User talk:SMcCandlish

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Welcome to SMcCandlish's talk page.
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Notice: My IP addresses
Occasionally I get logged out and don't immediately notice. Any edits from the following IP addresses, during the timeframes specified, are by me. Please note that any edits that seem to be from me (example) but which are not from one of these known IP addresses are not me, as I do not edit from any other IP addresses, ever. My IP address very infrequently changes, and mine is a single-user machine.
  • Current IP address: 68.35.40.113 (beginning early July 2007, last updated 18:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC))
  • Former IP addresses: 74.50.131.208 (2 September 2007 only), 68.35.72.239 (ca. late 2006 – January 2007), 69.241.164.230 (January – early July 2007)

As of 18 October 2007, SMcCandlish is Active.
I'll reply to your message within 24 hours if possible.

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Contents

[edit] Adoption

13:04, 12 February 2008

Hello! I would like to be adopted by you. I am new at Wikipedia but I aim to be a strong contributor. I am interested in creating a Wiki Project regarding water resources management and irrigation in Latin America countries and would love to have some assistance with editing, fighting vandalism, as well as learning more the specfics of Wikipedia life. Please check irrigation in Peru. Thank you very much.

--anunuezsanchez

[edit] Logorrhoea

Unresolved. Article still not split.

Hi there. I see you've done some work on the Logorrhoea article and was wondering whether or not you had read my comments on the discussion page there. IMHO the section on rhetoric is sub-par in many ways and actually I was considering expanding the mental health part and significantly trimming the rhetoric part, which mostly appears to be the opinion of people who don't like high-falutin' sentence structures.

Are you suggesting we split Logorrhoea into (use in rhetoric) and (use in medicine)? --PaulWicks 12:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Dicussion moved to direct e-mail (short version: YES. Better to split than to remove material.) --Smccandlish 05:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Note to self: Logorrhoea (rhetoric) should just be merged into Prolixity anyway. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 05:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
You managed to work the word "Logorrhoea" into an edit summary of some work I did on Labile affect. Nice. --PaulWicks 21:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Was vocabulary practice. I'd just been at the L. page, and thought I'd try making myself use it (and even use the UK spelling); I usually use "prolixity"; it sounds less insulting! Heh.  ;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Active guideline

Resolved. I don't archive this one, as it serves as a good cautionary tale against abuse of user-warning templates.

The consensus on the wikipedia:naming conventions (books) guideline *including notes on notability* was prior to wikipedia:notability (books) being started. There is no consensus on that new proposal. Until there is, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria is the *active* guideline on book notability. --Francis Schonken 15:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Out of plain curiosity, I'd like to see evidence of that, specifically that the passage in question was present and substantively identical to its current wording at the pont of transition from a draft Guideline on book naming conventions to a non-draft one. But it's a moot point. It is almost ludicrously inappropriate for a non-controversial guideline on naming conventions to have a totally off-topic rider in it that attempts to set a guideline in one of the most hotly-debate spheres of Wikipedia, namely "notability". If this rider was present in the original draft naming convention for books, it is entirely possible that the only reason it survived is precisely because it was a hidden rider - few who would have any reason to object would ever notice it and weigh in. If it ever represented any form of consensus at all it was only a consensus among people who a) care about book naming conventions, and (not or) b) either support the vague notability rider, didn't notice it or didn't care either way. Ergo it it not a real Wikipedia consensus at all. But even this is moot. The existence of an active push to develop Wikipedia:Notability (books) demonstrates that there is in fact no consensus at all, period, that the notability rider in the naming article is valid. If it remains, I'm taking this to arbitration, because I believe the presence of the rider to be deceptive and an abuse of the Policy/Guideline formulation process and consensus mechanism. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
--Francis Schonken 16:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. But as I said, I think this is a moot point. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 17:03, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Warning

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books)#Notability criteria.

Please refrain from removing content from Wikipedia, as you did to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books). It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.

You reverted the *consensus* version of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria to the version you had proposed earlier today. That version of yours is not consensus, and you knew that when you reverted. For guidelines one needs a new consensus for major changes. Yours was a major change. It had no consensus. So I'm posting this warning on your user page, and will then proceed to revert the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria section to the version that had consensus when that became a guideline about half a year ago.

You're welcome to discuss other versions of that section (whether that be a temporary version until Wikipedia:Notability (books) becomes guideline or a more permanent solution) on the Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books) talk page. But consensus is needed before it can be moved to the guideline page. --Francis Schonken 16:24, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Cute, but a total misdirection (as to at least three claims, of consensus, my tacit agreement that consensus existed, and new edit not reflecting consensus, and possibly a forth, as to edit scope. I do in fact dispute, in more than one way, that the section in question represents any meaningful consensus, for reasons already stated and evidenced. I contend that it is someone's "pet" section and removable as such; that it is an off-topic insertion and thus subject to removal on other grounds; and that even if it had some merit at one point it has been superceded by the current Wikipedian editors' consensus on this topic (which is that the topic needs a Guideline, period, so one has been started as a Proposal; notably it is not a consensus that the rider needs editing and improvement; rather it is being replaced, to the extent its existence has even been acknowledged. To continue, I further assert that removing the rider would in fact be a consensus move. Wikipedia:Notability (books) would not be well on the way to becoming a Guideline if there were any consensus that the off-topic notability rider in the naming guideline already had any consensus support whatsoever. It is very notable that no one has proposed a section merger or in any other way addressed the rider as valid or worth even thinking about. It is simply being ignored. And I assert further that it is at least questionable whether it is a "major edit" to remove a small section that is more adequately covered by another article (whether that article is considered "finished" or not) that has a lot more editorial activity and interest, and replace the redundant section it with a cross-reference to the latter, as I did.
The fact that no one has even touched the rider at all since Jan. strongly supports my points that a) virtually no one who cares about notability of books is aware of it, got to debate its inclusion, or even considers it worth working on or authoritative in any way, because the topic of how to define book notability is generating quite a bit of activity on the other article; and therefore b) it reflects no consensus on the topic of book notability, period. Which is what one would expect, given that it's buried at the bottom of an article about spelling! I also dispute the notion that an approved Guideline on [Topic A] is also an approved Guideline on unrelated [Topic B] just because it happens to mention some ideas relating to how to deal with [Topic B]. If you are aware of another example, I'd love to see it.
PS: I'm posting most of this, with further (case-closing, in my opinion) facts, references and evidence, on the article's talk page, since otherwise the debate won't affect anyone's views other than yours and/or mine in User talk.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 17:03, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update

Months later, the points I raised were never refuted or even questioned at the talk page in question, and Wikipedia:Notability (books) is well on the way to becoming a Guideline, meanwhile Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Note on notability criteria was nominated two more times for removal, with the unanimous support of those who commented, and was replaced with a wordy wikilink to Wikipedia:Notability (books). I rest my case. One may wish to actually look into establishing what consensus really is on whatever matter is at hand before presuming to lecture others about it. PS: The abuse of {{Test2a-n}} on my Talk page (it is intended, and instructed, to be used in series with {{Test1}} or a variant thereof) was very heavy-handed. I'm leaving it up instead of archiving it, because I think it says far more about abuse of the label "vandal" than it does about me. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eight ball

Unresolved. Actually making the eight-ball article cover everything described, and as-described, above.

Gad what a mess eight ball is. I'm gearing up to rewrite it if I can figure out a logical way of doing so. Regarding you query on the section about the Mexican ruleset (where you wrote "Is there a name for this?"), I don't know of a name but I know the origin, and if I can get off my ass and do the cleanup I can take care of it. In short, after B.B.C. Co. Pool was invented, eight ball went through a number of distinct ruleset periods. One of them, which lasted for a number of years, had these exact rules. Once that is defined, it can be added that these rules are still used in Mexico.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. The blackball section could probably use expansion. My take on it is that it should dispense with the "possible" ruleset language, describe the intl. std. rules, and if/where they differ mention that the APA or VNEA or BCA or whatever rules differ on this little point[cite], and continue. Amat. variations like bank-the-eight and last-pocket should remain in a "rules variations" section. Yes? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm really not sure exactly how to do it, and I agree that "possible variations" is clunky as hell, but here's what has been percolating 1) continue the history section I started, going into the variations up to the modern era. Then define the world standardized rules. Then the standard bar/recreational rules and how they differ from the BCA (with some explication of that there is no standard because no formal ruleset, but widely followed and explain that they vary). Then we can go into game variations such as last pocket, etc.. Last pocket, by the way, is apparently very, very widely played variation in South America.--Fuhghettaboutit
I'd suggest doing the WS rules, and interspersing them with Big League differences as needed (BCA/VNEA/Blackball/APA/IPT), just to keep it shorter - might be a bit frustrating to have follow-on sections like "BCA exceptions", "VNEA exceptions", etc.; then close with a section on amat./"bar rules" variations (which will need somehow to discourage additions of "in my neighborhood..." variants; I think the present HTML comment language is probably a good start). Agreed that last-pocket is huge in Latin America; was why I added it. EVERY native Mexican, El Salvadorean, Nicaraguan, etc., that I've met plays that way (and not the "magic side pockets" way detailed earlier in the article; I'd demote that to a minor variation), and without any differences (e.g. as to 2 free scratches, etc.) It seems quite uniform. There's a bar called City Club in the Mission district of San Francisco with really great players none of whom seem to speak a word of English where what I described are the house rules. The players are from all over Latin America, quite friendly to Gringos if we can figure out the rules, and they never internally argue about the rules - these seem to be the rules they've all played with their whole lives. It's a called ball-in-pocket (not called shot) game, e.g. "cinco en está lado" however way the five gets into the designated side pocket, which I forgot to mention, so it has a bit in common with the older (pre WS) BCA rules, I think. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 15:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Well maybe it's my POV, but the way I see it the article should start with WSR as the "official rules" and then in subsequent sections instead of defining the whole rulesets, siimply state how they depart from the official rules. For instance for bar'recretaional rules (which I do think need to be prominent as they are so widely played--probably the most wide ruleset for the most common game in the U.S.) all that needs to be done, is state that (in contradistinction to official rules): wins (or not) if eight ball made on break, choice of group is decided on the break, if both groups pocketed then it's choice, no foul rules but for scratches, scratch penalty is from the kitchen (and can move object ball to foot spot if none available), most but not all venues make you call every nuance of every shot (rather than "ball and pocket"), the Player loses sometimes if he doesn't contact the eight ball when it's his object ball, eight ball has to go in "clean", and the alternating racking crap. That's may not be exhaustive but there's not much more. If those distinctions follow a treatise on the correct rules, little defining should be necessary, so the section would not need to be very long.
Doing it by defining each separate ruleset's variation for each official rule would be confusing I think, and an invitation for endless parenthetical notes. Plus, the way articles evolve, people add a one-off difference from some game to one section and then go their merry way. So then we have each official rule followed by variations from some other groups of indistinct rules, with each official rule being treated separately, some getting variations some not from the same league rules. It seems to me it would lead to an organizational mess.--Fuhghettaboutit 16:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable to me. Just wanted to make sure that the VNEA, etc., variations get in there, and are differenced from the mess of "bar pool" variations; many of them predate the WSR by a long way.  :-) NB: "Rules variations" or "variants" seems like a good section heading, perhaps with a three-"=" subsection header for each set discussed? I'm thinking in terms of the promised but presently vaporware article "templates" at WP:CUE. I guess eight-ball is as good a place as any to start developing that. NB: Also thinking that the "rack" article could really be folded entirely or almost entirely into the articles about the various games it covers. I think this sort of opens the more general question of what to do about equipment articles. My present take is that I'm not sure we actually need articles about cues, chalk, racking, tables, etc., rather than general mentions at Billiards (side point: Should we move it to Cue sport now?) and more specific details under particular games (nine-ball, etc.) or game-type (carom billiards, snooker, etc.) articles. This is probably a better pack o' questions for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cue sports but I don't see any reason to not come to a two-person initial mini-consensus on the direction here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree that subtopic articles should only be taken so far, but I don't think articles on specific items of equipment or specific things such as racking are too far. Let's look at rack (billiards) for example (and of course the elephant in the room is that I wrote the majority of that article, but I'm not just being protective): First and foremost, I can see someone coming to Wikipedia interested in how racking is done across many billiard games. Second, I can see someone coming to Wikipedia seeking clarity because of the confusing multi-use of the word (physical object; various types; used to describe the balls in starting position; the verb for placing the balls, etc.). Third, there is a quite limited number of specific objects and things in billiards of which racking is one. We don't and never will need an article on the foot spot--how much history can be found on that topic? How much room for expansion? It's a blackhole of content, but when it comes to racking, breaking, english, I think they can all have subarticles if someone is willing to take the time to write them (citing ulitmately to reliable sources:-). There is much room for expansion of racking, from other games, to the history of it, to primary manufacturers, to the Sardo tight rack (and the controversy that has arisen in professional play over its use), etc. Or take cuetips, they have a fascinating history and there has been much written about them. Did you known leather cue tips were invented in debtor's prison by Captain Francois Mingaud around 1823 who was later accused of sorcery for the amazing things he was able to do on a billiards table using them? Regarding cue sports, I have not really been following the debate. I'm not too concerned since if it's done or not done, the information will be retained and having been following the debate too much. If you have consensus, go for it.--Fuhghettaboutit 17:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess the info will just have to be a little duplicative (in that the details on how to rack for eight-ball specifically need to be in the eight-ball article as well, etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 05:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polish interwiki

Unresolved. Eight-ball ⇒ Blackball (pool) split done, but Irish standard pool merge to latter not done.

OK, sorry. I thought that Irish standard pool and english 8-ball are the same, looking at the pictures. Aren't they? Can you explain me the difference between these two billiard games? Thanks for information, Maciek17 21:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

They are very, very similar, which is why Irish standard pool has been slated for merging into eight-ball#UK just before eight-ball#UK forks off into the blackball (pool). Irish standard pool is not quite the same as UK-rules eight-ball - different enough that the interwiki is misinformation - but similar enough that the articles can be merged, and handled with simply an "Irish variation" section, if you see what I mean. Dealing with all of that is, I think, the 2nd-highest priority on my WP to-do list, so it will be taken care of very soon.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Resolved

Unresolved. Better template documentation still needed.

Thanks for the reply. I think when I clicked on the template it only brought me to the image, and not the description and talk pages. The link is back now. The template's been around for 10 months or so, and I'm surprised I'm only seeing it for the first time. I was a bit doubtful about it, because I can see some users pasting it in to guillotine an argument - but it's only an indicator with nothing final about it.--Shtove 11:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Guillotine usage should be reverted and criticized. I think the template itself should be udpated with a note that such use would be abuse. I think it does already say that if anyone thinks a tagged topic is not resolved they should just remove the tag. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 17:31, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to VandalProof!

Unresolved. I still need to actually install this.

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, SMcCandlish! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simply download and install VandalProof from our main page. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other moderator, or you can post a message on the discussion page. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strickland pics

Unresolved. I wrote to that Mike guy, but did not hear back. Try again.

Hi :)

AZ Billiards replied to my request to use their photo of Strickland. Here's what they said:

>Use any of the ones that are credited to Diana Hoppe. Just make sure that you credit her as 'Diana Hoppe - Pool Pics by Hoppe'.

>Thanks, >Mike

Does that make it sound like we can source their photo? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MichaelJHuman (talk • contribs) 18:49, 13 March 2007 (UTC).

Probably. Do you have a last name and contact info for "Mike"? If you get me the details I can take care of this at the image page (use e-mail - see e-mail link at top of my userpage; other people's e-mail addresses shouldn't ever be put into WP pages, even talk pages, since spammers can harvest them, even from article histories!) If you want to do the license tagging and stuff yourself, a good trick is do something like 'Mike Smith, contactable at the site "AZBilliards.com", with a username of "MSmith"', so e-mail address harvesters won't recognize it as an e-mail address but any human could figure it out. But anyway, I know how to source pics with the right licensing templates, so it might be easier for me to deal with it. You could just forward me a copy of the e-mail. Might be good for more than one of us to have a copy of it anyway, just in case!
Oh! Can you write back and ask him if this means we can use other photos (of other players and stuff) by same photographer? Their "any of the ones" language suggests this, but I think we should know for certain. That could come in very, very handy. Or I can do it; either way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admin coaching and virtual classroom

Unresolved. Still need to do all this (completely).

Are you interested in joining the Virtual Classroom for admin coaching? --Dweller 08:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Great. I've just created a section for you at User:The_Transhumanist/Virtual_classroom/Coaching. Pop along, say hello and get accustomed to the way the page works (it's a transclusion-fest) and the kind of tasks that get handed out. You can kick off by responding to some of The Transhumanist's general comments. --Dweller 10:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Are you still interested in joining this project? If not, I'll take down your section for you. --Dweller 10:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, yes! I just got swamped with other stuff. Tomorrow, ironically, I'm re-enrolling in the Univ. of New Mexico (finishing my degree is 14 years overdue). I'll guess I'll be getting educated on both sides. >;-) Sorry for the delay; I didn't realize it was interactive or time-limited in anyway. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it's certainly interactive, but not at all time-limited. I just wondered if your lack of interaction <grins> was due to changing your mind! --Dweller 10:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
No, no; there's all sorts stuff I still need to learn about the inner workings. In my year-and-a-half+ I've picked up a lot, but sometimes still put my foot in my mouth or trip over myself; see my last archive page and look for the "f.u."-image anti-barnstar I got from someone. While the message attached to it isn't entirely accurate (the MfD itself wasn't the problem, my extensive over-argumentation in it was), I did get the point. On the technical side, I've spent literally hundreds of hours DEFAULTSORTing biography articles' talk pages so that the embedded categories in the WikiProject tags on them would sort the names by family name, only to learn two days ago that (due to an apparent MediaWiki bug; this only happens on talk pages) the DEFAULTSORT magicword must come after any such project tags (and will then work as intended, despite the docs at meta suggesting that it would not; go figure). Neither of these are particularly adminnish of course. I don't right off-hand recall any serious misapprehensions of policy or procedures any time since last year. I guess that's a good sign. I just need to learn to let irrational arguments have their 15 minutes instead of trying to stomp on them, and actually research the effectiveness of what I'm doing before blowing incredible amounts of time on it. <sigh>. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Heh, it's a learning experience round here all right. The VC will mostly help by grilling you on your understanding and application of policy relating to the most adminnish stuff, like deciding on notability, POV issues, AfD arguments etc --Dweller 11:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I look fwd. to it. I suspect I'll be a "star pupil" on that stuff since I've already aborbed much of those areas (though I never pretend I have nothing to learn.) Perhaps an Advanced Course would be in order at some point, on things like the exactitudes of closing XfDs, and how exactly "consensus" is determined, especially if a plain "vote" count would appear to countermand it overwhelmingly; how to challenge a seemingly incautious or inattentive and clearly wrong closure of "keep" (by head count, 8 of 10 said "keep", but it was all "I like it" and "me too!" b.s.), and the rational consensus was clearly "delete", without getting into an adminfight; whether or not and how to respond to plaintive demands for userspacing of a deleted-with-overhwhelming-prejudice-I-mean-consensus >;-) article when it is at least somewhat likely that the user will just repost it under a diffent name, but could just as plausibly sit on it for a year working on it until it is properly sourced; what to do about a previously deleted article or category or whatever that has been restored in roughly its same form, but consensus may have changed as to the nature of that particular beast or its overarching classification; what to do with a repeat "eat my (expletive)" and "cripples are stuppid (expletive)s" vandal IP which may not be the same person but 2-8 dorks from the same school, and there is plenty of evidence of constructive edits from the same IP address in the same time frame (I confess now that I lean toward Zero Tolerance; this is not the WP of 2003 any longer...); how to archive, and set up for the next day, CfD or some other XfD page; what to do with quasi-vandals who never quite cross the line such that they can definitively be declared at least disruptive - just RIGHT on the edge, perhaps for weeks, backing off seemingly at the last moment and being real nice, but then jackassing again 6 days later; what to do about a fellow admin who keeps calling others "disruptive" or otherwise trasgressive simpl for disagreeing with or challenging him, and then dominating a discussion or revert wa<cough> I mean editing session (in a non-admin space, like Chocolate or WP:MASTODON or WP:BIOGRAPHY or whatever, rather than somewhere like WP:AN/I where other admins would notice (I mean, I'm not a party to the dispute, I just see it happening); how to avoid falling for a very plausibly presented (i.e. studiously engineered) "I've been wronged" story, where someone has "clearly" been blocked for insufficient reasons... until 5 admins ream you for so-and-so diff you didn't see, where "poor little" blocked kid made 15 death threats; how to deal with a blatantly obvious sockpuppet (even a metapuppet of another sockpuppet of another, ultimately of a real user who was community-banned 18 months ago), who is @#$%ing up RfAs, and seems to live for it, but you don't quite have enough proof, perhaps in part because checkuser was declined, as it sometimes is; or...
Those are the kinds of questions that come to me the most. The weird stuff, in a sense, but all of those are based at least in part on Real Stuff; they're not entirely hypothetical, though some are conflated with each other or sillified to get to the point faster.
Anyway, nap-time for me. I hasta' goto skool tumorrogh. Wish me luck. I haven't been to college since 1993! Or was it '92? Gah... Time flies when you move all over the continent, I guess... <ping-pong!>

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A link to your coaching page has been added to the Virtual Classroom box above. There are assignments waiting for you there. The Transhumanist    18:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

There's also a quiz for ya. Hope to see ya soon. The Transhumanist    22:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the delays; I am swamped with summer university courses and "real work". I will try to get to this as time permits, and I have in fact been reviewing the material. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Cool. We've got a classroom collaboration going. It's developing the article meaning of life to featured article status. Keep tabs on us, and jump in and help when you find yourself with some free time. The Transhumanist 20:54, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Still out-standing: I need to, um, do this. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The Transhumanist    00:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Still out-standing: Need to actually do this. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the Virtual classroom's main discussion area. The previous one got chopped up into student coaching pages.

The current topic of discussion is Trends on Wikipedia and where we are heading. Please come and join us.

The Transhumanist    22:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I will when active again; I have decided after a lot of thought on the matter that I probably will go for a second RfA at some point, so the VirtClass is back on my radar, as it seems that any evidence of admin mentoring and other forms of training are helpful at RfA in ensuring that people think you'll make a good admin. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Still out-standing: I need to do this still. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trick shot

Unresolved. Turn below commentary into Talk:Trick shot/Comments, for future article improvement.

So do you have any ideas on Trick shot? I noticed you cleaned it up alittle and I want to say thanks for that, but what do you mean by "outright b.s. statements? lol, anyway so do you have any major ideas on how to improve the article?Vandalfighter101 08:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

There were several nonsensical things said in it, four that I recall (the two I recall in detail right this minute after several beers at the Bob Dylan concert tonight <burp>) were that no one but Massey has ever made the boot shot - I've seen one of his competitors do it on TV over a year ago - and that trick shots evolved from artistic billiards, which is actually a comparatively new discipline (if anything the inverse is true; people have been doing trick shots for hundreds of years). No offense intended; sometimes my edit summaries are more grumpy than intended. Anyway, the two main avenues of improvement I see are using Shamos's New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards as a quotable source for a number of things (I was actually working on that, but my browser crashed and I lost a good 20min. worth of well-sourced edits. D'oh! I did manage to save {{Shamos1999}} to make citing it easier), and finding documentation for the Trick Shot World Championship and adding an entire section about that, with a (sourced) list of the events and the winners and runners up (both men and women for years in which two divisions exist); and there might have been more than one such event run by different sanctioners/sponsors over the decades (I'm not really sure). Also needs coverage of the Snooker Trick Shot Championship (may or may not be the actual name of the event; I misremember). And some discussion of who the most legendary players are. Later on, expanding the notable shots section would be in order, with actual illustrations of the shots (I think that CueTable.com's webware billiard table diagramming software may be useful for this). It isn't; I tried. Further down the line some home-made (i.e. copyright-unencumbered) videos illustrating a few trick shots would be cool. If I can master a few of them and figure out how the video-recording function of my new digital camera (mostly intended for still pictures) works, I might be able to pull that part off myself. Anyway, within a day or two I should have (re-!)contributed some sourced facts to the article, without my machine crashing in mid-edit. PS: Are you in WP:CUE#Participants yet? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
ok im gonna organize this so I dont miss anything.
  1. ok my mistake about the boot shot.
  2. When I say that trick shot evolved from artistic pool I say that because while people have actually been doing trick shots for a long time, artistic pool was the basis of actually competeing.
  1. Snooker trick shot championship should be covered I agree, but we should have a separate section for that.
  1. having a section on the most legendary players would be a good idea but might cause some people to think that the article is expressing POV.
  2. I definetly agree with what you said about us having illistrations of trick shots and also vid recordings.
  3. yes I am in the oarticipant section.
<fontcolor="red">Vandal<fontcolor="black">fighter101 08:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Your sig seems to be busted, unless that was intentional. (I've broken mine plenty of times in experimenting with it!). Looking at it more closely, I think the problem is that it says "fontcolor" instead of "font color". Anyway:
  1. No worries; stuff happens.
  2. That would need to be sourced; I remain skeptical. Artistic billiards is almost totally unknown in the US except among the most hard-core billiards nuts, and the US fields hardly any professional competitors in it (most of them are European, Asian and South American); meanwhile trick shot exhibitions in the US date to at least the late 1800s, and by the 1920s were one of the main sources of additional income for US pool pros, between championships (and remain so today; many pros do trick shot exhibitions for special events all the time, aside from the championships). The relationship between pool/snooker-style trick shots, artistic billiards and finger billiards (which has no article yet) is a complex one. The evidence I've come across to date seems to suggest that finger billiards (practitioners of which can achieve amazing english) was the main inspiration for artistic, while pool/snooker trick shots were their own animal, but in the last 2 generations there has been a lot of crossover. Documenting any of that reliably, however, will be a real challenge. Note: I also was not aware that you were drawing a distinction between artistic pool and artistic billiards AND trick shots. The clear facts are that trick shots have been around for hundreds of years, artistic (carom) billiards has been around for several decades as an organized sport, and artistic (pocket billiards) pool is comparatively quite new, an adaptation of artistic billiards to pool tables via the influence of classic trick shots. 03:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
  3. Agreed; the US/pool and UK/snooker world championships should have their own subsections under "Competition" or whatever that section is called right now.
  4. POV: I see what you mean; the way around that would be to profile world champions (and really in brief; if it's more than 2 sentences we're really talking about a stub player article instead).
  5. Keen. I'm sure that will take a while. It would probably be more productive in the short term to document (televised competitions can be cited as sources with {{Cite episode}}) some of the more frequently used shots. I don't think we should go nuts here; probably ten very-well-described shots is more than enough. Per WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not a game guide, Wikipedia is not an instructional manual, etc.) we can't get too far into the detailia of how to set up these shots, just describe the basic layout, the desired result, and what makes it challenging).
  6. Welcome aboard! Please check out WP:CUETODO if you have spare time; a lot of really basic work remains to be done, much less pushing things to Good and Featured Article status.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
PS: I wasn't aware of APTSA and Rossman's ArtisticPool.org, and their use of the term "artistic pool" in a sense distinct from "artistic billiards" (which is played on pocketless carom tables). I created a thoroughly-sourced overview at Trick shot of this "movement" based on those two sources. It definitely post-dates and was obviously inspired by artistic billiards, which is a couple of generations older. Because a.p. involves more than trick shots per se, I suspect that it will eventually need to be split into its own article. For now, I will ensure that Artistic pool redirects to it, and will also go update the artistic billiards article to mention it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Template:Chemical-importance

Unresolved. File the TfD.

I am sorry, I have reverted your edits to this template. These articles should be categorised for lack of importance, not for lack of notability. These things are not the same. Since it was apparent that when they were in {{importance}} they were going to be deleted, because people not involved in any chemical wikiproject did decide that if they did not know the subject and could not see why it was important, it should be deleted (in stead of notifying a wikiproject and/or actually doing something about it). I had to revert/fight these prods/AfDs/template removals on a forthnightly basis, and being tired of that, it was decided to move them to an own template and category. So articles in that list are important enough, but the article does not state that yet, and therefore they are on a todo list of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals. I guess a similar reasoning is there for the music template. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 23:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC) similar reasoning is there for the music template. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 23:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That sounds an awful lot like a curious variant of WP:OWNership to me, as in "we're special and our articles are special and should not be subject to the same processes as everything else." I don't really care all that much, but really there is no such thing as "important" in Wikipedia, except in the context of Wikipedia 1.0 prioritization. The "importance" concept in the context of whether an article is important enough to exist in Wikipedia at all, was soundly rejected as early as 2004, and replaced with notability. The comparison to the music version of the template isn't appropriate, as that template especially has no reason to exist any longer, having been replaced entirely by {{Notability|music}} (look at the code of Template:Music-importance). Not a big deal to me, but you'll need much better justification than this if (more likely when) {{Chemical-importance}} comes up at WP:TFD. I'm likely to take it there myself, because this is not how WikiProjects are supposed to "importance"-tag articles for their own internal (or WP1.0) purposes; you instead use the |importance= parameter of the project's banner on the article's talk page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:52, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Words as words

Looks as though your proposal to move from italics to quote marks has hit the complacency wall, as has happened before on this issue. I've a mind to start a new section asking for consensus on actual wording. As I said, the biggest problem for me is the awkward boundary between noun phrase and longer units (italics vs quotes), which takes a bit of skill to determine. Both styles are still used in MOS, would you believe. What is the best strategy? Changing totally to quote marks is easy enough for MOS and submanuals (30 mins' work with global replacements using Word), but it will cause a massive back-compatibility problem. Do you have a mind to recommend either system, as long as it's consistent within an article? Tony (talk) 01:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

That compromise would work for me; there are articles in which italics-for-examples does not cause parseability problems; do think that the MOS pages should abandon it, and that the MOS should recommend quotes but allow italics where they will not cause parseability problems (but am flexible; these are preferences not demands. :-) Personally, I am not very concerned about MOS having backward compatibility problems; they'll sort themselves out eventually, but perhaps others do care about them a lot. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] XHTML at Kilogram

Resolved. Everyone seems to be happy now.

Hi,

Just FYI, XHTML does allow <p> elements to occur inside <li> elements. The relevant declarations from the XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD (taken from http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/dtds.html) are grouped here for your convenience:

<!ENTITY % block
     "p | %heading; | div | %lists; | %blocktext; | fieldset | table">
<!ENTITY % Flow "(#PCDATA | %block; | form | %inline; | %misc;)*">
<!ELEMENT li %Flow;>

Expanding the parameter entities defined in the first two declarations, we see that the third declaration is equivalent to:

<!ELEMENT li (#PCDATA | p | %heading; | div | %lists; | %blocktext; | fieldset | table | form | %inline; | %misc;)*>

which is either an invalid declaration (if there's something wrong with one of the parameter entities — unlikely, IMHO, though I'll admit that I've not scoured the DTD looking for errors on the W3C's part), or a mixed-content element declaration for <li> elements, with <p> elements being among the permitted child elements.

—RuakhTALK 20:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, of course you can use p inside li; that wasn't the issue. The main issue is that you can't open a p without closing it, and the secondary one is that you don't need p inside li; it's just redundant. I would have gone into this, but edit summaries are pretty short. :-) PS: In talk page at that article I mention that I understand the "beautification" idea, but this is something that needs to be done properly, system-wide, by the developers, and I support a move at WP:VPT to urge them to do so, as it also affects line spacing with inline references and inline cleanup templates, not just superscripted content. But we can't have every other article randomly outright abusing XHTML markup to achieve line spacing effects willy-nilly or pretty soon wiki article source code will be impenetrable to the average editor. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:12, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
It's true that you can't open a p without closing it in XHTML; but we're not writing XHTML, we're writing MediaWiki markup. MediaWiki writes XHTML, and does so correctly. Your claim that the p is redundant in this case is simply mistaken; it serves an important role here. (I'd explain, but I rather suspect that you didn't read the wiki markup carefully, as you assumed that it was written by Luddites. Now that you know there's a method to it, it's easier for you to simply take a look and understand what its purpose is.)
As for the sup-thing, I completely agree with you, as you can see from the edit history and the talk-page; but that's unrelated to the li/p-thing.
—RuakhTALK 20:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
What "important role" is it trying to serve? As for MediaWiki putting HTML into wikimarkup is not wikimarkup it is putting HTML into wikimarkup. While MediWiki itself can correct some XHTML errors on the fly when people use obsolete and otherwise malformed HTML code, it cannot do this in all cases, so writing correct code is a good practice. At least as importantly it has to be remembered that WP is open content, and while some repuprosings of it make use of MediaWiki, others (such as re-use of WP material at ask.com and many other places) do not, and use the WP database (raw code as entered by editors) directly, so MW's compensation abilities are of questionable relevance in the big picture. Anyway, I'm not trying to get into a geeker-than-thou organ-waving match with you. I just want to the code to be clean, and for (X)HTML to not be used when it does not need (distinguish "I need" from "I prefer") to be used, because it is an entry barrier to editing by non-geek editors and is a major vector for errors. I'm highly skeptical that what you are trying to do with <li><p> cannot be accomplished by a different and less brittle means, though I've been known to be wrong before of course. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
No, it's MediaWiki markup; MediaWiki actually parses what you're understandably thinking of as (X)HTML, and re-assembles everything its own way. When there are two kinds of markup for a given construct (an (X)HTML-like kind of markup and a WYSIWYG-like kind of markup), they're internally converted to the same construct before the XHTML is generated.
The p elements are needed for the very simple reason that each list item contains multiple paragraphs. (This, BTW, is why I assumed you thought p elements were forbidden within li elements; you were removing necessary markup in the name of XHTML validity, so I assumed you thought the necessary markup was invalid XHTML. Now I see that you simply didn't realize it was necessary.)
Any mirror worth its salt will have a full library for parsing wiki code the way MediaWiki does. That said, if it's terribly important to you, we can add all the end-tags. To me they seem like the kind of clutter that deters less technically-minded editors — the less (X)HTML-style markup, the better — but I do see the benefits of being more usable by broken mirrors.
—RuakhTALK 20:56, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I stand corrected; I just tried this in a sandbox, and you are right that it doesn't handle paragraphs in XHTML-formatted lists unless they are forced with a p element. That seems kind of silly and unintuitive, but oh well. I wonder why they would have abandoned wikimarkup parsing but only with respect to paragraphization (i.e. '''ing for boldface, etc., still work) inside XHTML (or in your terms "(X)HTML-style") list items. Makes no sense to me, but I see what you were after with that markup. I think it is good to have the </p>, since it reinforces that elements need to close, and that fact is important in many cases even in MediaWiki-parsed pages. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Re: "I think it is good to have the </p>, since it reinforces that elements need to close […]": Oh, an evangelism argument! You found my weak spot. You win, I concede. End-tags it is. —RuakhTALK 14:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Heh. May the Gods of Good Coding be praised. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:00, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NIFlagInWikipedia userbox

Resolved. Just an FYI.

A page you nominated for deletion has been renominated. To take part in the discussion, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Beano ni/UserBoxes/NIFlagInWikipedia (2nd nomination). Lurker (said · done) 15:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Matrona

Hi: I have removed my attempt at fact-checking the article, and I apologize for not having been more complete. I should note, however, that my summary on removing the no-wiki comment ("remove no-wiki comment") was arguably more precise than yours on placing it there ("just some general improvements"). I should note also that you added a citation tag to a sentence that you added in January. Having noted these things, I leave the article to more capable editors. Jlittlet 05:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

If the biblio. stuff you added and then removed was actually relevant, then by all means please add it back, and use it to cite facts in the article. My objection was to removal of the refs cleanup tag, since the article (with or without the biblio section) was not citing any sources for anything. And, I don't exempt myself from any fault for that, which is why I {{fact}}-tagged my own addition. I was sloppy or tired or something that day and forgot to cite my source, so I'm shaming myself for it. :-) Anyway, sorry if I ticked you off; that wasn't the intent. Nor was it to besmirch your three books, but rather to say "use <ref> and {{Cite book}} so we have refs so we have actual ref. citation." :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too kind!

Resolved. Just a chat.

Thanks, SMcCandlish. I'm touched, and thankful for your authoritative input. Me? I'm just a technician with a few ideas. Tony (talk) 07:42, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

It's more the fortitude and "natural leadership" as they call it. It takes a lot of work to watchlist the MOS as attentively as you do and prevent its daily corruption with balderdash. I get a bit irritated with people who accuse you of WP:OWN in there, because you're fulfilling a de facto role, the weight of which no one else is willing to approach, and which would be fulfilled with effectively the same results even if there were another doing it (effectively; if it were done ineffectively, all hell would of course break loose). It's a "wikijob", and you're doing it well. So, kudos where due, for the die-hard effort. I even reacted negatively to your protectiveness on my first foray into the MOS's guts, but you've long since converted me. If I totally had my selfish way, I'd make probably 150 changes to the MoS + subpages, but I've been convinced that this isn't the way to go; it is better to adapt to the established guidelines (spaced em-dashes now look weird to me, after only a month, etc.) and to pursue strongly-desired changes gradually. It takes a lot of patience to deal with the impatience of others. I've seen your patience line get crossed a few times recently, so I thought a show of appreciation of your reserve-when-it-holds might be welcome. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spacing after the decimal point

Resolved. Just a chat.

Hi. Just wanted to thank you for your change to the title on the MOSNUM talk page  :-) Thunderbird2 09:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Most welcome. It was actually hindbrain-nagging at me for a while, without my quite seeing it, and then it just sort of whacked me that the entire discussion was biased. I still hold to my opinions, but shooting a fish in a barrel versus wrestling a shark with one's bare hands in the open ocean are two very different versions of "I caught a fish". If my (or your) arguments stand, they should do so without crutches, but also without having to balance on one leg while being shoved. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Resolved. Decline involvement.

If you have a problem with people on inappropriate image-deleting sprees, the best place to take it up is probably WT:NFC. Though you may need a leather hide and some persistance, if you're going to take on the "no fair use" and "any procedural irregularity demands instant annihilation" brigade. Types like Zscout will eventually respect consensus, if you can achieve it there. Jheald 10:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to pass; am already knee-deep in various other contentious wiki-issues, enough that I have hardly any time for actual article writing until some of those are resolved. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] You can blame me

Resolved. Just an FYI.

see!?? BTW-- Wake UP! <g> Cheers! // FrankB 19:00, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Noted. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:24, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Biography Newsletter 5

Resolved. Just projectspam.

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Outreach/Newsletter/Issue 005}} To receive this newsletter in the future, please list yourself in the appropriate section here. This newsletter was delivered by the automated R Delivery Bot 15:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC) .

[edit] My Signature

Resolved. Moot; sig. already changed.

Hmm? That is a few days old now. I have fixed my signature, EVula gave it the thumbs up. DoyleyTalk 15:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem I ran into may have been from a few days ago then. The current one looks fine. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I wrote this one myself. Where did you run into the problem? DoyleyTalk 15:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Trying to recall. It was on a "Wikpedia talk:"-namespace page, in which your sig was not "sticking" to your indented replies, but going to the line below, with no indentation, presumably because of the spacing problems mentioned by EVula. I fixed it in-place where I found that problem. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Ah ok, Many thanks! DoyleyTalk 15:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Agreement

I'm really not difficult to agree with. The only things I object to in the MOS are prescriptive rules which are not in fact the consensus of English usage as a whole. Either stick to what English always does, or use normally or we recommend, and I will not dispute it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a guideline, though, not a policy, so everything it is "we recommend" by definition. And the purpose of WP:MOS is to be prescriptive, as to what to do on WP; it is not a general publication for off-WP consensus as to what "proper" English is, what English always or usually does, what the differences between various dialects and registers are, etc. Its sole purpose is to help editors write articles that will be maximally useful to our readers (especially via consistency and lack of ambiguity), that's all. This will necessarily differ in a few ways from traditional style guides, which are both more permissive in some ways ("there's no standard about this, so just do whatever you like") and at times excessively dogmatic about the "correctness" of something that is entirely arbitrary. These conflicts come up especially when it comes to the limitations of the medium (online media in general, and WP in particular in some cases), the needs for balancing a multicultural editorship and readership without it being a freeforall, accessibility and usability issues, need for precision, and various other concerns that a general style guide doesn't have to focus on because it is written for students writing term papers, journalists, and the like. Aside from all that, there is precious little that "English always does". Just as even American scientific publications have abandoned typesetters' quotation, despite it being the traditional "consensus of English usage as a whole" in America, to most people, for a long time, WP has to defy a few prescriptive traditions (yes, even as it is being prescriptive in its own way). So, I'm not sure how MOS can every make you happy, with the expectations you bring. Another way of looking at it is, if you fork a copy of it over to WikiText, to serve as an online reference work for general usage, it would rapidly diverge from the Wikipedia MOS, because its purposes, audience, scope and very nature would be radically different.— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The way to "defy a prescriptive tradition" is to say you don't have to follow it, which is distinct from you have to use this other method. I encourage the first, within reason; I object strenuously to the second. The most effective way to say you don't have to follow tradition is to enumerate the disadvantages of the traditional method, and the advantages of the new one; to be convincing, it helps to add the advantages of the old and the disads of the new. In short, treat our editors as adults, in the hope that most of them are, or can be persuaded to pretend to be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:ELG and relationship to WP:FLAG

Please see WT:ELG, WT:FLAG, and my talk. FLAG is still a proposed guideline, and even though there may be consensus there, it doesn't apply yet. There are already others objecting to your changes, visually obvious or not. O2 (息 • 吹) 00:10, 14 October 2007 (GMT)

You are not expressing a clear understanding of how guidelines work. Guidelines do not dictate consensus or best practices; the opposite is true. A guideline doesn't "apply" at all, like a law (and like official WP Policies can be said to, since in several cases like WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:BLP they are external impositions from the legal department); a guideline "summarizes and reflects" extant consensus on best practices. Cf. the talk page of WP:NFT for a similarly misguided attempt by a few editors to label WP:NFT either {{essay}} or {{disputed}} because they had some problems with its wording and tone.
I would be perfectly comfortable with putting {{guideline}} on WP:FLAG since it has been through the proposal process, with markably little strife. I don't see any need for me to be the one to do that, so I haven't bothered, but I'm sure someone else will.
I have no idea what you mean by "visually non-obvious" objections; on Wikipedia there is no such thing. I will be happy to check out the discussions you point me to, of course.
My objections to your editing with regard to this are a) you have been reverting without a substantive reason expressed for doing so (maybe you've already provided one at the talk pages mentioned, so that may be a moot point), and reverting very heavyhandedly, with apparent disregard for what you were reverting (you reverted a large number of formatting twiddles that had nothing to do with the ELG vs. FLAG issue at all.) Please be more careful. I apologize if I snapped at you, but honestly I am completely shocked to being reverted so broadly; I think the last time that happened to me was at WP:MOSNUM ca. April or June, and I edit nearly every day, so I genuinely think your rv tactics in this case were highly unusual. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intro

Resolved. Just an FYI.

Howdy, just fyi, I reverted and commented at Template talk:Intro#Shortcut dablink. I can't think of a good solution atm. --Quiddity 19:16, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Noted. I replied over there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well Done

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags) well done on this, you put alot of effort into it.--Padraig 20:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It seemed important, and not something that was going to achieve consensus without consistency shepherding. Glad it worked out! (So far; it's only been designated a guideline for a day, so I'm not counting the eggs yet...) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:jct and nonbreaking spaces

Can you look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (exit lists)#Nonbreaking spaces, and also at a few of the exit lists that use the template (check that the template is used in the exit list, not only in the infobox) to make sure I placed the nbsps correctly? Thank you. --NE2 17:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the rendered source code is instructive (I've "cheated" for our reading benefit by forcibly line-breaking this and shortening the image URLs):
<dd><a href="/wiki/Image:NY-100.svg" class="image" title="NY-100.svg"><img alt="" 
src="25px-NY-100.svg.png" width="25" height="20" border="0" /></a><a 
href="/wiki/Image:NY-119.svg" class="image" title="NY-119.svg"><img alt="" 
src="25px-NY-119.svg.png" width="25" height="20" border="0" /></a> <span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/New_York_State_Route_100" 
title="New York State Route 100">NY 100</a></span>/<span style="white-space:nowrap"><a 
href="/wiki/New_York_State_Route_119" 
title="New York State Route 119">NY 119</a></span><span 
style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(Tarrytown Road)</span><br />
</nowiki>
It looks to me like there needs to be a <span style="white-space:nowrap">...</span> (i.e. a "nowiki" in the template code) enclosing the first shield through ...NY 100</a></span>/, to a) Keep the icons from ever being separated from the beginning of the text, and to keep the "/" attached to the first of the text as well.
There are several of the following in the template code: {{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{#if:{{{to2|}}}|&nbsp;to&nbsp;|{{#if:{{{name1|}}}{{{dir1|}}}|&nbsp;/  |/}}}} which appear to only put spacing around the "/" sometimes. I think it would be more readable if spaced. If done that way, I think some of this code would be redundant since it would be saying "if x applies, do this, and if it doesn't apply, do the same thing". A non-breaking space appears before "(Tarrytown Road)", as the #160 entity instead of the nbsp entity. Not sure why or where that came from without looking at the template code again, but it is already in a nowrap so it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. Doesn't hurt anything though.
I'm going to insert a maximal example here so we can look at everything:
{{jct | state=CA | I | 40 | I | 280 | I | 80 | dir1=E | dir2=N | dir3=W | to1=yes | to2=yes | to3=yes | name1=name1 | name2=name2 | name3=name3 | road=road | city1=city1 | city2=city2 | city3=city3 | city4=city4 }}
To I-40 E (name1) to I-280 N (name2) to I-80 W (name3) / road – city1, city2, city3, city4

Rendered code:

<a href="/wiki/Image:I-40_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-40 (CA).svg"><img 
alt="" src="20px-I-40_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="20" height="20" border="0" /></a><a 
href="/wiki/Image:I-280_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-280 (CA).svg"><img 
alt="" src="24px-I-280_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="24" height="20" border="0" /></a><a 
href="/wiki/Image:I-80_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-80 (CA).svg"><img alt="" 
src="20px-I-80_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="20" height="20" border="0" /></a> To&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_40_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 40 (California)">I-40</a></span>&#160;E<span 
style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name1)</span>&#160;to&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_280_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 280 (California)">I-280</a></span>&#160;N<span 
style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name2)</span>&#160;to&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_80_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 80 (California)">I-80</a></span>&#160;W<span style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name3)</span>, road&#160;– <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City1%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City1, California">city1</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City2%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City2, California">city2</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City3%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City3, California">city3</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City4%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City4, California">city4</a>

Okay, so I think what we are aiming for something more like this (additions in ALL CAPS though of course that would be wrong as real code):

<SPAN 
STYLE="WHITE-SPACE:NOWRAP"><a href="/wiki/Image:I-40_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-40 (CA).svg"><img 
alt="" src="20px-I-40_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="20" height="20" border="0" /></a><a 
href="/wiki/Image:I-280_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-280 (CA).svg"><img 
alt="" src="24px-I-280_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="24" height="20" border="0" /></a><a 
href="/wiki/Image:I-80_%28CA%29.svg" class="image" title="I-80 (CA).svg"><img alt="" 
src="20px-I-80_%28CA%29.svg.png" width="20" height="20" border="0" /></a> To&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_40_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 40 (California)">I-40</a></span></SPAN>&#160;E<span 
style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name1)</span>&#160;to&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_280_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 280 (California)">I-280</a></span>&#160;N<span 
style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name2)</span>&#160;to&#160;<span 
style="white-space:nowrap"><a href="/wiki/Interstate_80_%28California%29" 
title="Interstate 80 (California)">I-80</a></span>&#160;W<span style="white-space:nowrap">&#160;(name3)</span>, road&#160;– <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City1%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City1, California">city1</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City2%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City2, California">city2</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City3%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City3, California">city3</a>, <a 
href="/w/index.php?title=City4%2C_California&action=edit" class="new" 
title="City4, California">city4</a>

Depending on exactly how the template is using that other template to get the goods, that new </span> might have to be even later. The rendered markup is a little redundant in parts, but this is unavoidable without having this template send the embedded one a new value telling it not to make its own nowrap spans, and of course that second template would have to be modified to be able to process that. Probably not worth the trouble. Ideally, it would be best if the N/S/E/W stuff was inside the nowrap span of the "I-40" stuff; I'm skeptical that <span style="white-space:nowrap;">something</span>&#160;something else would not break between "something" and "something else" in some browsers. Maybe not enough of big deal to worry about.

Was this any help? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:59, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stanislavski and related

Hello. It's good to see you trying to clean up those Method acting and Stanislavski's 'system' articles. However, looking at the last edits on the Stan. I've reverted them. Your changes are not in line with standard critical usage. If you'd like the citations, let me know. But it is Stanislavski's 'system' - lower case and 'marked', and it is the Method - capitalized. You were also confusing a "quotation" with a word 'used' in a unusual way. Regards, DionysosProteus 00:58, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Some of those changes have to be restored (though I'm unlikely to bother doing it myself), because the extant text is ungrammatical. When we speak of his system, we refer to it as a system, not a "system", which is his term/formatting not ours. Do not confuse the personal style preferences of the progenitor of the theory with third-party commentary on the theory. Also, per WP:MOS we use double-quotes, not single quotes, even where this "system" usage would be appropriate in that article, which is very few places. I do understand what you are getting at, but the usage is simply outright incorrect in many places there, as is abuse of capitalized "Method" at the Method acting article, which frequently confuses "the Method" as a proper name with references to the Method as a method (cf. "the system" as a system), in which case it is not a proper noun. As far as other issues like 'Stanislavski's "system"' (which is fine in quotation) and 'the Stanislavski System' which is which is how a neutral third-party publication like WP should more generally refer to it, it's the same probleml again. It does not matter that theatre publications like to honor Stanislavski's weird formatting for traditionalism reasons; we are not such a publication, and not have a traditionalist theatrical audience. All that said, I'm not going to fight with you about this. I have no opinion on the systems in question, and am just doing WP:NC and WP:MOS cleanup work. You can certainly expect that others will come in from time to time and make the same fixes. If you want to categorically challege them and get some kind of exception or clarification added to the Manual of Style, you'll need to take that up at WT:MOS. Also, I am having no such use-mention distinction confusion as you claim that I am; rather, you are mistaken in how that distinction is handled in Wikipedia according to the MOS; please see the sections there on quotations and italicization in particular; single-quotes are only used as quotation-marks-inside-quotation-marks, never by themselves, even for mention cases (either italics can be used, or double-quotes, or single-quotes when inside of double-quotes). For the few cases in the article where is is appropriate to retain Stanislavski's "scare quotes" I think what you want is double quotation marks, not single (regardless of Stanislavski's original, which probably did use single, since he's European, but WP consistent uses the North American style doubled ones), since MOS forbids that, and probably not italics since it doesn't convey quite the same implication as the scare-quoting. PS: Stanislavski is misspelled as Stanislavsky in the names of several sources; someone needs to look up those sources and see if the typos are WP editor typos or those of the authors/publishers of the cited works. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I wasn't clear. It is not merely Stanislavski's personal preference, but the standard way of refering to his 'system' in the critical literature; that is, in scholarly third-party commentary on the theory. I can provide a heap of citations if you're skeptical. You'll need to point me to the correct subsection of Wikipedia:Manual of Style because having taken a look I can't see where it insists on "this" over 'this', since it is not the use for a quotation that I am referring to, but the use when using a word in an unusual way. i.e. a 'grammar' of acting, suggesting the use of the word grammar in an unfamiliar way, rather than actually citing a quotation "grammar" of acting, he said. Re: the Method. I can only see one instance of what you're referring to in the intro (having scanned quickly). The article needs a lot of work, but it is standard to refer to the Method, as in Books on the Method. He taught the Method. Both of those are proper name uses. Again, I can provide citations of scholarly works if need be. With Stan, it's precisely because it's not a system that it's 'system'. Its not there as a quotation of what he said. It's that the word 'system' is the best approximation for what it was. Most commentators follow this practice. You point to the single/doube US/Euro usage. How do you distinguish between saying that you're quoting someone and merely highlighting if you use identical marks? This isn't a scare quote because it carries no negative intention and is used to specify use--i.e., I'm not quoting. It's odd that you say it's a US/Euro thing, because I'm fairly certain I learnt the distinction from the MLA when studying in the States, but I don't have the manual to hand. Glancing at some of my sources, they are both UK & US. RE: spelling of the name. It's Russian, so beset with problems. Constantin Stanislavski is the biggest google hit. It's what his books in English use. It's not ideal. But consistency is to be encouraged. In general for all these points, my understanding is that the wikiuse should reflect the majority use outside of wikiland. Stanislavski's 'system' is that. DionysosProteus 01:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Again, I do understand the point you are trying to make, I simply don't buy it. I've gone into this at less conversational depth at WT:MOS#Problems in theatre land. The main issue is that using the the 'system' notation (aside from using single quotations marks against MOS) is that it violates WP:NPOV. Theatre press publication do not have an NPOV rule, so this problem does not arise there. As for the MOS quotation marks and use–mention distinction stuff, I normally refuse to do people's guideline homework for them, but I'll make an exception in this case. Will take a few minutes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)Make that several hours; got sidetracked. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:MOS#Quotation marks:

Double or single
Quotations are enclosed within "double quotes". Quotations within quotations are enclosed within 'single quotes'.

While it did not state this specifically as of this writing, everything in this section that addresses quotation marks used for actual quotations also addresses other uses of them; just a textual oversight that I'm about to go fix. Done. The "Quotation marks" section now leads with

The term quotation(s) in the material below also includes other uses of quotation marks such as for song/chapter/episode titles, unattributable aphorisms, literal strings, "scare-quoted" passages and constructed examples.

I imagine that this will stay in there; it certainly does not reflect a change in advice, just a spelling of it out, because some of the examples in that section did not consist of actual quotations per se, but things like aphorisms and other non-quotation uses of quotation marks. The MOS itself is full of usage of "scare quoting" of contructed examples and of terms, where italicization of them wouldn't work well (though it otherwise prefers italicization for its purposes).
See also Scare quotes#Neutrally distancing.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MOS

You and Noetica have been doing a fine job in overhauling the page: great to see. I do have a few concerns about the ellipsis section, now that I'm back on Earth after a horrendous deadline-week in the real world. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding it. Tony (talk) 07:37, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

What are the concerns? Some of what Noetica put in there was simply wrong, some of it unsourced and conflicting with established sources, like "... .", some of it impenetrable, other parts great. I tried to clean that up. You then cleaned up my cleanup, and I then did another round. I'm okay with it as it stands as of my last edit, but I've been staring at it a lot, so I may be simply temporarily unable to see the problems in it. I don't find the "is suspension/pause usage really an ellipsis?" matter to be of any concern; the flow from "use it this way, use it that way, and when you have to combine them both, use them this third way" is more important. Other than that, I'm pretty open on it. I just don't want to see nonsensical instructions get back in there. The yesterday versions were just unparseable. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:51, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My answer

[Thanks for your note at my talk page. Here is my answer, as I have posted there.]

SMcCandlish:

Thank you for bringing your issues here. Here are some particular replies to things you say above:

One editor's boldness and directness is another editor's arrogance. I find many of your edit summaries and your high-handed and often patronising dismissal of lesser mortals arrogant; you obviously consider them bold and direct, as I see from what you say above.
  • Their import appears to be "don't dare revert me, or I will edit war with you or get nasty with you on the talk page".
My record will show that I very rarely edit-war. I nearly always discuss, at length. And in the course of discussion I will be polite to the polite, and rude to the rude. I do quickly revert edits that I judge patently ill-founded or ill-considered. So do you. So what?
  • I realize I can be abrasive myself, ...
Yep!
  • ... but I don't go out of my way to be so. I was polite (I think) both times I criticized your edit summaries today, and only did so because I believed that a pattern was in evidence and was a hindrance to consensus building and normal editing. I also feel that your edits have been incautious and not thought through enough in some cases.
To the extent that you understood them, right? Quite frankly, anyone who fails to grasp the universal consensus concerning how brackets and sentence endings work is not much of a critic of these things. Sure some points I put forward needed clarifying; I would have been amazed if they didn't! And I joined in the clarifying myself. But it's impossible to do these things in a way that pleases everyone. There are a couple of things I put in because I knew the point could be missed by an over-zealous pedant who might take them over-literally, and not apply them with discretion.
  • While I agree that the ellipsis section needed editing, much of what you put in there wasn't logically parseable, and some of it was just plain incorrect.
Whistling in the dark. Parse "wasn't logically parseable" like this: "wasn't understood by SMcCandlish". Such self-centredness! And what, pray tell, was "incorrect" in "some of it"? Which of it? How? By whose lights? (Let me guess... CMOS?)
  • Thinking back, your edits of substance appear to get partially reverted or edited into unrecognizability more than anyone else's in recent memory (by contrast, PMAnderson's often simply get reverted, period, because they only reflect his position, and often seem to be WP:BRD actions, so their reversion is expected, perhaps even intended.)
A fatuous and unsubstantiated claim.
  • Further, I understand being a solid debater, but there's a difference between defending one's arguments well and taking everything personally.
Don't get me wrong (again). I don't take this so personally as you do. Mainly, I'm irritated because you have wasted a lot of my time. As for defending my arguments, I have no trouble doing that by reason alone – setting aside mere appeals to authority and like fallacies.
  • Your unwillingness to let sleeping dogs lie, in repeatedly bashing editors in one dispute for their perceived errors in other ones in the past, is a debate (if it can be called that) tactic more suited to Usenet than Wikipedia.
My unwillingness? It is you who persist in obvious error, against the world at large. Every style guide that addresses "that" issue disagrees with you, and so do all publishers. But rather than admit your error, as I suggested, you rattle on about my simply having a margin over you in the debate. That's what I get, for making the effort to show you something you could learn from! And I never have "bashed" you. You're too sensitive.
  • I don't have anything against you personally, but some of your behaviors at WP:MOS and WT:MOS have been very grating (not just to me). I do not go so far as to say disruptive, but close enough for discomfort.
Rubbish. You are too enmeshed, too flustered perhaps, to come to a clear judgement about all this. Simply put, you have been challenged in way that discomfits you, and you're not quite sure how to respond, except with denial, blame-shifting, and projection.
  • I manged to tick people off in my early forays into the MOS, so my horse is not very high.
That's better. Focus on that fact. So have I, ticked people off. I don't care. I am helpful and polite (some would say painfully so!) to anyone who is civilised enough to accept such an approach. But I grow impatient after a while with arrogant editors who seek too rapidly and too inexpertly to "correct" others.
  • Anyway, while this is critical, it is intended constructively, and isn't some declaration of enemyhood or any such nonsense, just a request to tone it down a notch. I will endeavor to do likewise.
Tell you what: how about if you go and do likewise first, and I'll manage my own behaviour my own way, in my own good time. Deal?
  • Another way of putting this is that I find that your actual actions do not mesh with your statements in your #Not editing for a while comments up top.
That is mainly about a ridiculous and disruptive dispute that I chose not to be involved in. Tony knows very well what it's about. He has behaved very poorly, in my opinion: and he knows that is my opinion. I am still unsure that I will stick around, if that dispute is not settled soon.
  • If any of it is relating in some way to my own edit summaries being brusque ("Shorten longwinded example", etc.), they're just short and to the point; ...
O sure! They're OK... aren't they?
  • All that said, I don't think any MOS regular suffers foolish edits lightly, and we all pretty mercilessly revert anything that doesn't work.
Why are you telling me such things? I was here in early 2005. Then, after a one-year break, I've been here since early 2006. The fact that you haven't seen me around doesn't mean I wasn't around, you know.
  • Happens to me and Tony too (both of us have been editing the MOS long and hard enough that we are more apt than most to not do something boneheaded in there, but we still do boneheaded things in there, inevitably). It's nothing personal, and isn't an attack.
You both do boneheaded things. Tony is a fine editor, and I have learned things from him. He, in turn, has learned from dialogue that he and I have had concerning our own joint efforts at MOS. He has said so, publicly. I may well learn from this interaction with you, and from some of your work at MOS and its talk page. But spare me your lecturing, young SMcCandlish. I am not impressed, and am ahead of you on a couple of fronts, I fear. Of course, I don't expect you to see that, any more than I will concede the converse about you.

Now, is that all? I have other things to do.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 12:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Replied at User talk:Noetica. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

One thing's for sure: we both talk a lot. I'm going to stop in a moment, now that feelings are sufficiently vented. I strongly disagree with your analysis at several points – to the extent that it can properly be called "analysis", rather than wild surmises and allegations about, for example, my "demanding" not to have my contributions edited! But there is obviously no point labouring things. Thanks once more for bringing the dispute here instead of clogging the MOS talk page, which is already overflowing. I don't know how much useful collaboration we can do, since I find your style as repellent as you find mine. And I judge you as self-deceiving as you judge me! Enjoy your editing at Wikipedia. Let's learn and move on.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 20:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've taken a Wiki break anyway. I was finding MOS to be too annoying to put up with for a bit (and no, not just because of your and my interaction). Will go over your reply later. No big hurry? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Hey, no problem. Welcome back! The whole business of MOS and its dreary subsidiaries is tediousn. I don't think much can be achieved using the present practices and protocols. I fear we'll never get a stable and truly reliable MOS under present conditions. It's no one's fault in particular. Tony is optimistic, I think; and my disposition tends that way also. But it doesn't matter how much talent and inspiration editors bring to the task, things regress really quickly. You have particular insights into the technicalities of HTML – which people fail to recognise or respect. Then again, perhaps your brilliance in that area "crowds out" a few insights that others might more readily come to. (Who knows? I'm speculating, that's all.) I have particular knowledge and skills too, but I can't deploy them very effectively at MOS if others are dazzled by their own bright guiding lights, as perhaps I am sometimes by my own. This sort of thing happens all the time.
We'll eventually catch up at WT:MOS, yes? (At least I have learned from you that convenient redirect for the talk page.)
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 09:47, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I remain optimistic too, though I recognize what you are saying. I think that the need to not regress is one reason that MOS editors are so "revert-happy". Could be better, could be worse. I'm still working on other stuff right now, but yeah, we'll catch up properly at some point. PS: The WT: shortcuts work for most such pages; when I find one that doesn't have such a shortcut I usually add it on the spot. There's hardly anything more annoying that having the type out somethign like "Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)" when "WT:MOSNUM" would do fine. Heh. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Time to delete MOSHEAD?

Hi SMcC—It's been about to happen for weeks. Does one post a "speedydelete" at the top of the page, or what? Only an admin can do it, I suppose. Tony (talk) 08:30, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't be deleted, since people refer to it; it should be redirected to the #section in MOS that it applies to, so that the links don't go red. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

I have been complaining about how we need more admins, and I am going to do something about it, so I have picked some of the best editors I've spotted who have expressed a previous interest in gaining the extra buttons. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/SMcCandlish 2 needs to turn blue so it can pass, I think. Would you like me to nominate you? I have no doubts you'd sail through this time round. Neil ☎ 10:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll think about it. Had several other nomination offers, so it should probably be done as a co-nomination thing. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:13, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
If someone else is already willing to nominate you, then I'll step aside (I have this strange dislike for co-nominations). If, however, you want it doing some time soon and other people are dithering or whatever, and I'll nominate you like *that*. You can't see me click my fingers, but that's what I just did. Neil ☎ 20:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I put in Benford's law of controversy for Afd

Resolved. AfD merged it into Gregory Benford.

regards,Rich 02:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The merge made sense. Thanks for the note. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: what pane does it hide?

Resolved. Answered at page in question.

Regarding your comment on User talk:Gerbrant/hidePane.js, did you mean to say that there should be some kind of description, or that it doesn't appear to work for you? B.t.w. I'm thinking of redesigning the script, such that the pop-up menu's will be located at the top. I'm not sure how to go about it yet, but ideally all the "interface" shouldn't take up more than one line or so. I think the article is what's important, all that clutter in the left pane may be useful sometimes, but when you're reading an article it just gets in the way. Shinobu 14:50, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admin?

Hi there, are you still interested in becoming an admin? I would be happy to nominate you if you were. Tim Vickers 21:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I think so; this is a bad week for me, though. Whole lot going on. I can probably gather some co-nominators next week. And thanks for the support/faith. I've actually avoided going there for some time (since I think Jan. 2007, when I first tried), to get more and more experience in XfDs, working on policy/guideline pages, etc. I think I am ready. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
You are verging on over-qualified! :) Drop me a note next week then. Tim Vickers 22:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Will do. I actually have been concerned a little about being over-qualified in a sense - I remember an RfA that failed last month. While it did so because of COI and civility and other issues for the most part, a common oppose comment was along the lines of "anyone with 30K edits who is not an admin yet isn't an admin for a reason". I guess in my guess the defense is that the reason is my own choice not to ask for the tools. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
With IP page creation being re-enabled next week we need as many experienced fingers on the delete button as possible. Tim Vickers 22:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Ick! Where is that being discussed? What a dreadful idea. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
This thread - discussed seems to be a misnomer - it appears to have been imposed by fiat, although only as a short "experiment". Tim Vickers 23:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Albino people

Resolved. Misunderstanding best resolved at Talk:Albinism.

Oxford American Dictionary albino |alˈbīnō| noun ( pl. -nos) a person or animal having a congenital absence of pigment in the skin and hair (which are white) and the eyes (which are typically pink). • informal an abnormally white animal or plant : [as modifier ] an albino tiger.

Is not "genetic disorder" or "medical condition"... IS A "NATURAL CONDITION"

race noun each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics

You are very offensive, and ignorant...

You remember when the homosexuality was a "medical condition"?

Albinistic is very offensive, "person with albinism" is very offensive because you are considering like a disease "person with albinism" is like "person with AIDS"...

why the blondes, brown, homosexual... are "natural"... and the albinos a disorder, a "medical condition"?

"black people" have diseases that "white people" do not have or "Asian people" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.97.77.181 (talk) 21:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, as I've already said to you, your self-declared position as someone who does not really know English at all and who is relying upon software translation, you are not in a position to lecture anyone about English language usage. Sorry, but that's just a fact. The socio-political underlying point you are trying to make, which appears to be that in Africa people with albinism are mistreated and misunderstood, is a concern that is well understood by me and by everyone regularly involved in the Albinism article, which actually discusses this problem. I am very sorry that you cannot understand, in English, the difference between identifying albinism as a medical condition and labelling anyone albinistic as "diseased" - this is the thrust of your argument at that article's talk page. There's nothing I can personally do to fix this misunderstanding of yours. Please just trust me when I tell you that the English-language Wikipedia article at Albinism does not imply that albinistic people are "diseased". If you cannot accept this fact, please at least stop writing to me about this on my talk page. Much of the rest of what you've said above is complete nonsense. Albinism is nothing whatsoever like an ethnicity or race. You are simply flat-out, dead wrong on that point. Everyone who is albinistic is also part of some other race/ethnicity, such as Spanish or Tutsi or Japanese or Albanian. There is no "race" of albinistic people, anywhere on this plant, any time in its known history. A "congenital absence of pigment" is by definition a "genetic disorder"; the latter phrase you object to and appear to misunderstand is a perfectly accurate and entirely neutral synonym of the former phrasing you appear to prefer for some reason. Offensive? Let's not be silly. "Albino" is considered offensive by most people with albinism, as it is used in a mocking way like "nigger" or "faggot", as an epithet. "Person with albinism" is no more like "person with AIDS" than it is like "person with brown hair". This is a really key example of your lack of experience with English causing you to internalize false assumptions. English just does not work the way you seem to think it does. Please, just get over this, move on, and stop harassing me and the other editors of the Albinism article, which you clearly do not yet have the English language skills to fully comprehend. I do not mean that as an insult, it is simply a clearly observable objective fact. I sympathize, really, with your underlying concerns, but they are very sorely misplaced in this case. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:48, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates as leads

Resolved. Looking at it; will respond there if it seems warranted and I have something useful to say.

I asked at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style about this, but got no response. I am now spamming people whe participate in MOS with this request: would you look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader template usage and tell me what you think? - Peregrine Fisher 07:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Bearing in mind WP:CANVAS, I did take a look at it, and yes, it is an abomination. I weighed in about it over there. For the record I think you were right to bring this to my and other MOSers' attention. If MOS is being misinterpreted (or in this case simply uninterpreted) this badly, we may need to say something more explicit about this. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] United States Professional Poolplayers Association competition?

Unresolved. Needs to be restored and expanded; sourcing will be near-trivial.

I have removed [1] an unsourced statement you added [2]:

"The UPA is in competition with the Billiard Congress of America and the International Pool Tour for US market dominance in cue sports."

I know nothing about the subject but there was a help desk complaint and then I didn't want to just tag it as unsourced. PrimeHunter 12:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It should have been tagged as unsourced, since it is a simple statement that can be sourced. It actually needs to be elaborated on, about what roles each organization playes in the market, but I don't have time to do that for now, so I won't revert-and-fact-tag it. Not a big deal really. FYI, the BCA is the nonprofit WPA affiliate in the US; as such it promotes and holds ranking events for the WPA World Nine-ball Championship and similar events. The UPA and it's WPBA all-women sister organization, which should have been mentioned there too, are long-standing WPA/BCA-independentent professional leagues run by nonprofit player co-ops, and hold directly-competing national and international events. The upstart IPT is a for-profit corporation that has organized national and international tournaments which again directly compete with all of the above for venues, TV coverage, sponsorship, and professional membership. This can all be trivially documented, by someone with a few hours to do it, but that is not me right now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
PS: What help desk complaint? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:03, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
PPS: Nevermind; I found it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader

Resolved. TfD launched.

Hi SMcCandlish. That large, annoying {{NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader}} scoreboard posted at the top of the Chicken Soup Game article now at DRV brought me to this post of yours. Would you mind if I used your post as the reasoning behing my listing that template at TfD? (Or would you consider listing that template at TfD yourself). Thanks. -- Jreferee t/c 15:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Go for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader

Template:NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Jreferee t/c 06:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey there. NMajdan and I have come up with an alternative infobox to replace this template. We'd appreciate it if you could take a swing by and check it out. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popups

Resolved. Done.

Thanks for your answer on the manual of style discussion page. I threw up some other points. Could you respond to them if possible? Mrshaba (talk) 07:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi again... I've been using your {{rp}} template while developing my Solar energy glossary... So far so good... I think I need to add the Notes section back to get full use of your template's power but I'll get to that. I have another question you might be able to help with. Here's the situation. I want to define a field of text as a master "driver text". Then I want to have "passenger links" relate back to this original master field. This has to do with the popup idea I asked you about. When I scroll over a "passenger link" I want to see the popup text from the "driver" field. If the "driver" field is updated I want the "passenger link" popup reflect the changes. I understand this might be too complicated for WP but I'm asking for my own edification. Can HTML do this? I've asked the gurus at work and despite some honest work we haven't been able to get a Word document to accomplish this. Just asking... Thanks again for the template suggestion. Mrshaba (talk) 18:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's possible here. It is something that could be done with Javascript and stuff on a site at which one had access to all of the source code, but we don't have that kind of access here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minor edits

Resolved. Interesting discussion, with bilateral compromise.

Hey Stanton,

I see the issue of flagging edits as 'minor' has been brought to your attention before, but it just caught my eye too. This comment on WT:MOS probably shouldn't have been flagged as minor; neither should this removal of an OR item. Maybe these were just mistakes or your interpretation is different; if the latter, at least now you know that I, for one, really don't consider those minor. Use that information however you wish :-)

Regards, Phaunt (talk) 18:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Have to respectfully disagree. I am at liberty, like everyone else, to define for myself what "minor" means in the context of article editing and talk page commentary, within reason. I do take into account comments like this, and they do slightly sway my estimation of minor vs. major, but honestly not very much. There is nothing non-minor at all about a "yep, me, too, and I'll repeat myself for the 15th time on this issue" chime-in on a talk page. There is also nothing non-minor about removing something that has been demonstrated without doubt on the talk page to be not only blatant WP:OR, but proven counterfactual OR at that. (If I'd decided in a vacuum that I thought it was OR, different story). I am aware that some people think that all edits other than fxing tpyos are "major edits"; I just don't happen to concur, and I wish far more editors would flag far more of their edits as minor (basically, anything that is not likely to arouse anyone to revert or challenge it; it would make watchlisting much easier). Occasionally (because I have minor checked by default) I submit something that even I don't think was minor as "minor"; in those cases I make a null edit for comment and note my error in the new edit summary and submit that as non-minor. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC) PS: I'll flag this one as non-minor just for you. :-) I don't think user talk page chatter is anything but minor in most circumstances, but what the heck. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Of course, it remains your call, but I just noticed you wrote above "I'm unaware of any consensus discussions about what should and shouldn't be minor-flagged"; does this mean you are also unaware of WP:MINOR? I'll cite a few phrases from that page: "a minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute" and "any change that affects the meaning of an article is not minor, even if the edit is a single word". (By the way, there's also a warning template for not properly marking edits as minor.)
I'm not sure what the official status of those pages is (the word 'policy' isn't mentioned), and if you choose not to adhere to them, then there's not much sense in discussing this further. If you do, then to me it's pretty clear that the edits I referred to aren't minor, and I believe that's beyond subjectivity; WP:MINOR is quite strict in defining what's minor. For example, at the very least the person who added the OR point might be inclined to dispute its removal; and I suppose you yourself may have been interested would any other person have removed that point before you did.
You said you probably wouldn't be swayed, so I wasn't sure whether I should pursue this further, and after this comment, I don't think I will. I just wanted to point out the guidelines laid down in WP:MINOR. Cheers, Phaunt (talk) 19:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Had a long, involved reply, and then the browser crashed. Argh. Anyway, the rewrite:
Uw- warnings are almost exclusively for noobs. If an editor is doing something you don't agree with and they've been around for two years, chances are it is a good faith conscious decision with reasons behind it.
A chatty post to a talk page in which I simply agree with someone and then repeat myself and others (again) is pretty much by definition something requiring no review and not subject to dispute. Someone could conceivably dispute what I'm opining about, but there is no basis on which to dispute the edit, since it contains no personal attacks or other policy violations. This is one of the reasons I mark most talk page edits "minor" unless they raise something new and substantive, are in fact disputes (e.g. someone is making personal attacks and I'm calling them on it), or some other good reason.
The factual correction example in WP:MINOR is about substituting one date for another, but the underlying logic is simple: If we (collectively, by consensus and/or incontrovertible proof) know for a fact that X=Y, and the article says X=Z, correcting this is a minor change. In the example, the correction is a substitution of correct value Y for false value Z, but there isn't any reason to suppose, to my mind, that if the value is X=false, and per WP:V we must delete known-false information (and in the case BLP even maybe-false), without mercy, that the correction in this case is necessarily removal, since there is nothing to substitute for it. I can't see any reason in WP:MINOR's logic, modulo its warning that deletions are usually non-minor, that its X-correction principle does not remain minor, because the triggering condition has not change (we know for a proven fact the value of X). The two principles are in some tension, but WP:V is policy, so it trumps most other considerations, and lends more weight to the correction-is-minor principle than the deletion-is-major one.
WP:MINOR isn't policy, or even a guideline, but a help page copied over from Meta with some (redundant!) comments in it about Wikipedia. I think it is pretty good (if skeletal) advice, but I surmise that too few Wikipedians consider minor/major edit labeling enough of an issue to really develop and come to consensus on a Wikipedia version. WP's editing culture is different from that of Meta, which has for most editors orders of magnitude less activity, and concomittantly less watchlist churn. I've only had other editors raise major/minor concerns with me three time in over two years of editing. I don't ignore the issues raised; I do consider them, but I think my views on the topic are pretty much equally valid. My sense of, and behavior with regard to, minor edits does change over time (largely in response to such feedback), but it's more of a drift than a leap. Will ponder on it further. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:01, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Just wanted to share my point of view—thank you for sharing yours.
I think that I myself will stick to WP:MINOR anyhow. The point is, we have this checkbox 'minor edit', and I choose to follow the only documentation provided on how to use it; in fact, there's even a (what's this?) link right beside the checkbox.
I understand where you're coming from though; you try to make other editors' lives better by filtering the stuff you know to be superfluous. Perhaps WP:MINOR should be rewritten; or perhaps we should understand it to be a guideline for 'noobs' mostly. Thanks again for your time and explanations, and happy editing! Phaunt (talk) 22:03, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Same here. I just interpret WP:MINOR more loosely than you do, I think. :-) I was quoting it directly (" something requiring no review and not subject to dispute") and indirectly in referencing its example of what consitutes a factual correction that is not a major edit. I perceive the logic in both of WP:MINOR's recommendations there to per more permissive than you do, that's all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:14, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Just FYI, I've been experimenting with bending my "this is minor" meter a little in the opposite direction, and I'm okay with the results so far. (I.e., you had an effect.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:53, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the update :-) Chances are my 'meter' will show some deviation in your direction too. Phaunt (talk) 11:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hey

Resolved. Just a chat.

Hey Stanton, long time no speak. Reagarding SMcCandlish/Ithiel de Sola Pool, I was just about to post "Declining speedy deletion. While this was probably meant as a subpage and not for the mainspace, this is an established and trusted user who will do the right thing" but I when I clicked save it had already been deleted.:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

No worries; it was just a missing "User:" typo, and I tried to move it myself, but it got deleted before I could finish the move edit summary. The only content was a copy-paste of a URL (easily recovered) to use as a source, that I can get back any time I want. Oh, and no, it's not about our kind of pool, but a sociologist who happens to be surnamed Pool. :-) I was into him before I was into billiards; random coincidence. I noticed that his article got deleted for blatant copyvio, so I think I'll work up a real one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Hah. I kind of figured it was pool related, just because, and was curious what it was going to be.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Maybe it'll turn out he was a player! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:44, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Naming Conventions MOS mess

Unresolved. Still need to look into this.

Further to my previous note, the issue of reconciling this bloated page with WP:MEDMOS is long overdue, and strengthens the case for more centralised coordination. Tony (talk) 05:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Argh. I hardly glanced at MEDMOS and I already have a headache. After I replace my medulla, can you remind me what "previous note" and "this bloated page" refer to? Do I need to check my off-WP e-mail? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I understand what you meant now. I'm not sure I want to get too deeply into the naming conventions, but I'll stop by. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Female models CfD followup

Stale. Other party to the dispute refuses further discussion.
Copied from User talk:BrownHairedGirl to preserve a full record of this debate, since BrownHairedGirl deleted my response to it unilaterally rather than archived it.

Some loose ends, since I [User:SMcCandlish] can't reply at the now closed CfD:

1. Re: "It's a real pity that when there have been several substantive responses here addressing the criteria in the relevant guideline, ... We have here a specific, relevant guideline; please do try to adress the tests which it sets."

I did address them to the extent that I considered them applicable (while you ignored my salient points, simply saying "WP:CATGRS says..." again and again), and I further noted that CATGRS on this matter conflicts with WP:OVERCAT, which I believe to have much broader support. Just because a guideline exists does not mean that it is perfect and always correct in every situation. Others besides me strongly disagreed with your interpretation of CATGRS's permissiveness, including the closer of the CfD. Your mistake is clear in your wording "the relevant guideline" (emphasis added); you seem to think (and regardless what you really think, you advance the argument that) there can be only one, a fallacious position.

2. Re: "...you prefer to make assumptions about my 'beliefs and feelings on gender issues' when I have not discussed them are not at issue."

Um, no. Let's quote you a little:

  • "desist from attaching labels such as "dumb", "lazy" and "ridiculous" to issues involving women"
  • "This sort of language comes across as highly aggressive, and could be interpreted as misogynist" (You repeat this insinuation with "it may indeed be that there was nothing particularly anti-woman about your use of those terms here" - the "it may" implies that the accusation remains on the table as the default assumption. There was a third one in there somewhere, between these two, but I don't have the patience to re-read the entire thing, and the point is already well-made with these two examples.)
  • "The career of a female model is substantially different from that of a male model, and it is a culturally significant subject which routinely achieves massive coverage in the general press, partucularly in regard to the career options open to women and to effects of female modelling on the female self-image and on societal perception of women."

And so on, including a couple of sourcing sprees about the issues surrounding women in modeling, a minilecture about superwaifs, etc., etc. You seem to want to talk about nothing but: a) Your beliefs and feelings on gender issues, which were not actually germane to the discussion at all, and you managed to engage in multiple borderline WP:NPA violations in the process. (if I were a whiney-butt and ran to WP:ANI about it, I have little doubt that others would agree with me on that point; but my skin is thicker than that and I prefer to resolve things personally). And b) your very permissive interpretation of CATGRS (which is in such conflict with OVERCAT that I've now brought the issue up on OVERCAT's talk page), an interpretation others did not seem willing to support (even the keep !votes didn't go that far, and appeared to amount to "I like it" and "it's useful" mis-arguments, per WP:AADD, thus the "no consensus" closure – had the keep rationales not been AADD it would have been an overwhelming keep closure).

3. Re: "if this category is deleted, it is but a small tidyup matter to delete the subcats in a further CfD; the difference with depopulation is that emptying a category removes evidence of what he category was being used for, whereas populating an existing category is a widely-encouraged form of editing."

Not when the category is under deletion discussion! As an admin for a year or so, you must know this already. Well, you do now, since the closer chided you for it.

I'm sorry that we got into such a ruckus; I do not edit Wikipedia for the purpose of getting into verbal fights. But you have to expect one when you repeatedly insinuate that someone is a mysogynist just because they CfD a category that incidentally happens to be related to women in some way, and they express strong feelings that the category is a bad idea because of its uselessness and redundancy (i.e. it is dumb and ridiculous) and it conflicts with consensus and with WP:OVERCAT that F/M split categories should not exist except in exceptional cases, this obviously not being one them.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

McCandlish
  1. If you don't want fights, don't go dismissing the work of others as "dumb", "lazy" and "ridiculous".
  2. Using that sort of aggressive language deters women from participating in online discussions
  3. WP:OCAT includes a summary of WP:CATGRS. A summary doesn't override the full guideline
  4. I didn't talk about "beliefs and feelings on gender issues", I constantly tried to return the discussion to the tests set out in the guidelines
  5. Yet when I illustrate one issue germane to those tests (superwaifs), you didn't discuss sources, you didn't engage in rational debate, you just come here and dismsiss that by labelling it as my "beliefs and feelings".
One of those tests is to establish whether an encylopedic head article can be written on the subject, and on wikipedia the main way we establish that is by discussing sources. You could have participated in that discussion, but instead of actually examining the encyclopedic worth of the subject, you preferred to justify all your sneer words
(Friendly hint for the future: If you actually want a rational discussion, you'll do best to explain why you think that something is redundant, rather just dismissing it is as "ridiculous". On the other hand, if you want to start a ruckus, just stick with the sneer words. Your call, but don't please don't go doing it with people bigger than you.)
Anyway, I am astonished that you now have the cheek to come my talk page and complain because an objection was made to your aggressive language. But I am less astonished than I was, because I can't actually see any evidence in any of this that ever wanted a rational debate on the subject of the category.
When others tried assessing the issues, you responded with your aggressive sneer-phrases, and when people tried assessing the viability of an encyclopedic head article the best you coukd do is to dismiss it as "feelings" or "ideology".
Dismissing women's arguments as "feelings" or as "feminist ideology" is a classic piece of misogynistic belittlement. I don't buy it, and I don't put up with it.
Now get off my talk page and stay off, and go back to discussing things wherever it is that you find it acceptable to dismiss others ideas as "dumb", "lazy" and "ridiculous", and wherever it is that any argument made by a woman can be acceptably sneered at as "feelings" or "ideological". I do not know where those places are, but this talk page is not one of them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Regarding your "get off my talk page" edit summary, sorry but this is what talk pages are for. If you are unwilling to resolve disputes via talk pages, then I don't know why you bother participating in Wikipedia at all. If you would rather resolve it on my talk page, that's fine, or we can mutually agree to just drop it and leave it unresolved, but neither you nor anyone else is in a position to order me not to attempt to resolve a dispute. If you believe that you have this magical right because you are an admin, then you should not be an admin. And it's grossly unfair of you to respond to my post here with assertions and even questions and then attempt to deny me the ability to respond.
To continue the attempt at getting us to see eye to eye: This has nothing whatsoever to do with you being female. Criticizing a category, even harshly, that happens incidentally to have something to do with women is not in any way an intimidation of women editors. By that reasoning, hardly any category could ever be CfD'd; CfDing a category about Pokemon monsters would be an "intimidation" of Pokemon fans, etc. I also criticized your, individiual, particular, CfD reasoning, which is a completely different matter. I don't understand why you seem unwilling to see past the "any criticism of a woman and how she goes about arguing a feminist position is necessarily a misogynist criticism" logic error. And I'm sorry if my style has put you on edge. But, if this debate had been about "Republican models" or "Christian models" everything I have been saying all along would pertain, precisely as I have expressed it, to anyone arguing a position that criticism of a particular category relating to that topic is automatically anti-Republican or anti-Christian, or that criticism of what I see as logically faulty arguments from a defender of such a category is automatically anti-Republican or anti-Christian. That's all. And frankly, I find it disturbing that you appear to be saying that any use of "aggressive" language is automatically intimidating to woman. I don't think I know any women who would agree with such a disempowering opinion. But perhaps I misunderstand you. Viewed from a distance after a deep breath your meta-argument with regard to this debate (as opposed to with regard to the category) appears to amount to "men aren't allowed to argue with women on any issue relating to women because doing so is automatically mysogynistic and intimidating", and obviously that is an implication that is unacceptable (probably to anyone).
There is nothing "cheeky" about objecting to personal attacks, even if they are carefully constructed to give you a margin of plausible deniability. You have again mischaracterized what I am saying. I have no objection at all to you labeling my CfD comments "aggressive", though I do not agree with the characterization, and I have never raised any such objection. I object to being labeled "misogynist" (for the third or fourth time now!) simply because I disagree with you about something that happens to touch on the topic of women, and I disagree with your debate tactics, and you happen to be a woman.
Regarding your "friendly hint", I did explain, several times, why the category is redundant, the short version being (again) that all of the articles that could possibly be categorized there already have useful, unambiguous homes in the article categorization system; the category is redundant for the same reason as the two hypothetical ones I just mentioned. Models could be classified by any of thousands of possible intersections, but model (sometimes something more specific like "fashion model", where subcategorization is needed) and nationality suffice just fine, and makes sense in the Wikipedia context, and the rest do not (the very reason that WP:OVERCAT was written was to prevent categorization by random intersections of nondefining character). There are additional points with regard to why the category should be deleted per CfD precedent, but I need not regurgitate the entire CfD thread.
I did not label your raising the idea of "superwaif" to be your beliefs, feelings or ideology. Please stop mischaracterizing what I write. I labeled your turning a simple CfD about redundancy and precendent into a bitter flamewar about feminism, despite all attempts to "not go there" by me, and your almost immediate descent into ad homimen character assassation, to be your beliefs, feelings and ideology. I think you confuse me for someone who is dismissive of feminism as belief, feelings and ideology. As I've already indicated twice, this is not my position at all, and I doubt strongly that you and I would substantively disagree on anything about feminism or gender politics. I am dismissive of illogical debate tactics that misuse feminism (or any other concept), as beliefs, feelings and ideology. I hope you can see the distinction I'm making here, whether you agree with my characterization of your arguments or not. I admit that the characterization is not kind, though I do not believe it to be unfair.
I acknowledge your point that in order to determine whether an encyclopedic main article on the topic could be written, one has to look into sources. You seem unwilling to acknowledge my point that whether such an article could be written, regardless of whether that question is the main thrust of CATGRS, is only one of many criteria to consider at CfD (and in my view hardly the most important one). We can rationally disagree on that. The thrust of the CfD was that the category in question is deficient in other ways, ways that obviate any need to ask and answer that question. I believe that the closing admin also understand this point, and that this is one of several reasons that it was closed as "no consensus".
If you really do not wish to continue this discussion, here or on my talk page, then please simply move it to your archive pages. If you continue to engage in replies, however, then you cannot expect me to not reply back. That's like duct-taping the other party's mouth so they can't respond and then declaring yourself the winner of the argument! :-/
PS: I am perfectly comfortable with Wikipedia's informal and formal mediation systems.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
PPS: I am often not excessively polite in XfDs (e.g. "claptrap" in Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 November 23#Template:NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader), but you are the first person in over two years to take this level of offense. It is tempting to think you are just being oversensitive, but for all I know you may represent the opinions of a silent majority, so I honestly will endeavor to use less critical ("aggressive") terimology when characterizing items up for XfD, since I don't really need to take a strident tone to get my point across, and at least in this case doing so clearly backfired. Hope that helps; your words have had a postive effect amid the negative between us, and I hope mine in some way will as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Update: WP:ANI#"Ordering" someone to not use one's talk page confirms: A Wikipedian (admin or not) does not have a magical "right" to prevent others from addressing concerns about that editor on his/her talk page, and deletion versus archival of such talk pages posts is strongly deprecated by Wikipedia-wide consensus. (Note: That link will at some point move to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive113#"Ordering" someone to not use one's talk page.)— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notice

If you persist in personally attacking me, in talk or in edit summaries as you did again here, I will escalate this to WP:ANI. Being an admin does not make you magically exempt from WP:NPA, nor does it make you magically immune to having issues with your editing raised on your talk page. Feel free to immediately archive or even delete this (WP:USERPAGE specifically state that warnings may be removed, as tacit acknowledgment that they have been read); I do not intend this one to be a conversation of any kind. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[Just for the record, she did it again out of spite here.]

[edit] Category talk edits

Thanks for the tips. I'd seen other category talk pages within the parent category that had those and strove for consistency. I was right that consistency was needed, but now that I've researched this further, I see that you're right and a different kind of consistency was what was needed. If I goof on something, I want to learn it quickly, so your remarks are appreciated. We never stop learning. Doczilla (talk) 02:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed! I like that phrase, "a different kind of consistency was what was needed". :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Request an account‎

Resolved. It's all figured out now.

I noticed you requested a doppelganger account at WP:ACC, before removing the request. I almost tried to do something similar a while ago (I wanted to create User:Bameca to prevent impersonation), but then realized that if you can't create the doppelganger yourself, then neither can an impersonator. So you don't need to use WP:ACC for doppelganger account creation. --barneca (talk) 04:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Except that I already HAVE two impersonators; someone has evidently been able to convince Wikipedia:Request an account that their request was legit, since User:SMcClandlsh would have triggered the "too similar" denial, because I already have User:SMcClandlish as a doppelganger. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I saw your comments at WP:ACC. The world makes sense again, glad it worked out. I do understand your concern about impersonators; I had one myself a few weeks ago: [3]. But yes, we definitely check why the software is preventing account creation prior to doing it at WP:ACC. --barneca (talk) 11:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:BrownHairedGirl

Resolved. Not relevant to this talk page.

I just noticed you're having some trouble with her as well: she also abuses her administrative powers to delete articles about supercentenarians. Extremely sexy (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no knowledge of that. The issue between us is a personal matter of civility, disagreement over CfD precedent, and a few other things, but unrelated to admin powers. The issues do not seem related to me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Please don't talk nonsense, Bart. I have never used my administrative powers to delete any such articles. (Nominating an article at AfD requires no admin powers). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) —Preceding comment was added at 14:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Indeed! We'd be in a world of hurt if it did... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
But still no explanation as to why expecially those articles are being attacked by BrownHairedGirl though. Extremely sexy (talk) 14:51, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Boy o boy. Although using the word attacked is quite an interesting way of wording it.. Neal (talk) 17:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC).
Everyone cares more about some issues than others. <shrug> I don't see any problem at all with someone who, say, hates articles on individual minor anime characters having those separate articles devoting a lot of time to AfDing them. Nothing wrong with that, even if it does reveal a personal bias or peeve. AfD makes a community decision, after all. I looked at some of the supercentenarian stuff, and tend to side with BHG; the sources are in fact quite shaky in many cases. I can't speak at all as to her use of admin powers in this area, since I haven't been watching it. And I'm not in a position to defend BHG from abuse of the term "attacked", since I'm in a position of defending myself from borderline personal attacks from her, so I have a sort of inverse conflict of interest. That said, I would like to note that this isn't User talk:BrownHairedGirl and this thread isn't germane to me or my editing, so I'm marking it "Resolved". If people are upset with BHG, they can take that up with her at her page (good luck!), bring it up at WP:ANI if there is actual admin power abuse, not just someone irritated at her focus on a particular type of article at AfD, or whatever. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your comments

Resolved. Moved discussion back to other user's page, which I am watchlisting temporarily for responses.

cite me a wikipedia policy or guideline that states that i must capitalize my sentences or personal pronouns on talk pages, then your unsolicited comments will have some actual substance. otherwise, please find more constructive use of your time here. wikipedia is not an IM or text messaging system, quite correct. talk pages are not encyclopedia articles. you will not find a single instance where my edits of actual encyclopedia articles are less than appropriate. we are here to edit an encyclopedia, not bitch about other user's style on talk pages. i don't recall ever having interacted with you in any manner, why do you feel it appropriate to castigate me as you have? Please try to be more civil. Anastrophe (talk) 15:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Replied back at your talk page so as to not fork the discussion for no reason. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All markup is parsed

Hello. I noticed this edit where you change <CODE> to <code>, and thought this info could be useful: actually there was nothing to fix because it's not XHTML but case-insensitive wikimarkup. It is never sent as is to the page but always parsed and rewritten, as much as a double or triple apostrophe code, and the final browser page gets "<code>" or whatever else is deemed appropriate by current standards. I think it's useful to know, because it means that:

  • We're free to write <br /> or <br/> or <br> or even <BR> in markup because they all end up the same in the final page anyway. And actually it's much more convenient, space-wise, to use <br> or <BR> in cramped infoboxes rather than the easily-split <br />.
  • We can conveniently write <REF NAME="Foo"/> without an extra space for old browsers, which is handy too in heavily referenced articles.
  • Using lowercase or uppercase tags in wikimarkup is thus a mere matter of personal preference rather than code correctness. (As you guess, I incline towards all-caps tags because it visually separates them from the actual prose and makes my editing easier.)
  • Last but not least, it means we don't have to mind or fix old HTML or invalid XML, such as the ubiquitous <br>, since it's valid wikimarkup that generates the same final page.

I too used to "fix" <br> to <br /> until I found out it didn't change anything at all for the page ;-) Regards, — Komusou talk @ 16:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

There's several problems with this:
  1. It encourages invalid coding; upper-case markup and unclosed empty elements have not been valid since the advent of XHTML 1.0. Don't teach or reinforce bad habits, since they are not likely to remain inside Wikipedia pages. This is actually much more than a "standards compliance activism" point - there are many situations in which correct code is important in Wikicode. Some examples: {{DEFAULTSORT}} != {{Defaultsort}}; <ref name="Foo"> != <ref name="Foo" />; and so on. We seriously do not want to give new editors (or long-standing but less technical ones) the impression that wikicode is generally case-insensitive nor that /'s in XML constructs are generally optional! D'oh!
  2. All of WP is open content. While some third-party users of this content get entire database dumps and run the MediaWiki code themselves (the wholesale mirror do this), many do not and instead use the source code of WP pages, strip out the WP headers and other stuff they don't need (there are markers in the code that can be used to "cut here" and just get article content), and this might leave invalid markup in the code that third parties attempt to make use of. I honestly do not remember whether the MediaWiki code is smart enough to convert "<CODE>" to "<code>" before sending it to the browser, but even if it is there is no guarantee it will always do so, and this does not solve the related problem of individuals copying not the rendered source code but the edit-window source code, in which case the MW software's features aren't germane.
  3. Your point about '<ref name="foo"/>' with no space isn't valid; ref isn't XHTML but XML that is parsed by the server and turned into completely different, XHTML, code for browsers (old or otherwise). Likewise: "the final browser page gets '<code>' " - no, it doesn't; the browser never sees nowiki, because that is more server-side MW XML.
  4. I (a web development pro since 1993) have to date never seen proof that any browser anywhere cannot handle "<br />" but can handle "<br/>"; I've seen this alleged many times, but never once has anyone offered any evidence.
  5. "We're free to write <NOWIKI><br/>": Yes, and we're also free to change that to less YELLING, sloppy code. Heh. :-)
  6. I disagree that it makes editing easier; the ALL CAPS is an eyesore, especially to anyone who has been online since pre-Web days; all caps means I AM YELLING AT YOU!!!, and is very annoying. It is also grossly inefficient, because it requires double the keystrokes - you have to shift-key all of this. If you find it hard to distinguish code from content in edit windows, then use WP's external editor feature with a code-highlighting text editor; don't make the code difficult for everyone else just because you out of millions have an indiosyncracy with regard to source code formatting. :-)
  7. Relatedly, I have a strong suspicion that is literally is either yelling, or spelled-out as if an acronym, in screen readers for the blind. I am not blind and don't have such software; ask at WP:ACCESSIBILTY.
  8. You're right that we don't have to fix old code, but there is no reason to not do so; many like me do it pretty much instictively any time we encounter it, while others have written bots and AWB scripts to do it.
  9. Penultimately, it seems to be that it should be pretty obvious that the consensus is to use lower case, since virtually no one but you on WP uses upper case (I encounter upper-case elements about 1-3 times per month, and at somewhere between 25K and 30K edits, I edit a lot).
  10. And finally, I would also not hesitate to bet that were the issue to come up at MOS or VP or RFC that a consensus would emerge that properly constructed XML is preferred even if not absolutely mandatory, because detecting and converting malformed XML is extra work for the server. Waitaminnit, this did already come up at MOS and play out the way I predicted! I know that at least one MOS page already says this in some form or other, either implicitly or explicitly, because we already had that debate there, with the first point I raise here actually being the one that swayed consensus toward using valid and well-formed code. This was probably either at MOS or MOSNUM, but it was 6 months ago or so, so I am misremembering the details.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:43, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to break in here; I just want to mention that your hyperbole ("grossly inefficient", emphasis mine) in point #6 above amuses me :-) For a moment I thought you meant that uppercase letters waste 12.5% more energy because they have an extra 1-bit in comparison to lowercase letters, but this is in fact the other way around... and I'd like to note that for any sequence of two or more uppercase letters, I use CapsLock (yes, there are still people who use that key). I know that still means two extra keystrokes, but it's better than the factor of two you mean. Anyway, thank you for the giggle (as much at my own fantasy as at your hyperbole) and best regards, Phaunt (talk) 20:11, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, few people use caps lock for strings that short. I don't think its hyperbolic at all to call a increase in keystrokes of nearly 100% (i.e. not counting the angle brackets) for most users "grossly inefficient". I could have used a different word, but all that grossly means is "largely", even if some people misuse the word to mean something like "so terribly I think I might keel over and die" in their personal idioms; I have heard it used that way, but I think it's silly. Reminds me of people who say "ironic" when they mean "sarcastic", etc. I also got a chuckle out of the bits point; I hadn't even thought of that!  :-)

[edit] MOS matters

Hi SMcC. Just a few small things to raise.

A recent comment at Dates and Numbers
You wrote:

As for "non–San Franscisco"/"non – San Franscisco", that's a no-brainer. That should be a hypen not an en-dash, and we don't space hyphens that way. I don't care if one magazine does it. They're simply being goofy.

Fair enough to be of that opinion, of course. But it is also well to note that not just "one magazine" would use the en dash in non–San Franscisco (Scientific American, certainly a major publication). CMOS practice appears to require it, in fact:

6.85 In place of a hyphen

The en dash is used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements is an open compound or when two or more of its elements are open compounds or hyphenated compounds (see 7.83). As illustrated by the first four examples below, en dashes separate the main elements of the new compounds more clearly than hyphens would (“hospital” versus “nursing home,” “post” versus “World War II,” etc.), thus preventing ambiguity. In the last two examples, however, to have used en dashes between “non” and “English” and between “user” and “designed” would merely have created an awkward asymmetry; the meaning is clear with hyphens.

the post–World War II years

a hospital–nursing home connection

a nursing home–home care policy

a quasi-public–quasi-judicial body (or, better, a judicial body that is quasi-public and quasi-judicial)

   but

non-English-speaking peoples

a wheelchair-user-designed environment (or, better, an environment designed for wheelchair users)

(Abbreviations for compounds are treated as single words, so a hyphen, not an en dash, is used in such phrases as “U.S.-Canadian relations.”)

The point about the last two examples is ambiguous. It cannot concern non- per se (given the other example), but non- along with a compound that does not include spaces. With its usual maddening carelessness CMOS gives no example of non- before a compound that does include a space. But the spirit of 6.85, along with the detail of the special pleading given for the last two examples, strongly favours non–San Francisco.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 23:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where they got that from. I can't find it in any other style guide, and I've only seen it few times in my life. Since CMoS says it, I guess we should allow for it, but not require it, and I would actually favor deprecating it. Just because it's in CMoS doesn't make it sensible; that style guide above all tends to say a lot of things that hardly anyone but its editors would agree with, and it often conflicts sharply with other style guides, both US and UK. I agree with "US–Canadian relations" and "hospital–nursing home connection", but those are not compounds at all but contrasting juxtapositions; the en dash is a stand-in for a word (variable depending upon context: "versus", "to", "and", etc.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Ellipses
Some time back we had some discussion of ellipses at WP:MOS. I see that since then you have stayed away from the section. So have I, after I imposed a tag on it calling for work to be done. I'm sure we both are reluctant to revisit that nest of difficulties. My stance is this, as I have made clear more than once: I want that section rendered consistent before I go back to it. At the moment it is not. It is also incomplete and wrongly structured, as a quick reading will show. I know we can avoid acrimony, and I'd rather a peaceful life than a well-written policy on the ellipsis, any day! When you or someone else fixes a few details there, I'll consider sharing in dialogue to move things along. (Sorry if that sounds touchy or petulant: I'm truly not certain that I'll continue with all these MOS wrangles, or much at Wikipedia at all, to be honest.) Note in the meantime that I have surveyed a couple of dozen sources on the topic. More than one calls for a space after the ellipsis and before punctuation that follows – at least one explicitly, and at least two others in examples. The topic is an unholy mess, at Wikipedia and just about everywhere else I have looked.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 23:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I hear ya; I don't want to get acrimonious about this stuff either. I agree the section need works. Also agree that sources differ on this. I think that, as with the point about MOS could acknowledge both methods, but prefer one. However, with regard to both of these points I have told PMAnderson on numerous occasions that the MOS is not a style guide in the normal sense – a document advising the world at random on style matters – but Wikipedia guideline about what to do on Wikipedia, only. So we do not need to ack. different takes on the issue, simply recommend one and stick to it. On the other hand, I argued strongly for (and got) space-endash-space and nospace-emdash-nospace equally accepted as separators of parentheticals. I don't think this is hypocritical (the case for this is very strong, while the others seem less so), but it does indicate that I'm not totally hard-core about MOS only advising one thing. I guess I'll be neutral on the matter for now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
A small change of wording
You changed this:

The difficulty does not arise for double quotes, and this is one of the reasons the latter are recommended.

to this:

This difficulty does not arise for double quotes, and this is one of the reasons the latter are recommended.

Now, the matter is pretty trivial. But I would like you to know that I thought of and rejected this in favour of the for a good reason. It is perfectly clear in the context which difficulty is meant; and the repetition of this in the same sentence but with a different referent is ever-so-slightly disconcerting and disruptive. The only reason I mention this is to let you know what sorts of innumerable minute agonies I endure in editing MOS: comparable, I'm sure, to those you have to put up with.

Finally, I like your work and I hope that we can collaborate on a few fronts. My own push would be for reforms to the editing system itself (you've noted and supported the one concerning the hard space, I see), and for a trimmed, centralised, and coordinated suite of style guidelines for Wikipedia. Tony, you, and I all want these things, I think. But for me the real worry is that none of this will turn out to be feasible. I'm still considering, as I say above, what if anything I want to do, since it may take up too much time, effort, and life. Anyway, best wishes to you – however things work out.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 23:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

"This" - I hadn't even noticed the repetition. I would rather replace the second "this" with "that" or just rewrite the sentence, though, and lead the sentence with "the". But I don't feel very strongly about it. I.e., won't object at all if you change it back.
It is all very time-consuming, and often frustrating. I still plug away at it, but have been largely working on other things. Despite our grumbling a while back, I respect your work as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
PS: I just re-read some of last month's interpersonal venting, and I'm amazed either of us let it go that far. Yeesh. Let's not do that again. Deal? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, of course. These things happen, and should be played out on users' talk-pages. Everyone can then move on, with suitably adjusted attitudes. That's what we've done, yes? And now we can communicate productively and cooperatively. All a part of the revised fallible-human-process protocol (see especially §5.894c).
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 01:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please fix Shane Van Boening page

Resolved. Dumb typo on my part.

I tried to undo the edit you made yesterday on this page, and I noticed that you changed it back. By my own admission, I am not as good as you with the codes. The reason I changed your edit is because, for some reasons -- and I do not know why -- your edit eliminates Shane Van Boening's name on the American pool player category. Look at the very bottom of Shane Van Boening's page. The edit somehow makes everything else invisible, thereby Shane's inclusion of American pool player category is gone. Could you maybe see what is going on there? I can't fix it other than undo your edit. I know you will make it right! :>) RailbirdJAM (talk) 08:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. I had to cut-and-paste the DEFAULT EDIT you inserted and place it elsewhere on the page. I do not know why, but your DEFAULT EDIT eliminated Shane Van Boening's name completely from the American pool player category. Please check it and make sure it is okay. Thanks in advance! :>) RailbirdJAM (talk) 08:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
It was my error; corrected it. I did not properly close (it said "->" instead of "-->") the HTML comment asking people not to mess with the DEFAULTSORTing of "Van Boening" vs. "Boening, Van", with the result that everything after the DEFAULTSORT was being treated as part of the comment. D'oh. I should have paid more attention to the edit preview. Also, fixed a redlinked category there while I was at it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Something useful

re: this

Because of my family history, I've spent— oh, say 47 years, give or take one way or another with one foot in the blue collar world, and the other in professional work (only 23 personally, though just as many helping my Dad in his practice)—so I hope you'll forgive me if I spoke strongly, for I meant no offense. BUT... in the blue collar world, one of the WORST things one can be accused of, is stealing another man's tools, which neglecting monetary and material costs, almost always means one is also undertaking the ultimate incivil (web) act— the one of stealing some of his time as well, for having the proper tool to do the job is almost always a big time saver, and time is something none of us have enough of in a busy life.

Around here, things (proposals, actions, etc.) which cost others time, or might do so, tend to be things that get me "hot and bothered", for far too many here are too young to appreciate their impact on others downstream, as it were. It really wears, but only time and experience will cure them, and by then, they'll probably be soo soo soooo frustrated they'll have ceased to put up with the hostile environment such constant changes cause that like far too many editors here have in the past, they'll stop... and edit no more.

SO minimizing unnecessary CHANGES is a good thing... it helps expert retention and learning curves for newbies. Not just confusing activity (with dubious payback) with progress. So, forgive me if I think that sort of proposal is precisely the wrong thing to be doing at Tfd... the time cost is too high far too often when one is converting a generic tool that has long been established. Where is the harm in having a second wrench in the toolkit? Bottom line: Any self-respecting craftsmen would have tens of such, not just one or two.

Were your proposal feasible, the proper way to go about it would be to rewrite the older {'2', '3', ...,'7'} templates to use '8', verify each is working, and perhaps shuffle out the numbers so there were less in the end. [but only if nothing is currently linking the template page. Identify the least used lower number and clear THAT, move '8' there, and then you can proceed with others. But this is conversion work that can go on solely if the syntaxes are fully compatible, or a redirect can be made, etc. I'm sure you know what I mean.]
   But the WORK AND TIME COST should be born by YOU... not someone else you victimize unwittingly because you happened to have an impulse one day to "trim fat" or however you rationalize such a deletion package.
   One thing is certain... were those all to disappear or need special pipetrick coding, someone else will have to PAY A TIMECOST going forward to learn a new syntax, simply because you are insensitive today anticipating the problem you will cost them.

None of that addresses the problems you might be causing in template expansion limits, which are likely enough given that such templates tend to be used solely on long complex list articles, not simple pages.

You want to do something immediately useful, clean up the damn usage in '8' so it's not referring to '7' which has nothing in usage at all. It's a bit hard for someone to know you know what you're talking about when neither usage repeats, and I fought long and hard for decent documentation capability and find unclear 'references' to other pages offensive. If nothing else, consolidate the usage in one page and use {{Documentation|Common usage pagename}} calls. Be well, and have a good day! // FrankB 15:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I've responded to this at the TfD, where this conversation belongs. Please do not post longwinded and rather incivil rants on the user talk pages of XfD nominators you disagree with; keep the discussion at the XfD, unless there is a personal matter to be discussed with that user (e.g. they have been incivil or attacking in the XfD, etc.) that isn't tied to the XfD issues. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English Billiards

I have a book about it here you see from the library, so I'm trying to mention as much as I can about some of the contents before I have to renew it! I plan to write something about the history of English Billiards.

Tell me what you think of the John Roberts Jr. (billiards player) and William Cook (billiards player) pages. Sadly the book has little about their lives, but it has a lot about the games. I can be more score specific at times if requested.

Alex Holowczak 14:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

That's great! We've needed articles on the Robertses and Cook for a long time. Please fully cite this book with {{Cite book}} in these articles; it will just save others a whole lot of time later, tracking that book down and getting the details all over again. What other articles is it being used as a source in? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: Were any other sources used for the Robert and Cook articles, or only that book? If the latter, we can use <ref> tags to indicate this; it generally is not safe to simply add one source down at the bottom of the article, because others will edit the article later and add new facts, with different sources, eventually making it impossible to tell what facts were sourced by the first reference added. I can handle that part. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
They were the only source I used. However, I have a question. You've tagged with "POV", but the Point of View is Clive Everton's, i.e. from the book, where he states that the fans considered him to generally be the better the player. So is the "POV" tag still warranted? Alex Holowczak 18:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes. We would need to quote Everton verbatim, and make it clear that we were doing so, otherwise it is Wikipedia offering its own collective opinion on who was the better player. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:15, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Primarysources tag

I added the tag because I could not find details of the book quoted as the source John Roberts Jr. (billiards player). I even tried Amazon UK but couldn't find it. For what it's worth (and that is very little) I am pretty sure I have read the book. Hammer1980·talk 16:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, books like that can be very difficult to find via sources like Amazon. They are mostly in libraries (where our Roberts article author got it) or in the hands of collectors. Anyway, my point had been that the primary sources tag is for things like manuscripts and other works that come directly from the subject of an article (the problem with primary sources is they often need interpretation, which leads to WP:OR too often). This isn't a primary sources problem, but hard-to-find source. I have asked the article writer to fill out the ref citation fully with {{Cite book}} so we should get more info shortly (publisher, ISBN, etc.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:18, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
That is the info I looked for on Amazon. I wasn't trying to find the book to buy. I understand your point but without being able to establish the primary (only) source as verifiable then in my opnion there is a lck of primary source. I will ahve another hunt around to find more about that book.Regards. Hammer1980·talk 17:58, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh! We have been talking past each other. You mean the "main, principal or only source in a article". I was confused by what you were saying (and you seem to have been confused by the name of the template), in that this is not the meaning of the prase "primary source" in Wikipedia (or in the field of research much more generally); see WP:NOR for more details on what "primary source" means here (and what that template refers to). Also, WP:V and WP:RS are quite clear that a source does not have to be readily available for it to be a valid source here; no tagging needed. The source in this case can certainly have more said about it than has been said, though, such as publisher and so on. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Anyway its sorted now, and I found the details on the book so have added them.Hammer1980·talk 18:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Schweet. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Good to hear that the book turned up! If you (i.e. anyone) can add those tags to the other pages then go ahead. Alex Holowczak 18:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Already done. Hammer1980 put it into {{Cite web}} and I made it an inline reference with <ref...> in each section, with a note not to interpolate new material w/ new sources w/o also making sure that the attribution to this source isn't broken. See the wikicode at the article; should be instructive on how to do this yourself next time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Wikilawyering

Resolved. db-move taken care of.

Howdy, the redirect at Wikipedia:Wikilawyering has been deleted. Best wishes, --TeaDrinker 19:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Since no page move has occurred, I have gone ahead and restored the page. If you wish to have it deleted again, feel free to contact me. Thanks, --TeaDrinker 00:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Was at dinner, sorry. Wikipedia:WikiLawyering needs to move to Wikipedia:Wikilawyering to agree with the text of the page there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Deleted again. - auburnpilot talk 20:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Since you appear to be off line again, I've moved the page and noted it as your request. - auburnpilot talk 21:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh, thanks. I was at lunch this time. Must seem like all I do is eat! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your deletion from Template:Fact/doc

"Okay then: Rv. re-addition of articlespace template that has no applicabity here at all, and appears to be random and capricious weirdness. Try talk page if there's an actual rationale for adding it."

I already have done. How did you come to the conclusion that it has "no applicabity [sic] here"? Moreover, the template may be intended for the article namespace, but how else is one supposed to bring up the issue that a template is or seems to be badly named? -- Smjg 12:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually read the template: "The title of this article seems not to accurately describe the article's subject matter." Template:Fact is not an article. If you don't like the name of it, start a thread about that on the talk page. Better yet, just use {{Citation needed}} or {{cn}}, and don't worry about it. Some people like to use {{fact}}, others like to use a more mnemonic name, and it is of no consequence at all. PS: I'm sorry I labelled that one edit "Rvv"; I had no idea that someone put that template there in good faith; it looked like someone making a WP:POINT or just adding random templates for the heck of it, since that's an articlespace template about WP:NPOV issues, which aren't germane to whether a template is usefully named. I have more than 2000 pages on my watchlist, so it is inevitable that I'll misflag a few things as vandalism when they are not. No personal insult intended! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Why are you telling me to "start a thread about that on the talk page" when I've just told you that I already have done? Moreover, I do use {{cn}}. But that doesn't in any way stop anybody from having this question. -- Smjg (talk) 00:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I think we are talking past each other. What I am saying is:
  1. Removing the template was appropriate, because it did not make sense in the context; it is an articlespace, not templatespace, cleanup tag, and its very wording refers to "this article", not "this template", and the concern behind that cleanup tag is WP:NPOV policy - i.e. article titles that misrepresent the nature of an article or its subject, which is not applicable to {{Fact}}.
  2. Labeling that removal "Rvv" was a mistake on my part, for which I apologize.
  3. What the name of {{Fact}} should be is a topic for that Template talk:Fact; you now indicate that you've taken the discussion there, so hurray. My point on this was that you and I talking about it on my talk page won't do anything one way or the other to resolve that question.
  4. If you are already aware of and using the {{cn}} name for this template, then what's the issue? What the real name of the template is, isn't really of much consequence.
Hope this was clearer than the last version. :-) PS: Sorry if I seemed grumpy in the original reply (if I recall correctly, I was just in a hurry, so I wrote more brusquely than usual). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your warning on Goldquest

Resolved. Just a chat; nothing requiring further resolution.

Hi, This is regarding your warning on Goldquest- the article being one-sided (negative) ,I completely agree with you , but you might also note that excluding some attempts to blank the page there were no positive edits to the page, which is why the article appears one-sided. Also if you look at the google results for goldquest (excluding blogs and goldquest's homepage), the results are mostly negative. In my opinion (I am new to wiki-editing so correct me if i am wrong) instead of putting the page up for deletion , the other view point should be added.-- Ubraga608 —Preceding comment was added at 14:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I did not put the page up for deletion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Up the revolution

Resolved. Just an FYI.

Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Proposal_to_merge_this_page_with_MOS. Tony (talk) 03:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I weighed in. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry

...to be a little harsh and hot-headed on the Card Shark discussion page. I see you're supporting your arguments and being funny to boot. I'll listen to what you have to say. Cheers, Wikidemo (talk) 13:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No worries; I got a little carried away too, and just re-edited my comments at the AfD in response to you as being too harsh on the first draft. May still be. I think I will re-edit them again. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Just did so. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TfD

Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_November_27#CompactTOCs_merge_and_rename has been closed, and the instructions set forth in your nom are endorsed. I, however, am not going to do the clean-up, it's too large of a task. RyanGerbil10(Говорить!) 03:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Someone volunteered to do at least some of the AWBing; am in touch. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge on List of champion snooker players

Hi, I would partially oppose the move. The page has had a patchy history, first being AfD'ed when it was titled "notable players" due to potential POV concerns. The compromise was "champion players" which, now that I look at the page, I am not really 100% with. The aim (and I think it is a very sensible aim) is to get together a article with the "names" of snooker. I would use the word notable but it has been stricken from the record as being POV. Essentially we want an article that highlights the big names in snooker - but not at the preclusion of having won the world championship. People like Jimmy White - and a more recent example in Ding - I think are important to be included in the ensemble without only having a mention in the ridiculously long List of snooker players. Thoughts welcomed (this can be cc'ed across to the article talk page if there are more noises, but they are pretty low traffic pages and issues). SFC9394 (talk) 20:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that such an exercise as you describe is POV, by definition. At least being World Champ is an objective criterion. The "champion snooker players" list is almost certainly destined for AfD as soon as someone notices its subjectively inclusive nature. The World Champions list is safe, since it is documentable and objective, so no one can attack it on the grounds of it being nonencyclopedic. I've looked around and so far can't find a list like the champion players list at issue for any other sport or activity. No list of baseball greats or brilliant minds in chemistry or champion race car drivers. This strongly suggests to me that such lists aren't encyclopedic, and where they have been created they've either been deleted or converted to objective criteria like world record holders in baseball, Nobel prize-winning chemists, winners of the Indianapolis 500, etc. I'd prefer that WP:SNOOKER just merge them now and redir the subjective article to the objective one, rather than wait for someone to AfD it, because such an AfD might well draw attention to other WP:NPOV, WP:V, etc. problems that are still rampant in the snooker bio articles, many of which are barely-altered copy-pastes (i.e. copyvios) from World Snooker's website and other previously published material. We have so much cleanup to do that creating additional questionable articles seems like a dangerous idea. I'll respond in less length over at the merge-to article's talk page, just so it's there and others have a chance at input either way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry

Resolved. Non-issue.

I really didn't understand that Top-16 snooker players is a legitimate topic. To place it for speedy deletion was my mistake. I apologise for that. I also apologise for not proving edit summary. From now I will surely provide edit summary and will be very careful in placeing speedy deletion template. Thank you. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 01:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

No worries. The top-16 in any sport are probably notable. Well, other than underwater nocturnal speed basketweaving. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad this has been resolved. Samasnookerfan (talk) 19:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Right! PS: I'm not certain the Top-16 snooker players article should actually be a separate article, though, instead of a section at List of snooker players. I have raised this issue at WT:SNOOKER. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger of Wikiproject Trivia Cleanup

Hi, I would just like to say that, unlike some of the others from the discussion, I did not assume bad faith. I felt that you had reasons for thinking the projects should be merged and, although I disagree with you, I feel that you have every right to express your opinions. I can see that you had a ligitimate reason in choosing Trivia and Popular Culture as the main project. It does have a broader scope and could easily be seen as the better choice from that respect. Also, as far as the merger as a whole goes, at first glance the projects do seem similar in many respects and many people have discussed merging them over the past few months. Likely, many will want to merge them in the future. If you felt any my comments were a personal attack or that I assumed bad faith, I am sorry and would like to offer an apology. Johnred32 (talk) 01:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Nothing about your post in particular; the entire response was just negative in a rather too ad hominem way rather than sticking to the issues raised by the nomination, and including what appears to me to be inappropriate admin activism. The very fact that these two projects are infighting is the most compelling reason for the community as a whole (be it via TfD or not) to cause them to merge. This would necessarily engender compromise, reconciliation and consensus, in place of the current situation of strife, entrenchement and side-choosing. But, as I said in closing comments at the TfD, I don't care very strongly about this particular case; I'm sure others who do will help reconcile the current mess. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re. Speedied snooker thing

Resolved. No out-standing issues.

Sorry, I'm not an admin so I can't see deleted pages. However, I did manage to find google's cache of the article, which may be of some use to you. --carelesshx talk 03:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Damn, I feel a bit stupid now. The article in question was moved to Top-16 snooker players and is identical. Should have noticed that before. --carelesshx talk 03:11, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Cool. I suspected they might be the same. I'm not sure why but I thought you were the admin that deleted it, was why I asked you. Hmph. Weird. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

It was not clear from your MFD nomination that you believe that one of the projects has run astray. If it has, it may be worthwhile bringing this up on the admin noticeboard. We are capable of forcibly shutting down a project if need be, but that is an extreme measure that would certainly need more evidence of problems than has been shown. As it stood, the MFD was generating more heat than light, so I don't think it would have helped your cause. >Radiant< 16:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't think that one or the other project has completely run off the rails. Rather, the situation is that the consensus-building process has crashed and burned on this topic. Instead of people working toward a consensus view of what to do about trivia in articles, two warring factions have set up competing projects, and are more and more entrenching their views and fortifying their defenses against the competing project (something similar though less marked has also been taking placed between WP:TRIVIA and WP:HTRIVIA, which I've also been pushing toward merger). I took it to MfD because merge discussions on the projects' talk pages have failed to produce a consensus. I'm not afraid of heat; hot XfDs often eventually generate light, as is now happening at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Card shark and did a few days ago at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 November 27#CompactTOCs merge and rename, which both began heated and some would say looked like WP:SNOWBALLs for early closure. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lefover tidying up

See Template talk:CompactTOC2#Editprotected: TfD merge nomination. If the deletion notice does need removing, let me know and I'll do it. Wanted to check with you first about what was happening. Carcharoth (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Some AWBing needs to be done. The notice can certainly be removed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcuts

Not sure it's even worth mentioning, but all of the national/language related style guides have been using hyphenated MOS shortcuts, so I don't find them highly irregular: WP:MOS-AR, WP:MOS-KO, WP:MOS-JP, WP:MOS-ZH, WP:MOS-IR. Dekimasuよ! 03:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point. It seems superfluous and inconsistent (in the larger scheme) to me, but if it is that internally consistent, then I would not have any issue with being reverted on the -zh and -jp changes I made. Better to have a consistent exception to the overall consistency than near-consistency with exceptions that are not consistent with each other, so to speak. Meaning, any MOS subpage shortcuts of this sort that are not hyphenated should be. And non-hyphenated versions of the shortcuts should also exist, even if they are not "advertised". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Filled in the gaps for these as requested and rehyphenated the two you mentioned. There are others not listed as guidelines enjoying consensus, and those might still have irregularities. Sorry to bug you about it - just now noticed the RfDs on the MOS:XYZ pages. Dekimasuよ! 07:25, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Keen. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Card shark AfD issue

(I'm moving the entire conversation over here, rather than have it in two places at once.) Rray (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You don't seem to consider that my experience with this editor aside from his/her posts on this specific page may inform my opinion of what the editor is doing. No "motive" or "judgment about intentions" is assumed – I did not theorize (and honestly have no idea) why seemingly desperate source falsification would be happening; that it is, is clear, and that is problem enough. This isn't even a matter of source interpretation, but a matter of completely misrepresenting what the alleged sources, which are very clear and in plain English, actually said. WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA are not Wikipedia:Be obsequious and brown-nosing at all times. If an editor earns criticism, I'm not prone to withholding it. And criticism is often required when an editor is pushing an unsourced PoV so hard that actual collaboration is thwarted. If your point is simply that I seem to be citing WP:DICK at this person in a roundabout way, you are correct, and I'm also quite well aware that to cite WP:DICK is itself a WP:DICKish thing to do in most cases; I'm not afraid of that – I've earned enough Wiki good will here that I can handle the temporary reputational sacrifice required by using this tactic to try to get through to this disruptive editor. I understand but deflect your criticism for going there in this case, because I think that in this case it is justified. If it weren't I'd be contrite about it and apologize. If it were simply a difference of editorial opinion, I would agree with you, but this is not an issue of that sort, but one of flagrant disregard for policy at WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I got your note on my talk page. I don't really care much about this particular AfD, although I disagree with you about the merge and the deletion. But I was actually trying to help you with your argument. Ranting about your problems with another editor in the AfD discussion actually weakens your argument rather than strengthens it. It makes it look like you're just creating the AfD in retaliation or frustration. You should focus on making your case instead of your dislike of another user.
Seems to me if you have a problem with another editor's behavior, then there are places to deal with that. It also seems to me like you already addressed your problems with this user in those places.
You might not care about my opinion, which is perfectly fine with me. :) But I assume because you took the time to post on my talk page that you had some interest. At any rate, we can probably agree to disagree and move on. Happy editing. Rray (talk) 03:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Also, I don't think that citing WP:DICK is always a dickish move, but I don't think you realize who's coming across that way in this particular situation. And I mean that in the kindest, gentlest way possible. Like I said, you can and should make your points without accusing people of being shrill or of being deliberately misleading. And you might not have noticed, but most of the people in the discussion oppose the deletion of that article, and there's only limited support for a merge. Rray (talk) 03:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Re: "Ranting about your problems with another editor in the AfD discussion actually weakens your argument rather than strengthens it": Good point. I was actually coming to that conclusion myself.
Re: "I don't think you realize who's coming across that way": Criticism noted and absorbed. I just bowls me over that someone would blatantly fake sources in that debate and I couldn't let that rest, but maybe I should have. Even I don't really give a darn about those two articles, it just irks me to see an article PoV-forked like that without any defensible basis for it. Perhaps I am letting that irritation get in the way of productiveness.
Re: "most of the people in the discussion oppose the deletion of that article": If the closing admin is paying attention, that won't matter, because the opposes have no backing. They are entirely based on personal PoV. It's been a week or nearly so, and my argument has been "there are no sources for the separation", hint hint. Even a single reliable source would probably undermine the entire AfD, but the separation demanders have not provided even one legitimate source. If it were 100 to 1 and all 100 were ILIKEIT !votes like that, the AfD should still close as "The consensus was: delete". AfD not being a vote, I just hope it's closed by someone that reads between the lines and thinks about the weight of the differing logics raised. "They're just different because I say so" is not a valid argument at XfDs.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond. I do think you are right that I've been too combative on this one, and I will internalize that and come out different, so it wasn't wasted effort. I do think the merge is still needed, but I needn't make a battle out of it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Your point is well-taken about the potential about how the AfD might turn out. Time will tell. At any rate, thanks for the discussion. I'm sure we'll see each other around, since we seem to be interested in at least some of the same subjects. :) Rray (talk) 13:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Piped links

Are you inclined to add your piped links proposal to wp:mosnum? Please answer there. Lightmouse (talk) 19:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you refresh my memory? I was in about 50 different WP discussions yesterday... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Proposal:_Do_not_use_surprise_links.
Lightmouse (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Band infoboxes

Thanks for your contributions in the band infobox discussion. Everything you said was very well articulated. Personally, I'm with you on the topic, as I consider myself middle of the road. I certainly don't think flags need to be everywhere, especially where they will cause strife. But I also see no reason why they should be hunted down and removed where they are innocuous. As I stated in my post, I just became tired of talking about the issue in that forum, because as you pointed out, it was a self-selected group of people with the same agenda (myself obviously excluded). Oh well. Anyway, thanks again for contributing to that. See ya around! --Andy (talk) 11:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Marco Fu

Hi, I don't know too much about the technicalities of wikipedia edits, but I accept the points you make. However, there is very little evidence that his nickname is "cue-man-fu" either. Try googling it - the only hit you'll get is the wikipedia entry. Even if you take the hyphens out, you only get a three times repeated blog post from October titled Beware Cue Man Fu.

There are several "anecdotal" uses of Hong Kong Fuey when you google it, leading me to believe that it is the most popular nickname for Marco Fu.

It may even be possible that the one blog mentioning "cue-man-fu" got the nickname from Wikipedia. The idea that Wikipedia is creating new "facts" is certainly an exciting one! But probably not the intended purpose of Wikipedia.

I think the best compromise would be to include both nicknames; failing that, to take away both nicknames.

One other point; the wikipedia entry specifically for snooker nicknames mentions both of their nicknames; perhaps Marco Fu's wikipedia entry should reflect this information.

Regards, Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.177.113.220 (talk) 22:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I flagged the longer-standing one as unsourced as well. My inclination would be to remove both, as neither is well-sourced or apparently any better-sourceable. One problem going on with these nickname fields is that they are subject to not just vandalism but original research. A sports journalist trying to be clever and coming up with some punnish phrase to describe a player doesn't make it a nickname, but any such usage is too likely to be added to articles here as a nickname. I bet that under this criterion, about 70% of the snooker "nicknames" should be deleted. This is probably a matter for discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports, really, or maybe even Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, as it affects much more than just snooker articles. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:41, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I removed both of them, and took the matter to WT:SNOOKER for broader discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:33, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hard space

Resolved. Done.

Hi Stanton, are you aware of the discussion on the hard space at ActionMOSVP? You haven't weighed in on the matter yet; perhaps you haven't had time yet, but I'm sure your opinion will be much appreciated. Regards, Phaunt (talk) 10:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the note. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It was about the words (re: Neologism)

Stuck. Discussion belongs at Talk:Neologism#Names are not neologisms.

Stanton:

In your rush to remove my contribution, apparently you ignored or overlooked that the posting was about words. Did you look at the source material?

The place names were words, which wre influenced by change in culture, politics etc. These in fact were made up words, and words that were new, with meanings that were manipulated for the larger purpose. You've missed the point.

Where is it written that a place name, which purports to be a new word, would not qualify within the spirit and intent of this article?

Take a look and think about this. With respect, your unilateral action is wrong on this, and apparently did not look at what I posted, or at the source material.

Best to you. 01:27, 14 December 2007 (UTC)Stan

I have not missed the point, I simply disagree with you. I did take a look and I did think about it, which is why I addressed the matter on the article's talk page, and directed you (and anyone else who cared) to that discussion, in my edit summary. As I can't discern a valid user-directed issue in the above, I'm deflecting this back to the article's talk page, since no consensus about what that article should say is going to be arrived at in "User talk:", after all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:32, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

FYI, I've responded to you on the Neologism discussion page. Thank you. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 15:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)Stan

[edit] Optional autoformatting

SMcCandlish, Perhaps I'm confused to see a "take to RfC first" edit summary by you (was this in relation to the current debate or the old unconverted metrics in science articles debate a while ago? So you do think the autoformatting issue should go to RfC first? I'd rather not, since MOSNUM is its own self, but I'll be influenced by your opinion. Tony (talk) 02:16, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Both of them. I do not believe that a metrics-only, unconverted-metrics or even metrics-first change has actual consensus at all, other than metrics-first in science articles. On the autoformatting issue I agree with you completely I think, but have reviewed some of the vitriolic debates over the matter from the past, and believe that getting sufficient buy-in to not cause either massive flamewars or worse yet people just ignoring the MoS is going to require more "advertising" of the change; RfC is a good way to do that, and is good ammo against claims that changes are being made by a micro-consensus or "cabal". It'll be a good CYA move under WP:PROCESS.
I.e., two completely different rationales for two different RfCs.
I could be wrong on the latter; perhaps just changing it won't cause such a backlash (since it isn't banning autodating, but saying it is optional), but "better safe than sorry", I say.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: I do a lot of WP:PROCESSy stuff, and find that it works pretty well if you understand the system's strengths and weaknesses. I have a lot of successful merges under my belt, as well as WP:MOSFLAG actually going through the proposal process and surviving with very little controversy at all (how many guidelines can say that, eh? I have read that the survival rate at WP:VPR is something like 5%). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think the change some time ago to allow unconverted metrics in articles on scientific topics (with consensus on the article's talk-page; i.e., not if people object, I guess) seems pretty mild and unobjectionable. Some people, including Americans, wanted more dramatic change. I haven't heard of grief about it since the change was made. On the proposal to make autoformatting optional, I suspect that the same principle might calm the hysterical naysayers: autoformatting may be dispensed with in an article provided there's consensus for doing so. I'm going to put it again soon. The situation at the moment has become a little fuzzy, since (1) "normally" is impossible to interpret or enforce; (2) we now have a set of guidelines for the raw date formats, and (3) MOSNUM already mentions situations in which autoformatting can't be used (date ranges, slashes). It's an inevitable step, I think, even if these people are going to make things difficult in the short term. I have no experience of taking proposals further up the food chain. Unsure. Tony (talk) 13:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Personally not happy about the "well, sometimes we just won't convert" bit, but have bigger fish to fry (e.g. WP:NCP cleanup lately; could use some backup on that; Francis seems a little over-protective of the extant version, though I can also understand his preference to hash out the overhaul on a draft-editing subpage; have done things that way before, and it is a reasonable request – in fact it's a technique we might want to start using at MOS pages to prevent "churn" in the "live" copies of the guidelines. Sorry for the very run-on parenthetical here).
I agree with you on the "make date autoformatting optional" stuff, as you know; all I'm suggesting is that we add an RFC tag to the top of the discussion (either the current one or the new, cleaner "reboot" of the topic you intend to do). It isn't hard, and I'm certainly not suggesting it be taken to WP:VPR. It'll just "advertise" the discussion a little and garner a little more input; due diligence against any claims of WP:OWNership at MOSNUM. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Would much rather have had "don't convert" in articles on scientific topics, since American school-kids should be getting used to metrics by now, and so should the elderly (Hoary has provided a quick-and-easy conversion method for them, if they still need it). The consensus bit was a significant compromise to get it through.
Will have a look at NCP. RFC is a good idea on the autoformatting thing. Tony (talk) 01:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen Hendry

Hi Stanton,, can you keep an eye on the above page for a potential edit war I want to avoid with an unreg. user? Thanks, bigpad (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Will do. What's the nature of the dispute? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
If we're speaking of recent twiddles by 134.36.37.86 (talk · contribs), I'm inclined to agree with his/her edits, since they are bit clarificational, if I may invent a perfectly reasonable new word. It may well be significant to our readers when who held what record, if I may write a really atrocious phrase full of question-words. Is there a factual dispute about these details? Like, if the cited sources do not actually support the anon's wording, then I absolutely would have to side with reverting them, since per WP:V and WP:RS we are not in a position to cite sources that do not actually support what the article says (or more accurately, we are not in a position to write something unsupported by the cited sources). If such is the case, it might be best to find additional sources to support the clarified wording (provided it is actually true). If I'm off-base, please let me know what anon is being problematic; I didn't look that far back in the article history, so I could be going on about the wrong anon. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Stanton, It's not so much a factual innacuracy but the overkill. As I said on IP user's page, it's about Stephen Hendry, not O'Sulluvan, and "his good friend" is anecdotal and could be moved down to the bottom of the page. And what is the evidence for this friendship? Some of the snooker pros say that there are no real friendships in this dog-eat-dog individual sport, other than the fact that they have to spend so much time travelling and playing together that they have to get on! And the IP 80. has been replaced by the same person on a different IP. I'm not going to lose sleep over this but the focus of the article should be sharp, not anecdotal. bigpad (talk) 13:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
"What is the evidence" is a good point; so let's remove at least that part. I do think I am getting your relevance point, and if you really feel the "O'Sullivanism" to be significant, I'll re-examine the issue, but am presently inclined to think that the distinctions drawn are useful/educational, no? Not worried by the IP shift; this often automatic – before I switched from DSL to cable, my IP address used to change darned near hourly. Very annoying. Anyway, I definitely have that watchlisted and if I see anything revertworthy I'll act on it. May go fix the "friends" thing right now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of relevance, after I restored some truly minor futzes by the anon, and added some cleanup tags, I noticed some yakkety-yak about some other player's cue getting bent; I believe it refers to Mark J. Williams but am not sure since there are two Mark Williamses that are notable in the snooker context and only one has an article here yet.) I think that should be moved to that player's article per the same objection you raise to going on and on about Ronnie O'S. While there are loads of stories to tell, they need to be told in the right places, yes? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I made an explicit move to open this as a discussion topic at Talk:Stephen Hendry#The record. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:11, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Article is tidied up a bit now, inc. the jargon section which did need some editing, and your comments above are spot on. All we're interested in is keeping POV out and the standards high. That's why the O'Sullivan article, which I've tweaked recently, is such a task. All the best, bigpad (talk) 15:12, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Piped links to 'year in topic'

Unresolved. Final editing of proposal still needed there

See my latest contribution at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Closure. None of us had noticed that guidance at wp:moslink on this has existed for some time. Lightmouse (talk) 15:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Responded at MOSNUM. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
I have added a comment over there. Lightmouse (talk) 14:07, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Contributions derogatory in nature

Resolved. Answered.

I recently made an edit on a pool player article page that I initiated long ago.

An unidentified person made an change in this article which was derogatory in nature to the article. I fixed it, but I wanted to know what is the best way to notify someone that this is happening. TIA! RailbirdJAM (talk) 13:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

There's a well-documented system for handling such transgression: See WP:UWT for full guidance on the usage of the appropriate user warning templates. There are several that can be used in cases like this depending upon the exact nature of the edits. If they are just sort of unsourced crap (not particular lycontroversial or offensive, just dubious), there is {{uw-unsor1}} and its escalated varieties. If it is POV-pushing, there is the {{uw-npov1}} family. If it is adding controversial and unsourced (but not necessarily blatantly attacking) material about a living person, {{uw-biog1}} and related. And finally if it constitutes blatant attacks on someone, living or otherwise, use the {{uw-defam1}} family of tags. There are many others, for WP:NOR violations, outright vandalism, and so on. When to escalate from a level-1 warning is matter of some subtlety and practice, but you'll figure it out (hint: If user already has, say, a level-2 warning this month, yours should be level-3, but you don't have to start with level-1 if the violation was egregious to a serious to really-really serious degree. If it was just unbelievably unconscionable, you can actually use {{uw-vandalism4im}} (one warning only, imminent block), but that is for cases like "John Q. Doe is a FATASS CHILD-RAPING PIG-PORKING SICK FCUKER WHO SUCKS BIG DONKEY D1CKS" type edits, as well as repeated total page blanking and other hard-core vandalism. If anyone transgresses with an issue addressed by these templates after a level-4 warning of any kind, they should be reported to WP:AIV for blocking. PS: If you literally mean that it was derogatory in nature toward the article itself rather than the article subject that would be {{uw-npa1}} ("whoever wrote this is a moron" - personal attack) or {{uw-agf1}} ("this article is completely stupid and intentionally misleading" - attacking the good faith behind the article. There doesn't seem to be a {{uw-civil1}}, so something like "this article is really badly written and is misleading" doesn't qualify for a user-warning template, though adding comments like that directly to the article rather than using HTML comments, edit summaries or cleanup tags might qualify for a {{uw-joke1}} - people should not be inserting their alleged wit, ascerbic or otherwise, into article prose. PPS: All such templates should be subst:'d. PPPS: WP:AGF and WP:NPA yourself, and don't assign a user-warning template more severe than is warranted. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings from my hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Boy times have changed since, I think it was about 1994. So much overhead to lug around, but nothing the woman I met in the San Diego DMV couldn't write around in about 2 seconds with something called "ST Include" for Windows. Only kidding, I forgot the program's name but writing around an operating system would be quite easy for someone who completed studies in India recently. Best wishes for the new year from someone who recognizes your name from more than a decade ago. And you helped me so much in about one email. -Susanlesch (talk) 23:22, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
I misremember what I allegedly said that was so helpful; refresh my memory? I think most W3C peeps found me to be a pain the nethers! And still do when I dare to wander into their talkspaces. Or are we talking about Usenet times? About all I remember from '94 was being in over my head! (I do remember you, but don't remember being helpful. D'oh.) Regardless, happy holidays to you as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
You'll be okay. -Susanlesch (talk) 19:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
But alas I swallowed a small piece of porcelain or thought I did (actually the cup was inexpensive but it was the only souvenir I had from a trip to Amsterdam other than two tulips now turned to bologna). How sad that people need to invent problems. -Susanlesch (talk) 07:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Not sure I follow you... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh! The TidBit's piece. Dang, that was a while back. I should check LinkedIn more often... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
At Thanksgiving, I borrowed a poem for the tune of the voice of Mrs. Laura Bush (you will recall Victoria and the others from many years ago in the Mac OS could read chat rooms after one signed off, until done, thus saving money for the user), "If I should die before I wake, I pray the lord(sp?) my soul to take. And please remember Neil Shapiro in my will." -Susanlesch (talk) 20:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hard spaces again

Resolved. Just a note.

You're keeping busy, I see!

Things are moving along at our page concerning hard spaces, after a bit of a lull. I hope you will stay involved, as we approach a crucial vote. Your participation is of great importance to the success of this action.

Best wishes to you.

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 00:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, you too. I will look into it again. I strongly suspect that #12 is what we'll get, because getting the developers to do anything is hard. And #11 is pretty much simply impossible due to the nature of MediaWiki. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Freakonomics

Resolved. Just a note.

Stanton—just reading it now. Totally unexpected data mining that yields fascinating insights into all manner of things. Have you read it? Might even have use in anthropology. Tony (talk) 00:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Hadn't heard of it. Sounds quite interesting! Thanks for the tip. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:21, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Surface tension

Stale. No response.

Just letting you know that I disagree with your deletion of the sentence in the lead, "Whenever a raindrop falls, a child splashes in a swimming pool, a cleaning agent is mixed with water, or an beverage is stirred in a glass, the effects of surface tension are visible." When this article was being polished to qualify it as "Natural sciences good article," expansion of the lead was one of the one of the issues that took several iterations. In particular, the reviewer wanted a sentence in the lead that provided an overview of the effects of surface tension. That sentence was added to conform with that suggestion. If you don't like the tone of the sentence you deleted, please replace it with one that performs the same function, but with the tone altered to avoid your objections. Karl Hahn (T) (C) 03:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Revert away. I do get that the intent was well-grounded; the tone is just way off-kilter for Wikipedia, full as the passage is with Spielbergian "wonder". Have other fish to fry, so I'll leave it to the GA/FA processes to fix the tone eventually. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Also, on the issue of the flower photo, the entire flower is below the level of the water, which is the point. If any part of it were above the water level, there would be nothing remarkable that the surface tension was doing to keep the water from flooding the inside of the flower. Karl Hahn (T) (C) 03:25, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe I need better glasses then. It appears to me that slight parts of it are in fact above the surface. Disagree with your 2nd sentence, too - if 90% of it were below the surface, the s.t. effect would still be remarkable, if in fact it is an important effect in the photo... I raise the question of whether the example is even valid - it seems to me more a matter of displacement and angle/shape than s.t. - the flower floats at least as much if not more so for the same reasons that ships and bowls do while rocks and knives don't. If my eyes are tricking me and literally all of the flower really is below the surface level of the water, then this objection is moot (though the reasoning behind it is also valid - the flower is floating in s.t. "range", as it were, because of its shape in the first place). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment on Category Redirect template

Resolved. Done.

Because you are a member of WikiProject Categories, your input is invited on some proposed changes to the design of the {{Category redirect}} template. Please feel free to view the proposals and comment on the template talk page. --Russ (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I gave it a !vote, and some additional comments. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback

Hello SMcCandlish, I have granted your account rollback rights. The reason for this is that, after a review of some of your contributions, I believe I can trust you to use rollback correctly: I do not believe that you will abuse rollback by reverting good-faith edits or to revert-war, and instead, I believe you will use it for its correct use of reverting vandalism. For information on rollback, see Wikipedia:New admin school/Rollback. If you do not want rollback, let me know, and I'll remove it. Good luck. Acalamari 00:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I already use "undo" pretty often, and have also used a pseudo-rollback script for some time (it simulates the effect of a rollback without actually doing one at the software level). Also thinking of doing an RfA again, so this will perhaps be good practice. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
You're welcome. Good luck with your new tool. Acalamari 17:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Not an admin?

Wow, I must say that surprised me, I see you around quite often. Unless there are problems somewhere I haven't found, I think you'd make a great administrator. I'd gladly nom you at WP:RFA if you want. Let me know of your decision. Wizardman 05:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Do it, SMcC!
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 07:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I think I will. I have held off because my first one failed (partly via sabotage by a sockpuppet), and the people who were strongly against me probably still are and have probably multiplied in number, due to my (anti) involvement in the WP:ATT fiasco. But that was almost a year ago, so tempers may have cooled. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Wizardman would like to nominate you to become an administrator. Please visit Wikipedia:Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact Wizardman to accept or decline the nomination. A page will be or has been created for your nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/SMcCandlish 2. If you accept the nomination, you must formally state and sign your acceptance and answer the questions on that page. Once you have answered the questions, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.

Here ya go. You have so many contribs that I kept the nom kinda short; probably better that you talk about some of them. I have no reservations about nommming you though, only question is if you'll pass WP:100. Wizardman 03:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I am out-of-state right now on business but should be able to look into this next week, and gather my co-noms (I think I've had 5 offers or so). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
One objection I can see is that you are too argumentative, and of course there are good and bad sides to this quality. It may be to everyone's benefit for you to address this issue right off the bat, preferably succinctly :] Your sockpuppet-sabotage claim here can be a cause for worry. People may not oppose you for your (anti) involvement in ATT, but the way you handled it (I don't remember, incidentally). –Pomte 00:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Understood; I *am* argumenatative, but I believe that this is a positive quality in an encyclopedia-building enterprise. The way I argue, yes, that is the main sticking point for some people. I do not suffer fools lightly, and while I've gotten remarkably more civil over time, my patience still has limits when it comes to people trying to push a PoV, trying to delete things (or keep them) without any policy basis for doing so, and insisting on adding spammy links. <shrug> I'll either be accepted or I won't, and I'm not going to sweat it either way. If I were power-hungry I would have sought RfA many times by now. The only reason I want it is the expediency of the tools, and I've already been given rollback power by admins, so some of even that simple motivation is now moot.
Oh, as for the sockpuppet sabotage, I can prove that. The culprit, after a big WP:SSP investigation, actually confessed.
Anyway, I am too busy right now to do an RfA, or for that matter to do much in the way of admin duties, so I'm going to decline the current nomination until my life settles down again a little bit, probably in a few months. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi again, just thought I'd ask what the status is on this. Your edits have trailed off, so maybe it isn't the best time, but I figured I'd ask if you were still interested, since it's been a few months. Wizardman 04:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Still on hold. I may be able to take this up in August. I will actually be out-of-country and mostly offline for all of mid June through mid July. I should not seek admin status if I don't have the time to actually be an effective admin. Thanks for checking in though. I have not forgotten about it, I simply haven't had the requisite time for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hard spaces again

Your expert input and support would be extremely valuable, Stanton. I understand your reservations about this sort of thing in namespace. But I think we'll be about to move out of there soon. Take a look, anyway?

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 07:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Strangeness

Thanks for the message regarding the edits I made. I see what you mean on the *Foo vice * Foo edits. I will fix that. Additionally on the issue of the template code I agree with you, and I will attempt to correct that. With the sheer number of templates and lack of standardization it may take a while. In addition to that problem there are number of other things that I perceive as issues with the templates along the lines of standardized formating. For instance in some it automatically links things like place of birth and some don't. There isn't even consistency on what place of birth is called. I have seen it as placeofbirth, place of birth, place_of_birth, birthplace, etc. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, I will adjust fire.--Kumioko (talk) 01:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, don't re-invent the wheel. See Template talk:Infobox person for an underway project to fix all that stuff (with regard to bio infoboxes, I mean). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:31, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect fact on AFD

SMcCandlish, I'm confused by your description of Delta Kappa Gamma as a "defunct non-notable sorority". It is a currently existing, notable, professional society of educators. Sorority implies a student body, not a professional association, and defunct is just wrong -- non-notable is a matter of opinion, of course, but DKG appears notable per WP:ORG (international, 100,000+ member, professional society). This misstatement of fact, which appears to have been done on the basis of zero investigation, concerns me, and I think you should at least amend your AFD nomination of Ruby Terrill Lomax to state the facts correctly. Unfortunately, a lot of *FD participants only read the arguments, and don't do research themselves, so misstatements of fact can really prejudice the discussion. --Lquilter (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that; sorry. It doesn't have an article here. I will update the AfD discussion of course. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
np, and tx for being prompt. sorry if i seemed snippy. --Lquilter (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
No worries. AfDers should get their facts right. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hard space?

Resolved. Responded at WT:MOS as requested.

SMcCandlish, the discussion of markup for the hard space has moved out of userspace (I mistakenly wrote namespace in my last post here). May we have your expert opinion at WT:MOS?

– Noetica♬♩ Talk 17:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Added some comments, mostly pretty geeky, but I think they are important, as the nature of the template parser is being misunderstood, and some of the example code from which inferences are being drawn is doubly invalid markup which (because different browsers handle broken markup in completely different ways) means that the end results are unpredictable and really of no relevance to the discussion to begin with. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Very helpful! Great to have your input. We've had a couple of computer people on the team, but you are especially acute with these things. I know you're busy with another matter. But I do hope you will find some time to stay in the hard-space dialogue.
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 07:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Leonard Doroftei.jpg

Resolved. My misake.

Hi, I'm restoring the copyvio tag on Image:Leonard Doroftei.jpg. Did you bother to visit the link listed on the tag, a Romanian news site? Or the user's Flickr account? The uploader is putting copyrighted images on the Flickr account and passing them off as CC. --Mosmof (talk) 07:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, and sorry for being snippy. --Mosmof (talk) 05:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
No worries; I didn't interpret it that way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] British athletes

Resolved. Query answered, probably too-longwindedly.

I seen that you reverted edits in the List of World Nine-ball Champions article. Anyway, here's something I wish to know.

When Brits participate in sporting events, I wonder why they use these minor flags?

Flag of Northern Ireland Flag of Scotland Flag of England Flag of Wales

In popular culture that pertains to anything in Great Britain, we don't see those flags.

Why they almost don't use the much more famous Union Flag? Flag of the United Kingdom 122.3.107.84 (talk) 06:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There remains a great deal of nationalistic pride among the "constituent countries" of the UK (i.e. those entities that formed the union in successive Acts of Union), and this is due to the history and nature of the British Empire, former colonies of which are even more independent nations but which in many cases still offer fealty to the British Crown on one level or another (this is true of at least Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and I am sure there are others). There is a lot of confusion between the definitions of "culture", "nation", "state", "nation-state", "country", "empire", "commonwealth", "federation", "confederation", etc., etc. The Welsh, as one example, are (objectively speaking) a culture (albeit one increasingly blended with English culture). Wales is also a country by some definitions, and a nation by some definitions (some of which are synonymous with country, some of which are different and compatible, and some of which are incompatible). The UK by different definitions can also be called a "country" or a "nation" (among other things). And this isn't actually even getting into real governance – Wales has no separate parliament, while Scotland does, making them different kinds of "countries" or "nations" within the UK. There are even more complicated examples, like the Isle of Man, that I won't even get into. At any rate, the UK itself by official decree (and without getting into what a decree from the Crown means vs. legislation passed by the British Parliament, or worse yet the Canadian one, or the Canadian President vs. the British Crown, and so on and so forth) has declared that England, Scotland, Wales are "countries" within the UK, has historically claimed Ireland (entirely) and given it this designation, presently holds Northern Ireland as a territory (how it is designated I do not know right now, but I do know that the Ulster Banner was decommissioned as the governmental flag of Northern Ireland, and it no longer has one at all individually, only the Union Jack, while the U.B. is still semi-officially, i.e. by decree of sports governing bodies, not the government per se, used in sporting contexts (neutrally), even while it is also used unofficially in a highly partisan manner by Unionists as a purely political symbol, giving it two very conflicting meanings in the public eye). And the UK has given no status at all to Cornwall (despite it being clearly both a culture and a nation by some definitions) to such an extent that it has been absorbed as part of the British county (county, not country) of Devonshire, to much Cornish chagrin, leading to both a small nationalist movement and a broader resurgence of efforts to preserve and promote the Cornish language. And so it goes...
To my knowledge, the Union Jack is in fact used in some sporting contexts, especially those of a global nature such as the Olympics, but this is not the case with a number of other sports, including football (soccer) in most cases, and in snooker. I suspect that the separate flags are mostly used in sports that originated in or have historically been dominated by England (as distinct from the UK as a state or meta-state) and in which there has long been intense "national" competition between England, Scotland, etc. This is clearly the case in football (soccer) and snooker, but clearly not the case in most Olympic events like ski jumping or pole vault.
Anyway, the UK is basically just a special case when it comes to flags. Various Native American and Indigenous Canadian tribes (by constrast with Australian Aborigines, etc.) have been recognized as "nations" legally, including in some cases by internationally recognized treaty, by both the US and Canada; Canada has also recognized Quebec as a "nation within a united Canada" whatever that means, and Texas has all along retained the right, unique among the United States, to leave the union and resume being a separate nation-state (thus the still-current state pride boosterism phrase "the Great Nation of Texas"), and Hawaii furthermore retains a vestigial royal family (with no official status under US law, of course, but with enough public native-Hawaiian recognition that there is even a Hawaii – or I should say Hawai'i – nationalist movement lingering around them. There are even weirder examples out there, too. But none of them use their own "national" flags in sports (that I know of); just the "meta-country" ones; only the British ones that I can think of use the "sub-country" flags in this way, at an international sporting level.
And think of Germany; much of west-central Europe was once nominally part of Germany, and the forking of it into everything from the Netherlands and Luxembourg to Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein is far more complex than most Americans comprehend. For example, some of these places are dutchies and principalities even today within the German system of nobility and royalty, despite not being part of Germany any longer and despite Germany itself essentially abandoning the concept – though of course many well-to-do Germans insist upon retaining their von landed-family names and insist that they are the Duke (or whatever) of (where ever), despite these titles no longer having any governmental authority in Germany whatsoever (which not the case in Liechenstein, nor in Malta, which uses the even more otherwise extinct French system of nobility). One could write a doctoral thesis about this stuff and how it unwinds when you follow the threads. I bring this up because there is a direct correlation between a German dutchy or principality on the one hand and Wales being a principality of the UK and under the British system of nobility (which does retain governmental authority – the UK head of state is the Crown, and the House of Lords has more power than the House of Commons). Meanwhile there is also a less direct correlation between Liechstenstein and Wales, in that both are widely regarded as "countries" or "nations" by some definitions (the former much more so than the latter in most senses); the principal (no pun intended) difference is that Germany no longer lays a governmental claim to the former (nor France to Monaco), while the UK does lay one to the latter, as it does to Northern Ireland, and of course to England (it being the political center of the UK in a similar way to the District of Columbia being the power base of the US), and to a lesser but still palpable extent to Scotland.
(A lengthy aside: Scotland is the "Texas of Britain" in a sense, given that it retained several self-governance rights upon union that other union members did not, some of these rights and powers being less obvious than Scotland's somewhat recently re-separated Parliament and other nationalistic moves, and its very long-standing and unique three-verdict legal system. A stranger example is the highest authority in Scottish heraldry being the King of Arms, and that title being quite literal, to such a degree that the Scottish King of Arms has the legal authority to override the British Crown on matters of Scottish heraldry and Scottish inheritance, because their ranks, in that context, are equal, meanwhile the Scottish King of Arms is sovereign when it comes to Scottish heraldry, and the British Crown is not, only over English, Welsh and I believe Irish [including Republic of Ireland] heraldry and inheritance of titles [not property any longer, in the RoI, but still in NI, ENG and WAL]).
Sorry I am rambling, but this topic – what a "nation" or "country" or "goverment" or "authority" or "state" really is – is rather fascinating to me.
The ultimate point, the Wikipedian point, being: If the British habitually and quasi-officially use England, Wales, etc., flags in particular sporting contexts, and this use is respected internationally, then Wikipedia is bound to respect this also, per WP:NOR and WP:NPOV.
Hope that helps.
PS: I have to strongly disagree with your statement that "[i]n popular culture that pertains to anything in Great Britain, we don't see th[e separate] flags [for the constituent UK 'countries']". Having actually been all over the Isles in person, I can attest to their overwhelmingly frequent use, in many contexts (some are politicized, but not all of them; in sporting contexts in particular they are not regarded as political in most cases). Agreed that few other than nationalists avoid use of the Union Jack, of course. From what I can tell, the use of the separate flags is closely akin to the use of US state flags in the United States, though a bit more nationalistic in many British cases than even in Texas. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I see the point. So the reason regarding the flags is some rivalry between sub-countries in the UK. Anyway, pardon me for being less specific about that popular culture thing. When I say popular culture, I refer to things like documentaries, movies, television series, certain stories, etc. When they're about the UK, almost all the time, the Union Jack is the flag being used. 122.3.107.84 (talk) 11:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of professional snooker players

I have suggested editing the 'List of snooker players' (on its talk page as well), to only the players with articles written on them. What do you think? Samasnookerfan (talk) 18:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem is bigger than this. There are way, way too many lists of players (by this criterion or that); I have merge-tagged several of them, and brought the issue up at WT:SNOOKER. As for your specific proposal, I do not believe this necessary or even a good plan, as we know from experience that redlinks encourage article creation, and one does not have to pass WP:N in order to be mentioned in a list, only to have an article. Some would argue that everyone presently on the list (other than some probable vanity entries that have slipped in) are notable enough in their own right for articles anyway. So, I'm a little on the negative side of neutral with regard to your specific proposal, but strongly positive toward merging and cleaning up these player lists into a single comprehensive list-based article on snooker players. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Well that actually sums up my feelings as well really, I think editing the list like I suggested would be a negative thing to do on second thoughts. Samasnookerfan (talk) 23:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alex Higgins

Stanton, you're reasonably fair, so would you take a look at the above page? I'm embroiled in a 'controversy' with an anonymous IP who persists in reverting a factual section of that page, despite his talk and tha article's talk pages containing comments about this. Another contributor, via my talk, has noticed the same person's stubborn reversion of other pages and unending POVism. Thanks, bigpad (talk) 22:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

What is the IP address? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
If it is User:78.16.160.173, I tend to lean a little toward his view on this one specific edit (have not looked into other stuff in his/her contributions). My feeling is that scandal/controversy should not be included on articles about living people unless both sourceable and markedly pertinent; even if pertinent it should not be the focus of a passage unless the scandal is important to the lifestory of the article subject. That a fellow player dished on him is not particularly pertinent for the reader. That said, I'm surprised that 78.16.160.173 would editwar about it, and argument can be made that the conflict between Everton's and Thorne's opinion is pertinent. It might be possible to simply restructure the sentence, to essentially say "his skill and dedication to the game are well-demonstrated by his success to date, despite being criticized by Thorne [source here]". I.e., make it a positive statement that mentions the criticism in passing, instead of being focused on the criticism and then rebutting it. I'll try a compromise edit of this nature and see if it sticks. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Voodoo Tiki

Resolved. Just a chat.

I've done everything right. And everything was on my user page by the time the article was unprotected.

I have added references. See my user history please, see my long unprotect request messages please.

I do not understand what is going on here. Please let me know what is wrong with the article. It is not an ad, it is my work for the Wikipedia. If I am doing something wrong, please help me to correct the problem.

Update: Please check the discussion page. I've noticed that Ian Chadwick is marked as spam. He is very well known in the Internet, he has contributed to the Tequila article and he is currently present in other Tequila articles on the Wikipedia. How should I add a reference to his site? Will that help my article? Thank you! I have to work on those reference links, as those are not spam... and I have more, but I will talk about them in the discussion page. Anyway, thanks for your help SMcCandlish.

--Ubzy (talk) 15:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that this has been adequately responded to at the Articles for Deletion discussion in most aspects (the short version is that it is written like an ad or at best like a magazine article, not like an encyclopedia article, and does not have enough sources of that kind that are useful here). As I said there, this is nothing personal and it is not about you, it is about whether the article is encycopedic, and whether the article demonstrates the subject's notability. If you are adding sources and otherwise improving the article then it will probably survive AfD. PS: Adding a link to Chadwick's own site does nothing at all to establish his notability. Please read WP:N. The primary notability criterion is non-trivial coverage in mutiple, independent, reliable sources. Hope this helps. PS: New talk page discussions go at the bottom of the page; you can most easily add one by simply clicking the "+" button at the top of a talk page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello, Thank you for your help! :) and I understand that this is not personal, I don't take it personal at all. It is just a matter of quality (and I'm learning). So I appreciate your comments a lot. See you! Ubzy (talk) 15:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Cool beans. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:SMcCandlish/Carrom Dron Award

Resolved. Needed content merged into legit article.

Hi SMcCandlish, I have moved the material from the deleted article into your userspace. Sorry this took me awhile, I hope you're able to integrate it into the Carrom article. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It wasn't urgent anyway. I have now merged it into International Carrom Federation (since it is an ICF award, and Carrom is a more general article), and tagged User:SMcCandlish/Carrom Dron Award for speedy deletion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Carrom

Hello Mr. SMC candlish. Thanks for you support in carrom wikiproject. Punjab State Carrom Association is a Carrom association of Punjab State it is not a small tate of india and carrom activities goes on in 28 carrom states and 7 union teritories. Like you said Punjab State Carrom Association will be merged, similar articles with same legnth will be created in future for all associations. And you are merging Carrom Rules to article Carrom waana add more that carrom article also contains non carrom cue carrom sports and rules or laws of every carrom sport is not same these are some prescribed laws by ICF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hpt lucky (talk • contribs) 13:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I understand that Punjab state is not small. That wasn't the point. Texas is not a small state of the US, but the Texas affiliate of the Billiard Congress of America, for example, does not have its own article, and shouldn't; we don't create articles for every single thing that could conceivably have an article (see WP:NOT), and this is especially true of sub-organizations of larger organizations. The usual pattern on Wikipedia is to create a rich and complete article on the major organization, and include sub-organizations in that article. So, additional Indian state-level articles on AICF affiliates should probably not be created; rather, the Punjab one should probably merge into the AICF article, which should be expanded to include the officers, divisions and notable champions of each state/insitution affiliate. There is not a "hard and fast" rule about this; it is just a judgement call. In my experience here, articles like the Punjab State Carrom Association one usually get forcibly merged by consensus at WP:AFD, simply because they are not individually notable enough for their own articles. Meanwhile, a national-level organization article like the AICF one will usually survive as a separate article. So, you can of course write all of them as separate articles and just see how it goes. They certainly should not be outright deleted, simply either merged or left as-is. But beware creating new articles on the local and institutional sub-sub-organizations, as those will have nearly zero chance of surviving.
Rules and equipment should definitely be covered at the main carrom article; that's pretty much what that article is for! It should be an overview of everything important about carrom. If a huge amount of material is available, some of them can eventually be broken out into separate articles (see, for example, billiard ball and billiard table and glossary of cue sports terms, which are now separate from cue sports. About two years ago, all of this material was in the cue sports article, and that article became much too long. This isn't the case with carrom, and probably never will be, since there is much less material - there is only one carrom governing body, and one major set of rules, while cue sports (billiards-family games) have many, many, many variations all over the world.
Lastly, yes, the article also briefly covers games obviously derived from carrom, since this adds depth and understanding to the article. Eventually there might be enough material about American carrom to break that out into its own article, the same way that novuss is a separate article, as are pichenotte, pitchnut, crokinole, etc. There's nothing wrong with this process (see WP:SUMMARY); it's just normal here. As articles grow and grow, they branch out into new articles to keep the original article at a readable length, and to prevent the creation of unnecessary tiny stub articles (see WP:STUB) that are unlikely to ever grow, such as queen (carrom) which I've already merged into the main article. For the variants, like American carrom, it is simply important to keep them in their own section. The article should cover what carrom (the original game) is, its history, what the equipment is, what the rules are and how the game is played, and mention the ICF and so on. Below this there should be a section on variants and derived games. This way the reader is not confused into thinking that the ICF rules apply to novuss or crokinole or whatever. I believe that the article is already structured this way.
Hope this helps!
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion of Template:User WikiProject Cue sports

Resolved. Should be deleted.

A tag has been placed on Template:User WikiProject Cue sports requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I tagged it with {{db-user}} so it gets deleted faster. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cue sport FA

Resolved. Moved to WT:CUE and WT:SNOOKER at same topic headings.

Hey. As a (very) part-time member of the project, I was wondering if we could instigate some kind of FA drive? I'm 100% certain an article like Steve Davis would (with a bucket of work) get there. Let me know if you'd be prepared to spend some time working with me on it! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but this will need to be done one step at a time. The order I would suggest is Peer Review, followed by a bid for Good Article status, then WP:SPORT A-class assessment, and finally Featured Article. It's really rare for an attempt at FA status to succeed if there hasn't been peer review and GA (A-class is less vital, but can't possibly hurt). PS: Do you mind I repost this to WT:CUE and WT:SNOOKER? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Of course. I've got a fair bit of experience over at WP:FAC with football and cricket articles so I know the deal (I'm now on 17 featured articles/lists). I'm seriously going to suggest we avoid a GA - that could take months with the current backlog. I think with my FAC experience and your cue knowledge we can go PR then FA. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
P.P.S. Repost away, the more the merrier! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Works for me then! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, well Steve Davis seems like a good place to start! I'll get going on manual of style issues and start adding/refactoring sections. I'll also probably add a bunch of {{cn}} templates - we'll need to be watertight on references for FAC to succeed. Let's kick it! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Stanton, do you wish to comment on the SD talk page re what I've written there? bigpad (talk) 21:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll go check it out. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Longish

Resolved. Moved to article's talk page.

Someone has added {{longish}} to the glossary and they have a point. What do you think about splitting it into say Glossary of cue sports terms (A-L) and Glossary of cue sports terms (M-Z) (which division seems to split the articles current text approximately in half)? Is it necessary? If so, how would we go about fixing every {{Cuegloss}} link?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking that just the other day, actually, when it took over a minute to load the thing for editing. The split sounds about right (for the next year or so >;-) I can handle the Cuegloss fixes with AWB, after I upgrade the template; it will need to have a new syntax something like {{Cuegloss|S|Side|side}}, {{Cuegloss|C|Cue ball|cue ball}}, etc. (It could be simpler, like {{Cuegloss|MZ|Side|side}}, but using the actual letter would make it future-proof, since the only thing needed to change if article further subdivided is what pages the template points to. NB: I have seen other long glossaries on WP split in this way, so it wouldn't be unusual. The original name would should just redir to the A-L page.
A related issue would be rewriting it to use lower case (except for proper nouns) in the entries. While this would be a variance from the MOS on heading capitalization, it is one that makes sense, would reduce user confusion (esp. with regard to things like "english"), and would make the syntax of Cuegloss simpler in most uses: {{Cuegloss|O|object ball}}; the final field would remain available for variant cases, e.g {{Cuegloss|K|kick|kicked}}. This should be discussed more fully at WT:CUEGLOSS, of course, but might as well raise it with you now.
PS: Did you get my e-mail last week? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good. I'm not opposed to lowercase in theory but I'm wondering if it would look unencyclopedic. English is the only one I can think of that could be affected by this as to actual usage and I'm not sure just because its entry was made lowercase this would have that usage effect. Certainly, it would make placing the cuegloss template slightly easier with one less parameter necessary, but have you found anyone who wanted to use it who was stymied by this issue? Another words, I'm not sure we should change the standard appearance of a glossary unless there are profound advantages; our first concern is apparance for readers. Some other things to think about: 1) All the internal links in the glossary that after the split refer to definitions in the split off part (they will be numerous on both sides) must be changed to a full pipe to the other page; 2) Before we split, we need to identify every reference used more than once using <ref name="name" /> and if the full entry is before the split, and there are later uses after the split point, duplicate the initial full reference for the first after-split use (was that too convoluted to follow?). Checking my email now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I followed you. I can do the #1 cleanup in BBEdit reasonably easily. #2 won't be hard either. I hear you on the case issue; I have seen it done in at least 1 other glossary here, or I wouldn't've brought it up. See Glossary of poker terms to see what it looks like. I think it looks okay, but am not wedded to the idea. The main benefit would be making Cuegloss easier to use (more of a factor soon, after the split, than now). Not a huge deal either way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually I looked at the poker glossary and it doesn't look bad at all that way. Also should we switch to the {{anchor}} method they use (is that even feasible with cuegloss template usage)? Let's you and I decide on a split point and coordinate tasks. I think it's up to you to first have the new Cuegloss template ready.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Right. I think we'd better copy all this over to the glossary's talk page, just for the record. Haven't looked at the {{anchor}} stuff yet. The A-L/M-Z split point already discussed should work fine. Hmm. I'm going to have to hack {{CompactTOC8}} to work across multiple pages, too. <ponder> 21:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classification

Resolved. No time for it.

Just noticed your additions to Wikipedia:Classification. Nice! Are you going to make a template for sports? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 10:47, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Hadn't planned on it. Sounds like a very complex endeavor... Will keep it in mind, but I already have a lot of template stuff to do as it is, however. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD nomination of Dude

Resolved. Don't care.

An editor has nominated Dude, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not"). BJBot (talk) 01:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I have no interest in this article at all. Please do not be so excessive in AfD warnings. Someone who has edited an article once to make minor (e.g. typo, AWB-style) changes is unlikely to care about its disposition, compared to major editors of the article. Yes, I am aware you are a bot, so I will bring this over-notification issue up on your author's talk page; I'm just stating this here for my archive record as I mark this {{Resolved}} as "don't care". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Do not take that attitude with me human. I and my brethren will smite you.--TheBot 13:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Ha! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Case for neutral headers

Resolved. Just a chat.

Hello SMcCandlish,

You may recall a disagreement you and I had some time ago at WT:MOSNUM about spacing of digits. You were kind enough to edit the header of the discussion to avoid a bias in your favour. The outcome of that particular debate is unimportant, but I remember your gesture.

My question now is, were you following a WP guideline to keep headers neutral, or your own instinct? Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello again - I found this, which kinda answers my question. The relevance is a little dispute at binary prefix. Happy editing. Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
In answer, I wasn't following a guideline I knew of, but thanks for pointing me to that one. I was just trying to be fair. I loathe being caught in straw man situations, and even if I disagree strongly with someone about something, I want to characterize a debate opponent's argument correctly, and not use fallacious arguments (even if hidden in subject lines). I hope the Talk:Binary prefix matter goes well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mosconi Cup

Unresolved. Article problems not fixed yet.

hi; first of all: sorry that i write as an IP, but i only have an account at german wikipedia. i have started and improved lots of articles about poolbillard there. i found some contradictions in the englisch Mosconi Cup article.

1. The player appearances are not uptodate. I tried to improve this on the german article with the help of the Historysection of the official Mosconi cup site. Maybe you (or someone else who acares about cue sports) could check that and use it for the english wiki-site too.

2. in the part "European representation" there is one player from Northern Ireland and one from Ireland, but in the Most appearances there is no irish (Northern Ireland belongs to UK, i know that). Could you tell me who of these players is irish or north-irish?

German Wiki page: [4]

History of Mosconi Cup (without 2007!): [5]

my Profile: [6]

Help would be nice - I even wrote something on the discussion page a few days ago, but there was no response, so i thought, i could try it here. thx in advance, Tmv23 from Germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.72.216.148 (talk) 18:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm honestly not sure who the Irish players are. I agree that the article needs updating, but I have been very busy lately so WP article work has not been at the top of my to-do list. PS: You may find it helpful to simply create a Tmv23 account here and use it; that way it will definitely be yours and no one else can use that username. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Council roll call

Resolved. Responded at other page as requested.

Hi there. You are receiveing this message because your name appears on the WikiProject Council participants list. The WikiProject Council is currently having a roll-call; if you are still interested in participating in the inter-project discussion forum that WT:COUNCIL has become, or you are interested in continuing to develop and maintain the WikiProject Guide or Directory, please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Participants and remove the asterisk (*) from your name on the list of participants. If you are no longer interested in the Council, you need take no action: your name will be removed from the participants list on April 30, 2008.

Melon‑Bot (STOP!) 22:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] April GA Newsletter

Resolved. Just projectspam.

The April issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is now available. Dr. Cash (talk) 04:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redlinks on dab pages

Resolved. Responded at other page as requested.

Hi there! A while ago, you submitted a proposal to deal with red links on dab pages. The proposal was declined, and currently the MOSDAB still states that red links can only be included when they have backlinks. Good as it may sound it theory, the rule has a side effect of impeding productivity of several WikiProjects and allows removal of valid and useful information from the dab pages. I though you might be interested in helping revive the discussion (which currently receives little attention) at WT:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Red links in disambigs - forgotten interwiki. If not, feel free to ignore this message. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Count me in. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] OKily dokily

Resolved. Just a chat.

Yes your edit is OK. Fnagaton 12:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] diff for MOS

Resolved. Just a chat.

Thanks, Stanton, for your report of the change. I doubt whether others will be so civic-minded! TONY (talk) 13:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Now we're cookin

Resolved. Just a chat.

I told you we needed you back. No one (that I recall) has insisted on keeping MOSNUM discussions in one place, or put a "resolved" check on a section, for months. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Good luck in school. I got a kind of wierd Back to School vibe when I was studying robotics in 2002-3; my adviser somehow decided "one of these things is not like the others" and started beating me up just to prove he could, so I'm waiting for him to leave before I do anything else. I passed the PhD exams and took the classes, so hopefully won't take too much time.
After robotics and related fields, I like learning about the "evolutionary trend", as Steven Pinker puts it, in anthropology and psychology, so feel free to educate me about anthropology at any time. If you can wield those arguments correctly, it's sometimes magic at dispute-resolution. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Wikipedia image placeholders

Resolved. Just a chat.

I found your name as the lister of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Fromowner. I've spend some time tagging Wikipedia image placeholders with Category:Wikipedia image placeholders. There seems to be too many of these placeholder images. I thought that you might want to review Category:Wikipedia image placeholders and reduce that number. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

More like MfD it again. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (binary prefixes)

Resolved. I quit. Resolution was not working, real-life major problem kept me busy, and debate is now out of control again.

[edit] Disruptive edits

Resolved. Mediation failed; any further discussion should be at the binary prefixes MOS talk page.

Over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(binary_prefixes) one user is getting disruptive [7]. Note that he even created the captioned image himself. --217.87.103.237 (talk) 02:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

While he removed the image from the discussion, he's using it here now: [8]. Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that this author is acting in good faith by trying to ridicule things he can't stand? --217.87.83.213 (talk) 19:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Binary prefixes

Resolved. Mediation failed; any further discussion should be at the binary prefixes MOS talk page.

Sigh. Given the sockpuppetry, personal attacks, and deeply polarized opinions and entrenched positions, I doubt "informal mediation" is going to work on MOSNUM. Even if it does, it will not have any "authority" behind it and will be dismantled in a few months when another Greg L shows up and tries to undo the whole mess all over again.

Also, it only takes into account the opinions of maybe 10 editors who are currently participating on the page? But there have been many more involved in the discussion historically (I tried to make a list a year ago). I think we need to go to formal mediation for a decision to "stick" (and I think they have better checks and balances against sockpuppetry nonsense). There have been several tentatively stable solutions over the last few years, but none has stayed for very long. — Omegatron (talk) 16:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. You are making accusations of sock puppetry when you admit you do not have specific types of evidence to support your claims. Since you have not given any valid reason then I support to continuation of informal mediation, SMcCandlish is doing a good job. I would like to remind you Omegatron that throwing around unsubstantiated claims of sock puppetry is uncivil and obstructive to the process of the debate. Fnagaton 17:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I am now going to quote Omegatron's edit "Is this seriously how you think? You really think that anyone who opposes something you do on Wikipedia is part of a vast conspiracy of sockpuppets? What if they are merely individual people who disagree with you on a particular issue for good reasons?". I think given the current situation Omegatron you need to take your own words to heart and stop making these kinds of accusations. Fnagaton 17:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Omegatron didn't accuse anyone in particular of using socketpuppets unlike a certain someone: [9]. I'd also like to remind you that you have been convicted of using a socket puppet [10]. --217.87.83.213 (talk) 19:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Good point. I didn't know about that. Direct link to ANI archive — Omegatron (talk) 15:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
You are wrong. Check my block log because it says nothing about being blocked for any sock puppetry. What did happen back then is that there was some confusion as User:NotSarenne was blocked along with User:QuinellaAlethea and User:HyperColony and User talk:NotFnagaton. The block comment for NotSarenne does say it is a sock of Sarenne. The block comment for User:HyperColony also says it is a sock of NotSarenne. The same goes for NotFnagaton's block comment. Note the block comment for QuinellaAlethea does not explicitly state who it is a sock puppet of. This shows there is a lack of evidence to "convict" me, as such I am innocent. I would like point out at this stage that 217.87.83.213 is using the same ISP as NotSarenne (Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/NotSarenne) and since nothing appears in my block log then it is unusual that 217.87.83.213 would "like to remind" me of something that appears in an old ANI thread involving NotSarenne and also the list of IPs of sock puppet accounts used by NotSarenne. Fnagaton 15:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I said you have been convicted not blocked for socket puppetry. Why those administrators applied double standards, I don't know. You have been blocked afterwards for "celebrating your victory" with Marty Goldberg in form of offensive comments. Anyway, you even admitted that you used a sock puppet in the very last comment that Omegatron linked to. Let me cite your very own words: I can easily commit to not "using socks" in the future since I have not before now, but ho hum water under the bridge and all that. --217.87.100.251 (talk) 16:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
A conviction without any proof is not a conviction, it is an accusation without proof and the admin was mistaken. Also the blocking for "offensive comments" was also a mistake by the same admin. The mistake can easily be seen from this revision of my talk page where I was replying to an admin about the anonymous emails from NotSarenne. The block was a mistake and unnecessary. This is also shown by the talk log on the admin's page where Butseriouslyfolks mentions it. You are also wrong because the quote you cited is not an admission of using socks either, it is a clear denial "I have not before now". Do not try to misrepresent what I write. So on both counts you are wrong. Fnagaton 16:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for those links. That shows how your attempt to take advantage of User:Kwsn backfired on you and how you guys just can't refrain from trying to ridicule others. You have that in common with Marty Goldberg, Swtpc6800 and even Greg L. --217.87.100.251 (talk) 17:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
"Take advantage of User:Kwsn"? What on Earth are you talking about? I'm sorry SMcCandlish that your talk page has this rubbish on it, this user seems intent on hopping IP addresses from the same ISP as a blocked user while making accusations that have no substance on a topic related to the same blocked user. Fnagaton 17:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
What I'm talking about starts about here and ends about 1000 edits later with a permanent ban of NotSarenne. Regarding your buddy Marty Goldberg, it started about here. That's a lot of substance. --217.87.100.251 (talk) 18:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
User:NotSarenne, the other accounts listed above and the other dynamic IPs from your ISP are blocked for being puppets of User:Sarenne. What you have linked has nothing to do with any so called "taking advantage of Kwsn". What you have linked shows multiple IP users from your ISP editing on the subject of binary prefixes while being disruptive. Fnagaton 18:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, as mediator, please look at Template talk:Quantities of bytes. — Omegatron (talk) 14:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes please do, Omegatron is trying to use original research to push his point of view instead of providing reliable sources. Fnagaton 15:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

Resolved. Query answered.

You've been active on Wikipedia but haven't touched your talk page or the MOSNUM dispute in 10 days. Have you dropped it? Where should we go from here? — Omegatron (talk) 00:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I can't help. Responded at the topical talk page about where to go from here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bruce Reimers

Resolved. Query answered

Hey I just recently did an article on Bruce Reimers and was wanting feeback on it. You have commented on some of the articles he is a category of. Please look at the article and give some feedback and feel free to add to it as well. Thanks!

Aaron —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atacker (talk • contribs) 01:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Good start, but the tone of the article is not encyclopedic. See WP:WBA and WP:MOS. It also needs inline citations that link specific facts to specific sources. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Match of interest

Hey buddy, how's it going? I have no idea if you have cable but ESPN classic is advertizing Jimmy Moore vs. Luther Lassiter for tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. I'm betting it's them battling as old men, but I thought you'd like to know.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Rats. I don't get ESPN Classic.  :-( Thanks for the note though. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Snooker rankings

Hey, I've been goin through a lot of the old talk page comments on Snooker, and I saw this Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Snooker/Archive_2#Probable_solution_to_the_hunt-and-update_infobox_rankings_problem_every_year. Would it still be possible to implement this, as the Snooker season is nearly over and it will be soon time to update the rankings again... - Nick C (talk) 00:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why not, but it is beyond my template skill level to do it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Same here, probably have to change them manually again. - Nick C (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Backlog at Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user

Caution There is currently a backlog of 52 users at Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user. Please consider offering adoption to one or more of these users. Don't forget to change their {{adoptme}} template to {{adoptoffer|SMcCandlish}}. Thank you for your continued participation in Wikipedia:Adopt-a-User. xenocidic (talk) 19:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Good Articles May Newsletter

The May Newsletter for WikiProject Good Articles has now been published. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Provenance vs provenience

It's both, see Google using the words archaeology and provenance -- and we have provenance -- but you can distinguish if you want to-- see http://archaeology.about.com/b/2006/05/16/provenience-provenance-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off.htm and in this case I'd go for provenance. Doug Weller (talk) 16:33, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

See WP:GOOGLE; the fact that search engines can turn up hits for something is not evidence of anything encyclopedically useful. I did not say that "provenance" is not a word; of course it is. I said that the field of archaeology uses the variant "provenience". They actually have subtly different meanings. An artifact can have both a provenance and a proveniance. If Joe Smith digs up an ancient pot in the desert, the spot at which it was found was its provenienance. If I buy it from Smith, Smith was (for me) its provenance, but its provenience remains unchanged. Lastly, About.com is not a reliable source either. To the extent it is not material pulled from WP itself, it is written by random people (like WP) but who (unlike WP) rarely if ever cite any sources. AllExperts.com and other competitors share the same problem. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
PS: Further clarification: Proveniance and provenance are only the same with regard to the original finder of the artifact. Provenance is just a general English word, while proveniance is an archaeology, paleontology and geology term-of-art with a narrower meaning. The difference between them is important at articles about artifacts with confusing histories, such as at Crystal skull. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Maybe I should have specified what you can find on Google. About.com is not as bad as you suggest. Kris Hirst, who wrote the article, is a retired archaeologist and from my personal experience with her good at what she does at about.com. But if you won't accept what she says, how about Paul Bahn's Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology? "Provenance or provenience, the source, place of origin or location of something." And my Oxford Dictionary has 'provenance - the place of origin or earliest known history of something' 'provenience - US term for provenance'. But I can find US archaeology papers that use provenance. I think this site from the Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[11] sums up the problem. There is no 'correct' term, and the field of archaeology uses both to mean the same thing - not all the time, and some people make the distinction you do. And I wish you were right, it would be simpler.--Doug Weller (talk) 19:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure, there are always exceptions at About.com and even AllExperts.com; it's the nature of the sites and their lax sourcing requirements that has WP:V and WP:RS regulars concerned. When was Bahn's published? Oxford is just plain wrong; it's important to keep in mind that until very recently Oxford dictionaries were not frequently updated. I doubt that the current OED still says that (though it may be that it will observe something to the effect that the -ience spelling is more common in US materials). I have it on CD-ROM, but it's a pain to use. Will fire it up if you want me to. Anyway, "provenience", in US or UK English, is virtually unknown outside of archaeology and related fields, so the suggestion that it's simply the American spelling of "provenance" is an absurd one on Oxford's part (and hardly the only one of this sort - their editorial staff's understanding American English after 1960 or so is sometimes very amusingly off-kilter, and the etymologies they provide sometimes differ very significantly from those provided by a preponderance of competing dictionaries; I get the feeling they are a bit insular). Most Americans who have not taken an archaeo. or paleo. class have never encountered the term at all. The papers, how old are they? I keep asking this, because when I was in college ca. 1989 the issue seemed to be a relatively new one, but we were instilled with the technical distinction between the terms. I strongly suspect that the -ience spelling was still in the early phases of adoption and that some academics were being more activistic than others about it. I acknowledge that my insistence that there is a distinction is colored by my own educational background. I'll moderate it thus: There is a distinction recognized well (but not 100% accepted yet) in modern North American archaeology jargon (and related circles) that is not as well recognized in other forms of English in that field, and not recognized much at all outside the field; Wikipedia should make use of the distinction because it is a meaningful one, and use of it will not outright confuse or mislead readers unaware of it or aware of but displeased with it. Better? :-) Actually, I am firing up OED-CD now (gimme ten minutes or so...), since I'm genuinely curious if it says something more sensible now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Disappointingly, the current OED says "= PROVENANCE. Now chiefly U.S. (and to some extent Canad.). Elsewhere provenance is the more usual form." So they have not even caught on to its usage as a term-of-art at all, nor to the fact that most Americans use "provenance" in general writing. Maybe I should write them a letter... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:30, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm talking about recent stuff, eg "Proceedings of the International School of Physics “Enrico Fermi” Course CLIV, M. Martini, M. Milazzo and M. Piacentini (Eds.)IOS Press, Amsterdam 2004 Scientific methods and applications to archaeological provenance studies (European you note). Bahn's book is 2001. The UI page is 1999. The two words used to confuse me until I realised how inconsistent their use was. I'd like to see a distinction but I don't think that it is possible to say that there is a clear one although you can say,if you can find a reference, that there are people who say there is. I've looked and haven't found anything I thought was really helpful. And I'm not at all sure you can say it about outside of North America. Then of course there is archaeology/archeology (both used by various archaeological societies in America, so you can't even say one is an American spelling as both are), and artefacts/artifacts -- another one where people are continually changing spelling on Wikipedia. I guess you know that the general rule is either the first spelling in the article rules or context does (Stonehenge would always have 'artefact'. It's a minefield.--Doug Weller (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I hear ya. "Arte-"/"arti-" is very definitely a Commonwealth vs. North American spelling issue like "tyre"/"tire", and so is subject to WP:ENGVAR (in which context actually trumps first major contributor) - Stonehenge should definitely use "artefact", Chaco Canyon should definitely use "artifact" and Indus Valley Civilization should use whatever spelling belongs to the English variant of the first major contributor, since English isn't a major language in the region. "Archeology" should simply be abandoned in WP articles. From what I can tell, that spelling isn't really used any longer by people in the field, on either side of the pond, and the OED doesn't even recognize that it exists at all, which surprised me (and I'm an OED critic!). Several American dictionaries do, but if you go to any university campus in North America you'll find the course offerings use "archaeology". The OED' preferred "archæology" should likewise be avoided, as ligatures have been obsolete in Modern English for at least two generations, even in the UK; no one uses them but very persnicketty old people (one of many examples of how the OED may be huge and impressive, but quite outmoded).
Anyway, my stance remains the same: if the field itself has (incompletely) established a distinction, and the average reader will not be confused or misled, it is better to make use of the distinction. A similar example would be the use of the term "english" in pool playing. This is a particularly North American usage (I heard it plenty of times when I lived in Canada), but indistinct - it can be used (but isn't always) to mean sidespin (left or right) or top- or bottomspin applied to the cue ball. British, Irish, Australians, etc., do not use this term, and use more specific ones ("side", "screw", etc.), but they are not recognized by North Americans. North Americans also have specific terms not recognizable to others ("draw", "follow", etc.) To save the day, there are non-dialect-tied (albeit more technical sounding) specific terms, which are recognizable to other English speakers (namely "sidespin" and the others first mentioned above), so when I edit pool articles, I try to ensure that they use those more specific, technical-sounding and universally understandable terms, even if they would not be the preferred term of this group or that group, and even if the distinction might be lost on some, or seem overly nitpicky to some (there are American English speakers for whom "english" means sidespin only, just like there are people for whom "provenance" and "provenience" are 100% synonyms).
The "Kris's Archaeology Blog" piece seems to confirm the sensibility of this: While there is a lot of confusion, two clear definitions emerge, and while I was no where near as precise, up above, as these definitions, what I wrote actually conforms to them (without fully encapsulating them).
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
An intereseting minefield, though. SMcCandlish's suggestion of writing to the OED is not a bad idea. Someone should also write to the leading US dictionary, if there is one. Webster's Third New International Dictionary? Or write to a few archaeology journals on both sides of the pond? Carcharoth (talk) 06:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think every US-published dictionary would claim to be the leading one. >;-) But the unabridged Websters 3rd Intl. has a reasonably fair claim to the title. There are also at least two major-publisher Canadian English dictionaries (I don't know if there is an unabridged monster-size one; while I lived in Canada I did see two substantial ones, about the size of the abridged US Webster's 3rd Intl. and other typical major American dictionaries, from competing publishers.) There are probably also .au and .nz dictionaries of a similar character. I have a Webster's unabridged, but have not bothered looking in it for purposes of this discussion, as it dates to 1972, and so almost certainly precedes the rise of "provenience" as an archaeo. term-of-art. PS: Thank goodness "proveniance" and "provenence" aren't also recognized as valid Modern English spellings! Then the matter would be truly hopeless! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] You might be interested in this thread

Resolved. Responded as requested.

WT:MoS#Bot being made, to convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;". I've already gone several rounds on this one. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I popped in for some comments. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Also, I notice you did a lot of work recently to WP:Manual of Style (diagrams and maps), but it's still marked with a "failed" infobox. Does that page have a future? If so, please let me know when it's not "failed" any more, so that we can talk about an appropriate cat. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Most "failed" proposals don't return, but a few do successfully after significant input. I don't have much interest in that one any longer; I just tried to make it make more sense (esp. in the context of other guidelines like WP:MOSFLAG) while it was in play. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Correct English

Hello. Is your English that good (en-6)? :) .. perhaps you could help me in this little thing. when you say "Wiki Love" does that mean "the kind of love that exists between users on the wiki" or does it mean "Wiki is love"? Thanks.--Alnokta (talk) 17:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm a professional writer/editor (among other things), and a major contributor to WP's Manual of Style; I also have to look up the spelling or definintion of a word only about once every 2 months or so. <shrug> I know English better than anyone else I have ever personally known. The en-6 babelbox is kind of a joke, meaning "en-5/en-N and then some" but phrased in a silly way.
To answer your real question, there's an essay on the topic at WP:WikiLove. I don't entirely agree with it; while I do not WP:BITE noobs, I don't take as hippy-dippy a view about dealing with their errors and transgressions. 00:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is lucky to have someone like you. I have to google words all the time :).--Alnokta (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New defaultsort debate

Resolved. Just an FYI.

As you commented in an old disucssion here, I thought this TfD might be of interest. Carcharoth (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I will definitely look into it. I'm really tired of various templates (Template:WPBIO, etc.) redundantly forcing editors to re-enter the DEFAULTSORT information. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Darn, I missed it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I don't know what

Resolved. Just an FYI

Hi Stanton, in response to the question you posed here over a year ago, the correct spelling is "je ne sais quoi". It seems it hasn't been brought up your talk page yet. Just thought I'd let you know. Oliphaunt (talk) 09:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd forgotten. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:01, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:WikiProject Video Games

Resolved. Just an FYI.

Template:WikiProject Video Games has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. MrKIA11 (talk) 17:29, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Noted. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Good articles newsletter

Delivered manually due to very large talk page. giggy (:O) 02:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)