User talk:85.255.232.212

June 2016

Hello, I'm Cahk. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Esmond Birnie has been undone because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. Cahk (talk) 13:49, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

Please refrain from making nonconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Esmond Birnie with this edit. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted or removed. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism can result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 13:53, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did to Esmond Birnie with this edit, you may be blocked from editing. Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 13:55, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

March 2017

Hello, I'm Jrugordon. I noticed that you made an edit concerning content related to a living (or recently deceased) person, but you didn't support your changes with a citation to a reliable source, so I removed it. Wikipedia has a very strict policy concerning how we write about living people, so please help us keep such articles accurate and clear. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you! Jru Gordon (talk) 23:14, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Air France Flight 447

When you revert an anti-vandal bot as you recently did at Air France Flight 447, you normally should have a better explanation than just "reverting false positive"; you need to explain why you think it's a false positive. You have also previously made claims about the variety of English used in the article and a non-existent tag that do not hold up under scrutiny. Please go to Talk:Air France Flight 447 if you wish to make a claim about why the variety of English used on this article should be British English, when the history of the article indicates the opposite and shows it already coalescing around American English within the first few months^[a] of its existence. In a case like this, MOS:RETAIN is the governing principle, since on a Brazil–France flight, MOS:TIES does not apply. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 19:54, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot:You do not requite a better explanation to revert Cluebot. Once the false positive is reported, the reporting page instructs you to restore your edit (you may have noticed that I stated this in my edit summary).

The article was tagged as being written in British English at 12:45 on the 3rd November 2013, and the tag has been in place unchallenged since that time (I can see it. I'm sure everone else can see it, so I have no idea why you cannot.) It is therefore not unreasonable that editors will change American English to British English (and I note that someone else has done so (or at least partially). It has to be noted that the dates througout the article are entirely in the British English format of DMY and there are vastly more of those than the American spellings of words.

However, I do note that the American spellings were present in the article in November 2013, but so was the DMY date format. If we want to apply the principle of WP:RETAIN then the predominant format of English should prevail. In this case the British English dates far outnumber the handful of American spellings. 85.255.232.201 (talk) 13:02, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, and thanks for your response. If the tag was there since 2013, that would, indeed, have some influence on the matter if it were there by consensus; on the other hand, if the article was predominantly AE at that point, it could be that some editor just snuck it in there. I went and tried to find it at the revision you identified, but there is no such revision: I see one revision at 17:27, 1 November 2013, and the next one at 02:32, 11 November 2013, but neither one of those have the {{use British English}} tag, and both of those predominantly use AE; did you mean another revision maybe? If you meant the November 3, 2017 revision, that was your edit, but that version doesn't have the tag either, so I must be blind, can you literally tell me exactly where the tag is and in what revision? Normally the correct place for it should be in the top material of the lead section.

I agree with you, where you said that "If we want to apply the principle of WP:RETAIN then the predominant format of English should prevail." Date format is not the same as English variety and in the absence of strong ties to a particular country, the whole world uses d-m-y format, and in particular, Brazil and France do, so it's logical that the article uses dmy format, always has, and there's no reason to change that.

The article has been in AE since early on in its life for whatever reason, and although BE would have been just as good had it gone that way, there has been consistent usage of AE since around July or September 2009, and it remains that way now, and so per MOS:RETAIN it should continue to remain that way, and "[the] article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 20:52, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an aside, speaking about date formats: did you know that you can set up your Preferences to display dates in the format you prefer? See Help:Preferences#Date format. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As an IP address user, I have no preferences to set up. In any case it would not change the dates in article text because these are just that - text. 85.255.237.98 (talk) 14:18, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are you looking in the right place? The language variant tag is always on the article talk page. It's the second big box from the top of the page. 85.255.237.98 (talk) 14:18, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, now I see the {{British English}} tag on the Talk page (not where I looked for it). It was added in rev 294225866 on 19:07, June 3, 2009, just two days after the article was created. However, that tag was placed prematurely, or at least, incorrectly in this case. There was no clear trend in language usage in the article at that point. If you had to pick, by that same time on June 3, the article page itself was already trending more AE than BE, and by July, and certainly by September, the die was cast in favor of AE. So that tag, which probably few article editors noticed on the Talk page, really had no effect, because the article kept trending AE.

In addition, if you read the documentation at {{British English}}, it says:

This template may be included on talk pages or editnotices to alert other editors that the associated article is written in British English. Usually, the article either has evolved using predominantly this variety or has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation that uses this variety.

but in this case, neither statement is correct:

it wasn't written in British English at that point (or any point)
it hadn't "evolved" much at all in two days, and certainly not "predominantly"; if anything, it was trending the other way
there were no strong ties to the UK for this article, so placing that template was a mistake.

In addition, that's a rarely used template (it's only on 8,000 pages). The way you signal a language variety is not on the Talk page, but on the article page itself, with the {{Use British English}} Template (note the word 'Use' in the template name: this is not the same template as the other one, and yes it's confusing!) which is used on over 175,000 pages. That's where I looked for it, and that's why I couldn't find it, because it's not there.

Since the article is clearly in AE now (and has been since the end of 2009) the erroneous tag should be removed from the Talk page, as it only serves to confuse the situation. Mathglot (talk) 09:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: You seem to have misunderstood the purpose of the two tags that you have discussed above. The correct tag for instructing users that the article is written in British English is the {{British English}} tag placed on the article talk page where everone can see it. The {{Use British English}} tag in the article is a tag to make the Wiki engine add the article to the category of articles using British English as the documentation makes clear. As an instruction to users it is entirely useless, because anyone clicking the [edit] next to a section title will never see it. This was never its intended function. Strictly speaking both tags should be used, but the {{British English}} tag adds the article to a redundant separate list of articles that use British English and probably should be the preferred option. 85.255.234.206 (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, tags don't "instruct" users of anything, they are subject to community opinion like anything else. Few people who edit the article will ever bother to go to the Talk page, and those that do may or may not notice the tag there, and may or may not pay attention to it if they do. Given the history of the article, it's clear no one has paid any attention to it since the article's inception, since the Talk page article says BE and the article has used AE since 2009. Secondly, I've already given you data concerning the actual usage of English in the article which you have chosen to ignore, because there's really no response to the cold, hard facts, is there?

But the more important issue here, is your edit warring behavior at the article to achieve your preferred outcome, regardless of the opinion of other editors. When you have a disagreement with someone about content, the correct response is to follow Wikipedia principles of dispute resolution. You made a bold change, and were reverted. So far, so good; that's normal. The next step, per Bold, Revert, Discuss, is to take it to the Talk page and discuss the issue with other editors, and try to achieve consensus. What you don't do, is to keep reverting the article, just to have your own way and to unilaterally enforce your viewpoint, because that is contrary to Wikipedia's core principle of achieving consensus by talking it out with other editors. You should stop your edit-warring and talk it out instead. Mathglot (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot:I suggest that you step back and stop making unwarranted and malicious allegations unless you really do want a block. I made two good faith edits based on an apparently legitimately added WP:ENGVAR tag (as it was unchallenged since application). And you accuse me of edit warring based on those two edits. I have not pursued the matter beyond that, but entered into a cordial discussion surrounding the use of the ENGVAR tags. I have not ignored anything unless you can prove to the contrary. Where have I attempted to have my "own way" as you falsely accuse? I would suggest that if this is the level of discussion that you have to resort to to get your own way then you go and go and visit a taxidermist on your own behalf. I do not wish to discuss this further with what is clearly a WP:TENDENTIOUS editor. 85.255.234.206 (talk) 23:05, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Comments by user Sparkingplugs (talk · contribs) vigorously supporting 85.255.234.206 can be found here. Mathglot (talk) 01:30, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

^ The article was started on June 1, 2009. By July 1, we had: program, stabilizer, and airplane. By September 1, we had the above, plus: centralized, mobilized, sensationalized, realize, destabilized, recognize, generalized, and center. (Direct quotations excepted per MOS:ARTCON.) By this point, the trend was already clear.

November 2020

Hello, I'm 4thfile4thrank. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Astrological age, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. 4thfile4thrank {talk} :? 21:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits referred to above, consider creating an account for yourself or logging in with an existing account so that you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

December 2021

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) 22:18, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]