formats (you probably won't need to use it) and extended getValue to handle date formats as robustly as I can.

The getValue function can now take two optional parameters, |df= (values: "dmy", "mdy", or "y" - default is "dmy") and |BC= (values: "BC", or "BCE" - default is "BCE"). I've updated the documentation – not that anybody reads it – and provided test cases at Module talk:WikidataIB #Calls to getValue for dates. I'll leave the rest to you. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:17, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks RexxS! It's now implemented in the infobox. BTW, my overall plan is to switch /Wikidata to be opt-in (which requires updating the calls for the current articles using it so that they have clearly opted in), merge /WD usages to that page, and to match the rest of the parameters to Wikidata properties so they're available. Quite when it will be time to merge in with the main infobox, I'm not sure... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I've now merged the templates, now to match up the rest of the parameters to Wikidata! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:29, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	your Template:Infobox person/Wikidata is brilliant, and the way forward. please submit a talk for wikimania about it. Beatley (talk) 22:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

A discussion you might be interested in

I've just stumbled across the discussion at Deep water blackout#Merge and rename? (about merging the articles about deep and shallow water blackout and renaming them to Freediving blackout). The combination of diving and medicine makes it seem like the sort of thing you'd be interested in. Thryduulf (talk) 14:33, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Chris, for thinking about me. I was aware of the discussion and I agree that one article can cover the overlapping topics better. Peter Southwood has been making sterling efforts to organise and improve scuba coverage on Wikipedia and I have every confidence he'll do a fine job in sorting out the merged article. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:05, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:ANI

Your actions are under discussion at WP:ANI#Wikidata discussions and fallout. Fram (talk) 14:04, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata stuff

Thanks for letting me know about Module:WikidataIB. Great work! I've just started playing around with using SPARQL to verify sourcing for properties so we can build up to-do lists of Wikidata items that have contentious, BLP-ish claims but don't have sources that aren't just imported from Wikipedia. I'll ping you about it on Wikidata when I get further with it. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:25, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

onlysourced=True

This change removed quite a bit of info from e.g. telescope articles too... (see South Pole Telescope now!). Could it be undone until the individual infobox templates can be updated with their own defaults, please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:54, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Could that wait for a little while, Mike? While I'm trying to defend the template at AfD and ANI, one of the main selling points is that it filters unreferenced data, and having that as default is a big plus. I'll go through the telescope articles and set |onlysourced=no until we have time to improve the references on Wikidata, if that's ok for now? --RexxS (talk) 20:47, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

It's OK, I'll change it in other the templates now. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

(Changes like this should do the job for now - until I can go back through all of the articles to make sure everything's referenced on Wikidata. Having onlysourced=yes by default is definitely good in the long run though. Mike Peel (talk) 21:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC))

Thanks, Mike. I just used notepad++ to change all the {onlysourced|} to {onlysourced|no}, but you beat me to it. It took me a minute to work out why Show changes wasn't showing me any difference! Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:09, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism warning

At John S. Duncan, you claimed that you "expanded infobox even further", while in reality, in your zeal to have the Wikidata infobox, you actually removed information (the alma mater), while at the same time displaying the website twice in the infobox. Please leave articles where the infobox is working correctly alone instead of making them worse. Don't disrupt Wikipedia to make your point. Fram (talk) 05:33, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for showing yet again that you are not interested in improving enwiki, but just in promoting the Wikidata infobox. You removed information from the infobox which had been in the article long before this edit war, and which was easily sourceable. You also just happened to only remove information from the infobox but not from the article, as if the same information is more problematic in an infobox than in an article. Or as if you only care about getting your infobox on the article, and not about the actual article itself. Stop it. Leave the article alone and go do some actual work improving either enwiki (here) or Wikidata (there). Fram (talk) 13:29, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

13:01, 26 January 2017 "sorry Mike that duplicates the website when a local value is present - see Talk:John S. Duncan" 13:15, 26 January 2017 "My edit did not duplicate the website" 13:24, 26 January 2017 "Try this, Mike - it should fix the duplicate website display issue"

Considering that the problematic edit by Mike Peel was on 09:48, 25 January 2017‎, and the edit that duplicated the website at John S. Duncan only happened at 19.57 on the same day, it is clear that yes, your edit duplicated the website (by going back to the Wikidata version of the infobox). Please don't make false claims in edit summaries, it seems to happen way too often recently. Fram (talk) 13:44, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I strongly suggest you modify your tone, Fram, lest accusing somebody of not being "interested in improving enwiki" be seen as a personal attack. Perhaps you would regain a sense of perspective if you spent more time in the mainspace and less politicking in the project space? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:15, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

You mean like [1]adding references and correcting errors, [2]reverting vandalism, or writing new articles? Nah, I'm not interested in that kind of thing. Fram (talk) 14:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Then I'm sure you can find something better to do than giving out specious vandalism warnings to editors with long and distinguished track records of improvement to the encyclopaedia. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:25, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Please stop with the "fixes" and improve Wikidat instead

this, this or this are not "fixes", they are diffs polluting enwiki history for no good reason. If Wikidata can't handle these, then get Wikidata corrected, but don't turn every redirect Wikidata needs to link to in a temporary "article". Fram (talk) 08:12, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

How dare you come here telling me what and how I can edit on Wikipedia? You need to get a grip on your paranoia about Wikidata and go back to working on plain text articles - leave the technical work to those who know what they are doing. Nobody owes you an explanation and nobody gives a shit about the article history of a redirect. It fixed a problem, but that doesn't matter to you in your campaign to destroy Wikidata. If you want something fixed on Wikidata, why don't you get off your arse and fix it yourself? --RexxS (talk) 13:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Funny. Remember how I corrected the /Wikidata template and you thanked me for it? "leave the technical work to those who know what they are doing", right, just point me to those people then. "Nobody gives a shit about the article history of a redirect", well, you obviously don't, but you aren't everybody. I don't care if that problem gets fixed on Wikidata or not, I care about you messing around with enwiki because you have a problem at Wikidata but you can't have it fixed there. And yes, I "dare" to tell this to you, why wouldn't I? Fram (talk) 13:42, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm always prepared to give credit where it's due, unlike you. I have thousands of edits to templates and modules and you have ... how many? Two perhaps? You're the only person on Wikipedia who worries about the revision history of a redirect. Seriously, you are. I actually worry about you when you come out with absolute bollox like that. If you're concerned about my editing, then I thank you for your concern. If you want me to stop fixing problems because it's spoiling the way you think things should be, then you can either pursue DR (and see where that gets you) or you can fuck off. Your choice. --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

If you can't see that "Wikidata doesn't allow items for redirects, so I'll just create an utter bullshit article for a minute on enwiki" is making a mockery of both enwiki and Wikidata... I don't really care how many edits to templates and modules you have, and you can find out mine in the contribution history (hint: it's more than two, even if it's not my main area of activity). "You're the only person on Wikipedia who worries about the revision history of a redirect." You are probably not aware that one can do things with a redirect with only one line in the history which aren't possible with redirects with a longer history (like the ones you have now caused)? Or did you chose to ignore this? Anyway, I'll add this issue and your refusal to reconsider your approach for this at the ANI case, I guess you don't need a second link to it. Fram (talk) 14:33, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

If you think that you can leverage a complaint over my fixing of a problem by suspending a redirect for one minute and then restoring it, you're welcome to try. You have no clue about what I'm aware of. Now that Wikipedia:Page mover has been unbundled, your argument has disappeared. The same as all the rest of the flimsy arguments that you seem to think people will fall for. --RexxS (talk) 14:47, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

No idea what page mover has to do with this or how this has disappeared my argument. There are currently 106 "page movers", and fuck all other editors, something like that? Fram (talk) 14:54, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

To disappear, in English is an intransitive verb. You can look it up later. I know you have no idea, so I'll explain it to you: a redirect with a trivial revision history can have the redirected page moved over it, but you need the extended-mover bit to be able to that with a non-trivial history. If you think that it's a good idea for somebody to move the article University of Strasbourg to Universität Straßburg, then it's time you resigned as an admin because you've been given tools that you don't know how to use. --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't bother using the English language correctly with you, you are not interested in reading my answers anyway. I know what page mover does, I don't get how a right given to 106 additional editors somehow makes my argument invalid. Either it was invalid from the start, and page mover hasn't changed this, or it still is correct, as the 106 additional people to whom my argumen't doesn't apply don't change the situation for the 10s of thousands of others. So that's why I have "no idea what page mover has to do with this". If I wanted an explanation of what Page Mover actually does, I would have asked for one. Fram (talk) 15:16, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

You did ask for one, and I gave it. Stop whining. None of the edits I made to redirects stopped any likely page moves, and even if circumstances later changed, any admin or page mover – those trusted to do so – could make the move. That's why your bogus complaint has no valid argument behind it. Did you see that before you came here, or were you genuinely concerned that I might have stopped somebody moving University of Strasbourg to Universität Straßburg? The first possibility would be trolling and the second one incompetence. --RexxS (talk) 15:56, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Any article can be moved to that title, not just University of Strasbourg. Someone could make University of Strasbourg (1539-1970) and then decide that Universität Straßburg would be the better title (and please don't claim that that would be ridiculous, after all according to Wikidata it is the enwiki title for that non-entity already). And after having seen three such changese by you, I have little confidence that you would think about the onsequences for the redirects (which apparently only became clear after this discussion, unless you feigned ignorance). And for someone so concerned about personal attacks, you could stop with "your paranoia", "stop trolling", "stop whining", ... Fram (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

If you were capable of reading what I wrote instead of just spouting away without thinking, you might have spotted that I already explained to you that if circumstances changed – such the creation of as your putative University of Strasbourg (1539-1970) and the move to Universität Straßburg – any admin or page mover could do the job, as long as it was deemed reasonable, just as WP:RM works now. There are no problematical "onsequences" of editing a redirect and then restoring it moments later, no matter how much you wish otherwise. There's no problem other that you trying to create fictitious problems. Stop wasting my time - the only reason you're here is to make an argument over absolutely nothing. If you can't quote a single policy that forbids me to make those edits, then it's time to get back under your bridge. --RexxS (talk) 01:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

hey

Wordsighn here how do you find other users ? Wordsighn (talk) 15:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Wordsighn. Bishonen has explained to you how to use the search function on Wikipedia, but if you mean how to find other users who are interested in the same topics as you are, then look for a suitable WP:WikiProject. There's good information on that page. Optionally, you could go to the talk page of an article that interests you and check the users there, or examine the edit history of the article to see who the contributors are. Hope that helps --RexxS (talk) 15:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

oh, ok thanks Wordsighn (talk) 16:19, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

i did not mean to cause trouble Wordsighn (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Module:WikidataIB in multiple writing systems

See Module talk:WikidataIB. --Dabao qian (talk) 16:32, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@Dabao qian: I've tried to answer there. Hope it helps, --RexxS (talk) 19:34, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Need a bit of help, please?

Would you be so kind as to look at Kilimall International? I didn't bother to create a TP for it because I thought it would be SD after I tagged it via the curation toolbar. My thinking was that (1) WP is not the Yellow Pages, (2) the article is promotional, (3) the creator may have a COI. The SD tag was removed so I added a PROD via TW but probably shouldn't have, right? What do you recommend as the next step? ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:36, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Atsme: This is a rather tricky one, because we have much less experience in dealing with topics from Africa, so we have to bear in mind our developed-world centricity (if that makes sense). The decline of the speedy was quite reasonable, as it wasn't A7 - the claims of importance were credible taken at face value; and it would have to be much more promotional to be a G11, IMHO, remembering that speedy deletions are not intended for anything beyond clear-cut cases.

The prod based on lack of notability is a better idea, but given the three independent references, I'd have gone for AfD on the grounds that some debate is needed to establish consensus on whether they are sufficient to meet WP:GNG. It's worth noting that WP:ORG says almost nothing that GNG doesn't, so you might as well check against GNG anyway: "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

So it's really down to the three references. They do provide, again IMHO, substantial coverage sufficient to meet GNG, so the only question is whether they are "reliable sources", and that's where our lack of experience in Africa is a handicap:

1. http://techmoran.com/kilimall-chinese-backed-online-store-launches-full-scale-operations-nigeria-uganda/ - Techmoran looks reasonable as a news source, but has no Wikipedia article and further investigation, (see http://techmoran.com/about-us/) shows it's four years old and has a team of five. That's well short of our usual expectation of a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (WP:RS #Overview), but it's debatable whether we should be applying our expectations to news outlets in the developing world. Personally, I don't think the source is strong enough, but others may disagree.
2. http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate-News/Kilimall-gives-shoppers-an-option-to-buy-goods-overseas/539550-3424282-sbioob/ - Business Daily Africa is genuine printed newspaper in Kenya with a Wikipedia article. That's a solid source, IMHO, even though we don't have the same familiarity as we have with the Financial Times.
3. http://www.ipsos.co.ke/NEWBASE_EXPORTS/Telecoms_Others/160707_Business%20Daily_17_b850b.pdf - That's a press clipping from a PR & Marketing firm, Ipsos Kenya, so that was an immediate red flag for me. However, looking harder, the clipping is from Business Daily Africa again, with the same reporter, Stellar Murumba, as above. It turns out that the online version, BDAfrica, only "carries a selection of stories from the newspaper Business Daily" (see http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/meta/about-us/539554-539540-f5rep5z/index.html), so although there almost certainly wasn't an online version of the story, we probably ought to conclude that the print version is genuine. For me, that would be a second reliable source.

At that point, my inclination would be to give benefit of the doubt. I'd certainly decline the prod, because there is a need for debate; and even in an AfD, I'd probably be a "week keep". My advice is to either: self-decline the prod, without prejudice to its reinstatement by someone else; or take it to AfD where you can get a broader spectrum of opinion on the issues I raised above. I hope that I was some help to you. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Just wanted to add that the creator is a paid editor. I've tried to stay away from the COI sandpit, and leave it to editors who are better versed in it than I. ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:40, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Atsme: I concluded that from a look at his user/talk pages: "the CEO of Future Concepts, an online marketing and branding agency". But we don't know for sure if he was paid to write that article, do we? (although I'd be surprised if he wasn't). I'm philosophically opposed to paid editing, but I understand that's an easy stance for me to take as I'm comfortably retired. Anyway, as you already know, it's a minefield because of the danger of being accused of 'outing' which attracts more opprobrium than paid editing itself. In cases like this, if the sources are adequate, I just salve my conscience by reminding myself that the article could have been written by anybody. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 03:24, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Re-inventing the wheel

You might want to take a look at this code from itwiki. We may be reinventing the wheel when we could have just copied it, if only we'd known. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: On the other hand, they might want to be looking at our code. They require e.g. |colwidth=30em for "fixed-width" columns (our normal usage now), whereas we can deal with both |colwidth=30em and |30em or |1=30em. They do the rest of their work in CSS by having a "narrow column" class. Plus, we could now make our deprecated fixed-number columns into "fixed-width" columns by implementing the /sandbox2 code. Either way, we'll probably have to ask Edokter nicely to sort out the code or CSS. --RexxS (talk) 23:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Bah - I hadn't realised Edokter had retired. Rats. --RexxS (talk) 23:42, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, after he edit warred regarding some gadget of his. --Izno (talk) 14:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure of the context of this discussion, but phab:T33597 may be interesting. --Izno (talk) 14:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, Izno, that was lax of me. I normally try to include a link-back for any observers. The discussion is at Template talk:Reflist #Getting back to this, and your input would be valued, as ever. The phab:T33597 issue is interesting, but has been plodding along since 2014, so I doubt it will affect {{reflist}} any time soon. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:05, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Infobox metadata

Since I don't know much about infoboxes, and you do, I thought I'd post a question here before making a suggestion at one of the template talk pages, in case you can tell me a good reason why this is a dumb idea. There are some articles which fall into categories where there are useful infoboxes, but which don't have infoboxes, and for which the consensus is unlikely to change. One of the arguments I see for adding infoboxes is that it allows the extraction of metadata. Would there be any value in a "|display=none" or a "|nodisplay" parameter, for use in those cases? The infobox could then be populated and metadata made available independently of the decision to display it. This might also reduce the number of times that an editor adds an infobox to an article without being aware of a consensus against one, since the editor would see the infobox in the edit window, so we might get fewer arguments. One downside is that it would reduce editor oversight of the accuracy of the metadata, since it wouldn't be visible at a glance. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mike: you know more about infoboxes than most, I think, and you have spotted the principal problem with hidden metadata: hardly anybody looks after it. Being invisible, who will spot a discrepancy, or the lack of updating for values which may change?

The story of {{Persondata}} is instructive. The template was created to collect a fixed number of key data for biographies in a non-displaying section in articles, perhaps partially in an attempt to counter an argument for having infoboxes in bios. Anyway, it was structured, but never supplied the correct microformats and gradually fell into disuse. When Wikidata came along, there was support here for migrating all of the Persondata into Wikidata, but the Wikidatans refused a mass import, on the grounds that the data's quality was too poor. It all had to be done in the end by editors manually verifying the accuracy of the Persondata before each bit was allowed into Wikidata.

So, personally, I would consider a non-displaying infobox would be a large investment of effort for little reward, but I won't attempt to dictate how other editors spend their wiki-time. Incidentally, any editor can add table.infobox {display:none;} to their common.css and never see an infobox again if they dislike them so much, without affecting other readers who might value them. Optionally table.infobox.biography {display:none;} will only hide infoboxes in biographies, and the code at this common.css will suppress an infobox while still displaying its image (most of the time!). Hope that helps, --RexxS (talk) 16:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. I'm not interested in the css options for myself, since I don't object to most infoboxes; and a css option doesn't help our readers in situations where there's a consensus not to include an infobox, of course. I think metadata should be visible, so it can be monitored, where possible, but what do we currently do for metadata in articles that have no infobox? Articles on magazines are the place I usually see this -- some magazines have such a convoluted history that it's pretty much impossible to put a reasonable infobox in place; see here, for example. It's a mess -- multiple titles, overlapping runs, pseudonymous editors, anonymous (and multiple) publishers, overlapping numbering sequences, varying frequency. Just because an infobox would be a cluttered mess is no reason not to have metadata. Is there a currently accepted way to record complexities like this in metadata without having to have a visible template showing the information? That sort of situation was part of my motivation in asking about a "|display=none" parameter. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure, Mike, I understand that some editors will take the decision not to have an infobox for reasons other than they don't like the look of them – and I really don't have a solution for those editors, much as I wish I could conjure one up. A |display=none parameter would require a little re-jigging at Module:Infobox, but it would be doable. Unfortunately, it would defeat the object of providing metadata, because that is provided not by the wikitext, but by the rendered html – the classes for microformats; the tables as structured lists; etc. As soon as you suppress the display, you lose the html. I suppose you could move the infobox off the page by setting its position beyond the visible boundaries. Naturally, it would still be heard by screen readers in that case, contrary to the consensus not to have an infobox. Also it's a kludge and different browsers sometimes react to that differently, plus it's storing up trouble for future, so I wouldn't recommend it. Anyway, that's just my take on it; perhaps others can some up with something that I can't see. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a very creative kludge! I hadn't realized that invisible data could not be accessed as metadata; I'd hoped it could be embedded in some css that would essentially collapse it, but I assume that the relevant markup specification makes invisibility and consumability mutually exclusive. Could the rendering depend on the agent asking for the render?

In any case, thanks for the clear explanation. Wondering about this is the line of thought that leads one to Wikidata; keeping metadata embedded in wikitext and not rendered seems a bad idea; why not develop a separate system for handling metadata? But that seems to be suffering from a similar problem, for different reasons; some editors are complaining that the metadata is affecting the articles they work on, but they can't see it to monitor it because they don't watch Wikidata. I've been watching the discussions and am pessimistic about a good outcome for either side of that debate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikiqu

wmuk:Wikiqu is up as a placeholder. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:LEADCITE

Staszek Lem (talk) 23:35, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes it says "there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads". You'd do well to read your recommendation yourself. --RexxS (talk) 23:51, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories

This is a notice that a discussion you participated in, either at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents or at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 February 8 has resulted in a Request for comment at Wikipedia talk:User categories#Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:39, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Öh?

Huh what? Whatcha doing? Can I still make changes? Bishonen | talk 12:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC).

@Chère: yes, of course you can. The latest changes I made to the module are just to fulfil a request from Module talk:WikidataIB #getQualifierValue only works for properties that are Q-number valued ?. I use it as a sort of personal sandbox to try new things out, but each part is completely separate and changes to one don't affect the others. Have fun! --RexxS (talk) 12:42, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah. Yes. [Defiantly:] Yes, I understand all of that module talk discussion! I'm very good with Lua! Bishonen | talk 15:25, 23 February 2017 (UTC).

Technical pointer

Sorry to bug you again, but I don't know of a good forum to ask this question, and I'm guessing if you don't have a ready answer you or a TPS might know where to point me. I have developed a small MySQL database to capture some ongoing statistics about the featured article process. You can see some example data here. I've got the data capture piece worked out, but would like to make the database available for others to interactively query. For example, someone might want to ask which users have reviewed the most articles over the last six months, or who has nominated the most articles. I am building queries to produce statistics such as the G/N and G/R numbers in the link, and I'd like to make those queries available interactively too.

What I know how to do already is generate query output in wikitext format so I can simply update pages of data in my user space periodically, which would at least allow people to search for data if they're interested. Is there a natural interactive platform for what I'm trying to do? Thanks for any help. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:38, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mike: Coincidentally, I'm also looking at the issues involved in querying external databases to produce wiki-text. At present, the Wikipedia environment is "ring-fenced", in that there are no ways of dynamically inserting content from arbitrary external sites into Wikipedia – and quite right too, because of concerns about security. The solution favoured by most editors is to use a bot, often based on something like Pywikibot. Once it has approval, it can be run periodically to update a page automatically. I suspect that may be a workable solution for you. If you're not confident in running a bot yourself, have a read of WP:Bot requests and make a post there, or check the links in the lead of that page to see if one already exists that could do the job for you.

The page in your sandbox would be as good a place as any for folks to look at for its information, or perhaps you may want to request a sub-page of WP:FA. In any case, adding class="sortable" to the table would improve its functionality to cover most of what I think folks would be looking for. (In the code, I'd substitute 0 with 0.001 whenever the denominator is zero - that way you'd get sortable values that ranked according to the value of the numerator.)

As an aside, I'm presently looking at the feasibility of running both a Wikipedia and Wikibase installation on my own server to see how practical it might be to have other databases beside Wikidata accessible from Wikipedia, and how that could be done securely. We're a long way from that at present, but such useful functionality is going to be needed somewhere down the line, so we might as well start looking at it now. --RexxS (talk) 19:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I hadn't thought about this as a bot function, but I can see it probably has to be because of the ring-fencing you mention. This might be the time for me to finally learn Python. Yes, sorting that table would solve some problems, but I'm trying to walk a narrow line between encouraging people to improve their own rating without creating a league table and pointing the finger at those at the bottom. Thanks for the helpful reply. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:56, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Mike Christie, seems to me the easiest way for other users to query the table would be to make it available online on e.g. WMFLabs (or Tools Labs). --Izno (talk) 20:38, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Seemed to be a test

Dear RexxS, thank you for your welcome on my page, it brought a smile to my face. Let me warn you in turn, though: as happy as I am to see you there, you should be aware that Darwinbish visits sometimes. She may bite you if you're disruptive a bit silly. Soft Soap 'Shonen (talk) 19:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC).

February 2017

What the..”¥¢‰¶\{}¢√‰‡¶˜\܈Œ? Take the Wikipedia Adventure? The ±≈][|§∞£ Wikipedia Adventure!! [Darwinbish bites RexxS sharply in several places.] No Wikipedia adventure! Last warning! darwinbish ^BITE ☠ 19:13, 24 February 2017 (UTC).

#invoke:random

Hi RexxS, I ran into a template on the WPMED project page which uses #invoke:random and I cannot find anything that explains how it works, or the syntax etc. Do you know of a help page? Cheers • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:31, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Peter - yes, it calls Module:Random, one of Mr. Stradivarius' creations. He's very conscientious about documenting his work, so I think you'll find all you need on that page. If there's anything that's not clear, ping me or Mr.S. and one of us should be able to help. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:46, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks RexxS, It is adequately documented. Is there any form of indexing/list of contents for these modules? Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:36, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Sadly, none that I'm aware of, Peter. The only thing I can offer is that anything you see that starts {{#invoke:xyz |... }} is calling the Module:Xyz. But if there's no documentation, then it's time-consuming to figure it out. To find all modules, you can go to Special:PrefixIndex and ask for everything in the Module namespace. There are a couple of thousand pages, so indexing them looks like a job for a bot. I've written documentation for the three main modules I developed: Module:Wikidata, Module:WikidataIB, and Module:String2, but I have a collection of utility and sandbox functions in Module:RexxS that still need to be documented, so it's a never-ending task. --RexxS (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for this edit:[3] The tiny font was one of several formatting and decisions that the editors of The Signpost forced on me. A version that is formatted as I wanted it formatted is at User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Guy, I checked your original page first as I couldn't believe you'd have made such a faux pas - and of course, you didn't. My only assumption could be that they were trying to make the table not have horizontal scrolling on mobile devices. However, once I checked on my phone and on the Ripple emulator, it was clear that horizontal scrolling would still occur even at 75% font size. So I was sufficiently annoyed at that point to enforce our guidance on text size. Thanks for a thought-provoking article and for taking the time to drop me your note. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:58, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata at Wikimania

Hi Rex, I've created Submissions/invoke:Wikidata. Mike Peel said you might be attending this year's Wikimania and are quite well-versed with using Wikidata in Wikipedia, so it would be nice to invite you to join this submission. Deryck C. 12:46, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Deryck, I've no idea right now whether I'll attend Wikimania this year, as there are just too many unknowns at home to make plans yet. However, I do have experience in developing Module:Wikidata and Module:WikidataIB - ever since May 2013, when Tom Morris and I talked about it at Development House, and he wrote the first calls in his sandbox. Anyway, I'm always happy to help you develop your submission, whether I make it to Montreal or not. Let me know if you need anything in particular, or just want me to look at what you're submitting. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:23, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Please look at what I'm submitting and edit boldly! Deryck C. 17:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Tables

Dear RexxS I have seen on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:WordToWiki

The following: a. Open your document in Word, and "save as" an HTML file. b. Open the HTML file in a text editor and copy the HTML source code to the clipboard. c. Paste the HTML source into the large text box labeled "Raw HTML" on the html to wiki page. d. Click the "Convert HTML to wiki markup" button.

Where is the 'Raw HTML' text box - was wanting to give a go to see if we could easily create the Wiki-tables . Thanks Clive2982 (talk) 14:48, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@Clive2982: Hi Clive, you should be pasting the html source code into the top box (labelled "HTML markup:") on the page https://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/html2wiki.php

When you press the blue Convert button at the bottom of the screen, you'll get the wiki-markup in the lower box (labelled "Wiki markup:"), ready to copy into a page on Wikipedia.

I'll fix the misleading instructions at Help:WordToWiki.

Drop me another note if you still can't get it to work. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:58, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I created proposals

...at the WikiProject Medicine discussion on image OR and WP:VER violation. Be sure to have a look in. Matter is lost, as far as I can tell, because of the chef de ré·sis·tance, in particular. Le Prof 73.210.155.96 (talk) 18:07, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Infobox Hindu leader

Template:Infobox Hindu leader has been nominated for merging with Template:Infobox religious biography. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.