User talk:Mathglot

Reflib; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#MILHIST reliable source database

You may (or may not) be interested in commenting on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#MILHIST reliable source database. The intent of the proposals seems to be the same as your projects. Note that I mentioned the size of the task of preparing a database of sources just for the American Civil War. This is similar to some of our correspondence. One thing I did not think about is the use of Chicago Manual of Style by many of the editors of American Civil War topics. On the other hand, you noted it would not be necessary to make the conversion for your project. I mentioned World War II in passing. I did not mention your project in part because I rushed my comment, long as it is, and as I thought of it later, I wondered whether you would describe your idea more accurately than I would have done. I made no mention of preparing a list of general sources such as I noted to you. An editor has put up numerous improved articles (well over 100 with more promised) for B class assessment. I have been trying to do a few each day. This unexpectedly adds to my use of time unless others start to make some of the assessments. FWIW. Don't take this as a request to comment if you would rather not do so for any reason, just as information. Donner60 (talk) 23:30, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Donner60: thanks so much for posting this comment. It sounds very interesting, and I'll definitely go have a look, and likely comment as well. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 03:43, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

An article of its own?

Hi Mathglot, happy new year. Since you're experienced in gender articles, I believe your opinion is valuable: I recently created a redirect from social construction of sex to the section about it in the article sex–gender distinction. However, I'm thinking it might be a case of creating a separate article for this topic. What do you think? Gmsrubin (talk) 01:45, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Gmsrubin, you too! That redirect goes to a section that leads off with Monique Wittig, author of the The Straight Mind; one of my favorites. Anyway, it's certainly worth some research to see what kind of sources are out there on the topic. Start with rereading WP:Notability, to refresh your memory, then do some source hunting, and see what you find. Remember that dozens of passing mentions basically don't count for much; what you need, is significant coverage; an entire book about it would be a good start, but if not, chapters in two or three books or journals which are mostly about the topic (ideally, chapter title equals or contains the topic title) then you should be good. You're welcome to use the Talk page of the redirect if you wish, to record some of your research, or do it offline, or in your sandbox. You could start with these links, and see what comes up:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

France sources: Bing · Cairn · DuckDuckGo · E. Universalis · Gallica · Google · (books · scholar) · Persée · Qwant

I particularly liked Qwant result #13, an extract from Beauvoir, starting with her very famous phrase that one is not born a woman; possibly the first utterance of the social construction of gender, or at least, the first one I'm aware of. I'll be interested to see what you find for social construction of sex, and whether there's enough out there to pass WP:Notability. (There's another yardstick to consider, namely WP:PAGEDECIDE, but we don't need to deal with that now.) User:EvergreenFir is an editor I trust who is knowledgeable in this area and might have some good advice for you about this. If this turns into an ongoing discussion, then we should probably move it at some point to a better venue, possibly Talk:Sex–gender distinction, but let's see what happens. Mathglot (talk) 08:00, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! (Also, I replied in Talk:Doing gender#Partial merge proposal, in case you have understandably unsubscribed to it) Gmsrubin (talk) 02:27, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

LGBT rights by territory or country revert

Hello, @Mathglot. You reverted my edit at this article and said I should have justified the change at the Edit Summary and preferably also the Talk page. I did justify it at the Talk page, but I didn't point that out at the Edit Summary. My mistake. Could you take a look at the edit again and see if you think the revert should be reverted? Thanks very much for the advice. Charlie Campbell 28 (talk) 14:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Charlie Campbell 28: responded at Talk:LGBT rights by country or territory#legal or lawful?. Mathglot (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

The Pure Theory of Law

I changed the italics to quotation marks because The Pure Theory of Law uses quotation marks, not italics, around "ought," "may," and "can." I used single quotes around those words because I was quoting them within a quote. See page 5 of The Pure Theory of Law, which is accessible at Google Books. Surely the MOS: Manual of Style doesn't require us to alter quotations, does it? Maurice Magnus (talk) 02:25, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Actually, yes: Wikipedia would use ought, may, and can per MOS:WORDSASWORDS. Regarding your comment about altering quotations: the meaningful content of a quotation may generally not be changed, although even in that case, there are exceptions (antiquated spelling, ligatures, some abbreviations, non-English words, and various others); but punctuation generally is changed to conform to our Manual of Style, except when the subject of the content is about punctuation itself.

I have the 1967 Knight Translation, and yes, it does use quotation marks in the first paragraph at the top of page 5, but Wikipedia does not, so we change it. I understand your reasoning: you changed the double quotation marks in the book to single quotation marks because the whole thing is double-quoted, and English rules require a quotation within a quotation to use single quotation marks around inner quotations, and so does Wikipedia. But that's not the case here; when Knight refers to a word as a word, he uses double quotes, but Wikipedia does not; we use italics per MOS:WAW. Consider this difference:

1. Cheese is derived from milk.
2. Cheese is derived from the Old English word ċēse.

In #2, the word cheese is in italics because we are talking about the word, not the thing you eat. (Knight would have used double quotes around the word cheese, but we don't.

It's irrelevant that Kelsen, or rather the publisher of the Max Knight translation house style manual calls for double quotes around words used as words, Wikipedia does not, and the Manual of Style calls for us to use Wikipedia house style on punctuation and other purely stylistic choices. The governing principle is MOS:CONFORM, which says:

A quotation is not a facsimile and, in most cases, it is not a requirement that the original formatting be preserved. Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text. These are alterations which make no difference when the text is read aloud...

followed by various examples you can read at MOS:CONFORM. Later, it is followed by this:

Direct quotation should not be used to preserve the formatting preferred by an external publisher (especially when the material would otherwise be unchanged), as this tends to have the effect of scare-quoting...

Note the differences in my first sentence above, and yours: you used double quotes, and commas (and a period) inside the quotation markes; I used italic markup to generate ought, may, and can per MOS:WAW, and with the commas outside the markup, per MOS:LQUOTE.

Does this answer your questions? Mathglot (talk) 04:30, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Maurice Magnus, forgot to ask: are you subscribed to this discussion? Mathglot (talk) 04:35, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot You explain the Wikipedia rule perfectly clearly. I disapprove of it, but I accept that I must follow it. I also disapprove of placing commas and periods outside of quotation marks, but I accept that I must when I edit Wikipedia. Otherwise, as when I write to you, I follow the convention in the U.S.

I don't know what it means to be subscribed to a discussion. Maurice Magnus (talk) 12:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Single or double quotation marks

Mathglot In the following paragraph from Hans Kelsen, I would change all the single quotation marks to double, but I will wait until you approve. Is there a reason that they should remain single?

Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law aims to describe law as a hierarchy of binding norms, while refusing, itself, to evaluate those norms. That is, 'legal science' is to be separated from 'legal politics'. Central to the Pure Theory is the notion of a 'basic norm (Grundnorm)'—a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the theory, from which in a hierarchy of empowerments all 'lower' norms in a legal system, from constitutional law downward, are understood to derive their validity, hence their authority or 'bindingness'. This is not logical validity (i.e. of deduction), but 'legal validity'; a norm is legally 'valid' if and only if the organ creating it has been so empowered by a higher norm. Public international law is understood as similarly hierarchical. In this way, Kelsen contends, the validity of legal norms (their specifically 'legal' character) can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or a personified State or Nation. The Pure Theory is intended as rigorous legal positivism, excluding any idea of natural law.

Maurice Magnus (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Maurice Magnus: Tl;dr: the single quotes are correct as they are, but the wikicode could be improved with a template.

This was a really good question; I had to look this one up. I was almost ready to agree with you, but I was hesitating between keeping the double quotes (but, is that really a quotation, if it's only one word?) and no quote marks at all, because afaik, we only use single quotes for quotations within quotations. Well, it turns out I was wrong about the second part, because according to WP:MOS#Double or single, you can also use single quote in two other situations: plant cultivars ('Golden delicious'), and with glosses, as is the case here.

The use of single quote here is per MOS:SINGLE, and flags a single-quoted term as English translation (by Knight) of a particular choice of term by Kelsen. I would agree that since this is a lesser-known use of single quote in our Manual of Style, it is subject to misunderstanding by other editors who might change it later in good faith; in order to prevent that, I would change all the single-quoted terms to use the {{gloss}} template instead, as explained at MOS:SINGLE. After we add the template, it won't look any different to the reader—it will still be in single quotes, just as before—but it will look different to an editor looking at the wikicode. As also explained at MOS:SINGLE in the casa example, it would be helpful to have the German term precede the English gloss, although it isn't required. Do you want to make the change, or should I? Thanks again for inquiring about this; I learned something new about the MOS today. Mathglot (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot Please make the change. I have not educated myself about templates. Maurice Magnus (talk) 19:12, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Maurice Magnus,  Done. You can see the changes at this diff. Thanks for your interest and attention to issues surrounding Kelsen and Pure Theory. I'm kind of snowed under on various projects here, do you think you'd have time to have a look at the article Basic law? With the exception of one, small note, it is entirely unreferenced, and that's unacceptable. Btw, if you ever have issues or questions with templates, feel free to ask me, I'm pretty experienced using them, updating them, and creating new ones. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:17, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot I am a lawyer, but it has been many years since I have looked at Kelsen's writings. Therefore, I made only style edits to the opening of Basic law, which appears to have been written by someone whose first language is not English. I had to guess as to what the person meant. If you think that I guessed incorrectly, I'm fine with your changing it. Maurice Magnus (talk) 20:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Maurice Magnus, I'm so sorry, I got my wires crossed typing the article name; what I meant was, the article Basic norm, which is about Kelsen's principle from PToL. I didn't mean to link the Basic law article (arghhh; sorry!) but now that you've edited it, you're right, it is better. (I followed up there with a hatnote at the top to help get people to the right article, so they don't end up confused, as I did.) I apologize for sending you on a wild-goose chase, but at least your edits definitely *did* improve that one, which probably needs more attention, too, but is not my prime focus. Can I importune upon you one more time, in order to have a look at Basic norm? That's the one that is related to Kelsen's Grundnorm, and remains unreferenced—probably because it was written in the early, Wild West days of Wikipedia (2004) and there wasn't much attention to referencing then. Mathglot (talk) 20:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot I just noticed "subscribe" at the upper right of each topic. That must be what you were referring to when you asked me whether I was subscribed to the previous topic. What happens if I click "subscribe"?

Now to Basic norm. I am not competent to improve the article, except stylistically. I said that it has been many years since I looked at Kelsen's writings. Make that about 40. I did notice that, in the section "The origin of the term 'basic norm' from Merkl," "basic norm" was capitalized, as it is not elsewhere in the article. In the process of changing it to lower case, I made other style edits to the section. Later, I'll go back and see whether other sections need style edits, but that's all I can offer. Maurice Magnus (talk) 21:14, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Screenshot of subscription notification. The rectangular box entitled 'Notices' pops up when you click the small, square icon at the top.

Maurice, when you subscribe to a discussion, any replies to that discussion cause a notification to appear, in the same place where you get notifications when someone {{ping}}s you, or uses your username in brackets, which is to say, in the little square icon at the top of every page of Wikipedia, to the right of your username and the bell icon. You can click that square icon at any time to see a list of your notifications. If there is a superimposed number, it tells you how many there are, and if the number has a blue background , that means that there are some notifications you haven't seen yet.

I've since made some stylistic changes of my own at Basic norm, as well as rationalized the section headings (briefer per MOS:NOBACKREF, and some nesting of subsections). As far as my level of competence or prior knowledge of that subject, it's all new to me; just fyi, I only heard of Kelsen fairly recently, and have no legal training; nevertheless, according to Who Wrote That? I wrote 94.4% of the text at Pure Theory of Law, and I hope it's not too bad. The point being, not that I'm tooting my own horn, rather the contrary: any volunteer editor capable of finding reliable sources and writing a decent summary of the principal views and citing them properly can contribute here. You're certainly more qualified than I am about Kelsen, norms, and legal theory; that's for sure, but you don't need to be an expert in a topic or have formal training in it to write about it here, so you are certainly welcome to contribute there if you wish to.

But we are all volunteers, and everybody gets to contribute where and when they wish, so I won't trouble you further about "Basic norm". I only mean to encourage you, in the sense that if you're interested in some topic you know nothing about (or it's been a long time), by all means, go for it! One of my main satisfactions at Wikipedia is learning about stuff I'm unfamiliar with, by doing the research necessary to write articles about them. In my case, the Liberation of France and War guilt question were two topics like that; Draft:French historiography is another one (in progress; wanna help?), and now I'm excited about Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart and other legal philosophers. Anyway, it's been fun talking with you; so feel free to jump in here anytime (or ping me from any page). Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot I appreciate your comments. I'm tired and have nothing to say in reply at the moment, but I don't want you to think that I ignored them. I will reread them when I'm more alert. I gather that to ping someone means merely to contact him or her. I tend to avoid templates, because they create problems. For example, in n.2 of Ronald C. White, the title of the book cited was in quotation marks rather than italics. I italicized the title, but I couldn't remove the quotation marks, because they are hidden in the template. If the book had been cited without using a template, then they would have been easy to remove. Maurice Magnus (talk) 23:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC) By the way, in case you're curious, Maurice Magnus was a real person.Maurice Magnus (talk) 23:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Here is another (admittedly trivial) example of a difficulty I have with templates. In the list of References in France and the American Civil War, every item but the first has a comma before "p." or "pp." The first has a period. For the sake of consistency, I tried to change the period to a comma, but I couldn't (or, I should say, don't know how), because the period is hidden in the template.Maurice Magnus (talk) 18:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

It's true that single quotes are used for glosses that immediately follow the non-English word. It isn't a gloss if a translated word appears in the text:

• (current formatting -- wrong) That is, 'legal science' is to be separated...
• (correct 1) That is, Rechtswissenschaft 'legal science' is to be separated...
• (correct 2) That is, "legal science" is to be separated...

I assume that the quotation marks here are to emphasize that this is a technical term for Kelsen, or that it isn't really ordinary English usage. Otherwise, there shouldn't be any quotes at all:

• (correct 3) That is, legal science is to be separated...

Hope this helps. --Macrakis (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Possible (self-)promotion on pages related to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Hello @Mathglot: I noticed you had previously commented regarded possible COI on Revivalistics, a book by Ghil'ad Zuckermann. I am looking into the promotional nature of these articles, as well as material related to this individual on other pages. Sunjaifriþas (talk) 20:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

User:The Other Karma

Given the concerns being raised by multiple contributors at Talk:Effects of pornography on young people over The Other Karma's poor grasp of the English language, and what I see as the inadequacy of their response, I have started a thread at WP:ANI. You may wish to comment. [1] AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:32, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you might have been on to something there -- look how far we got working with Paulo Simoes(sp)? I've actually said before that maybe half the new editors who get blocked for CIR only need to team up with someone with better English who doesn't know the topic as well as they do. I'm guessing on the number but look at Paolo.

Apparently that editor was not a good candidate however (!)

I still think maybe we should talk about logistics and whether we could put something into practice. Thoughts?Elinruby (talk) 03:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Elin, yeah, Andy and others saw the situation earlier or clearer than I did, I guess, and I kept trying to get TOK to just shut up, because he made things worse every time he opened his mouth. I guess that's another kind of CIR issue he had besides just the English [in-]ability, and in the end Bish's upping it to indef was the right move. Sometimes I think I should get a St. Jude medal—I seem to be the patron saint of lost Wikipedia editor causes. I've had a few successes bringing editors back from the brink, or even out of indef in one case, but a lot more often I spill a lot of words trying to get an editor to back off, and they jump feet first into the abyss anyway. Oh, well. Mathglot (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I have my own atories like that, people I now regret trying to help. But listen... I remember you yelling me that I eas unstrapping my seatbelt and headed for a cliff ypu were trying to warn me of, or words to that effect. And while you were completely correct that Eastern Europe is toxic as hell, and I would have been better off to refrain, I have so far survived, so there is that. But what about the guy who knows his English isnt good and tolerates a brisk copy-edit? We should welcome those editors methinks though the disincentives have reached a point where I don't really do translation on Wikipedia any more. At least your protégés aren't trying to get you sanctioned, so you have better taste im protégés than I do if that's any consolation Elinruby (talk) 09:12, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I was worried about you wrt Balkans at one point, but you were never in that group of "mentees" I was talking about above, because you were always an experienced editor to me, and I was only talking about relatively inexperienced users above. I could list them off; I remember being sad about the professor of Holocaust history; Sonia-something, I think; absolutely no issues with ArbCom EE restrictions, wasn't that at all; instead, she was indeffed because she simply could not get on board with the requirement for verifiability and citations. Who, me? I write the books on this stuff! Sadly, despite all the instruction and pleading, she just wouldn't cite properly, and got booted for OR or something. Wasted a lot of words on her, and so did User:CaroleHenson, who will remember who I am talking about. Mathglot (talk) 09:23, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

i think I completely missed that. My most recent adventure in this area involved an editor who was at ANI for a month before I investigated, with his name in the section header as "again" covering up Lithuania's Nazi past, or some such. Turns out he removed

"(name) was a war criminal responsible for thousands of Jewish deaths" from the lede of an article that said nothing at all in the body about any war at all. The editor kept saying that but nobody was listening and they were debating topic ban vs indef. I did intervene there and people were really mad that I "derailed the case" but it was someone who worked on the Collaboration page and come on, they were about to indef him for (checks notes) following policy...and I was uncivil for pointing it out. And off to Arbcom it went. So yeah, Wikipedia is not always rational, although sanity prevailed at Arbcom, so overall I would say that "get out of Eastern Europe" was excellent advice, actually. But I digress. Maybe it's too soon but: Wouldn't it be a good idea to set up some mechanism in an area where our coverage is lacking where one person can easily read the language and the other can easily read good English? Theoretically?

ps: the supposed war criminal was prime minister for a month and thought the Nazis were going to liberate the Baltics from the Soviets, poor fool. I doubt he had the authority to be a war criminal but conceivably this might be true if he signed off on any extermination orders, per Nuremberg decisions. In time-honored fashion I jumped in feet first but I have yet to find that tho, but I am hampered by language issues

Elinruby (talk) 19:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

pps- I wasn't thinking of Lithuania, since all potential editors there have now been eliminated. (The editor was not sanctioned but has now left the topic area and who could blame him.) I am not willing to be the next sacrificial victim. Brazil would be about a perfect example if we hadn't already done that. Korea or Argentina or Finland come to mind though ... Elinruby (talk) 19:32, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

As to your idea of pairing up translators with different levels of mastery of a language pair involved in some translation project, we definitely should do something. That's getting far enough afield of this topic, that I've created a new section so it can take place under a recognizable title. See below. (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Translation buddy system

I've started this as a new section, based on this comment by Elinruby in the section above:

Wouldn't it be a good idea to set up some mechanism in an area where our coverage is lacking where one person can easily read the language and the other can easily read good English?

Yes, I think that would be a good idea. I have mused about that privately before, but hadn't gotten anything structured out of it to the point of doing anything about it yet. I think we've informally done stuff like that with Paulo in Portuguese and maybe some other examples, but I think with some thought, something could be developed. My original thought was modeled on the "buddy system" we learned as kids, so that for any given language, we would pair one native English speaker with iffy mastery of Klingon, with one Klingon native speaker with possibly iffy mastery of English, and consult back-and-forth on the Talk page. (The visual model I had for this, was a "three-legged race"; do you remember those? At the beginning, everybody falls flat on their face, until they learn how to coordinate properly, and then it starts to get smoother and smoother.) Although it wouldn't necessarily be just two editors, so maybe "buddy system" isn't a good name for it, but that was my first formulation, and I still think of it that way for now, regardless of how many people are involved. But anything you can bring to bear about how to make something out of your translation idea would be great. Mathglot (talk) 19:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

i have about ten minutes more before I have to go. Based on my experience I would say there should be clear expectations (be aware not everyone realizes how awesome you are, don't further ancient ethnic strife) for mentees as well as mentors (your mentee is not your meat-puppet), without, hopefully, getting too bureaucratic. People are unlikely to sign up of their own volition -- one of the hardest things at PNT was convincing original authors that their English was not as good as they thought it was, but maybe as a variation on mentoring, which has been tried a few times at ANI, not always successfully is the problem. In fact in the only case I have knowledge of the mentee sees no problem with his edits and never consults his mentor, who expresses helplessness, seen three rounds of AE on that, but that is behaviour not English. Those are the thoughts I have that may be a basis for discussion. Elinruby (talk) 20:17, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOPIPE at Buccellato di Lucca

Dear editor, just picking up from your edit summary at Buccellato di Lucca; thank you for taking the time to correct my mistake.

In offer of an excuse, in my experience, the VisualEditor likes to create piped links from minor adjustments in the text. In this instance, my copyedit changed the text from ancient Romans to ancient Roman to be grammatically correct, and the result was a piped link. It was by no means intentional, but I wanted to flag it up as something that can easily be done unintentionally, in good faith, by a visual editor with their eye off the ball like me.

If you know any way to avoid this issue without the tediousness of checking through the source code, I would be grateful for your help :)) IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 00:19, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

IgnatiusofLondon, thanks for your message. First of all, you did nothing wrong; I'm sorry I was snippy in my edit summary; I was a bit frustrated, because it was the second time in a few hours that I was fixing a problem that I had already fixed just previously in that same article. I realize it was not you that made the similar change earlier, and I apologize for my tone there. Furthermore, that change wasn't your fault; WP:Visual Editor has a long list of limitations, and this is another one—previously unknown to me, so thanks for describing it. I've added a new entry about this to WP:Visual Editor#Limitations with bolded header 'Wikilink changes'; please proofread it to make sure I summarized your issue accurately, and feel free to change it however you like to correct or improve the description.

I am actually not that knowledgeable about the workings of VE (except for its shortcomings  ), so I can't help you figure out how to avoid this issue, but I would dearly love to know the answer to your question as well. This would be a great question to ask at WP:VPT, if you'd like to raise it there (you can say I suggested it, if you wish) and there a lot of high-powered tech people who hang out there who may be able to answer it. (If you do, please link this discussion.) Another possible venue is at Phabricator; you can follow the 'Report a problem' link at the top of WP:VE to do that. Once again, sorry for the tone, and imho it was VE, not you, that made the mistake (and even if it were you, nbd because we're all human). Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 01:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt and exceedingly courteous reply. Don't worry; you weren't snippy! I will ask on WP:VPT now (wow, I didn't know that resource existed!), tagging you. Thank you! And thank you once again for correcting my edit :)) IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 14:46, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Do explanatory notes need to be discussed in Help:Shortened footnotes

Dear Mathglot, thank you very much for talking to me. I lack your experience. I thought your talk page might be a better place. To answer your question (have you ever combined them before?): yes, I have. I often use {{sfn}} inside {{efn}}. The only problem seems to be that one cannot list-define such explanatory notes, but that is besides our point here. I still do not see what the difficulties are that justify such a detailed treatment of explanatory notes in Help:Shortened footnotes as interactions seem to be limited to simple nesting. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Help talk:Shortened footnotes § Explanatory footnotes

Johannes Schade, I prefer to keep conversations in one place, and if I had time, I'd respond there, but I'm a bit oversubscribed at the moment. You may have a point, but I don't have time to look at it just now, and in any case, my page isn't the right place. Trying bringing it back there and try attracting more response there. You could try pinging Rjjiii from there who has done a lot of great work recently on rationalizing, clarifying, and expanding citation and other template doc, and really seeing it through with good explanations and good examples. Mathglot (talk) 03:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

We have Portuguese speaking help

The edits I checked were constructive gnoming. I asked them nicely to use edit summaries Elinruby (talk) 08:00, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Consensus

I can comprehend that there's a fear my post was "Forum shopping, admin shopping ..." but let me try to assure you that is not the case. I am looking for other opinions, not necessarily ones that match my opinion. I would reject neither agreement nor disagreement nor would I confirm either at this point. I think there is no consensus.

One can read the diverse opinions that have commented on the original topic, but that diversity is limited to 5 Wikipedia users. Too, it's only the users who comment without request (the "proactive" population) as oppose to those users one would ask for an opinion (the "Silent majority"). Do you know how many users there are on this website? I don't, but I know it's many many more than that. Similarly, there are many many more admins than have expressed an opinion or declared some from the seemingly infinite and redundant) policies that may apply.

5 from all users or admin is nothing like a consensus. It is statistically 0%. Obviously, the semantics to this particular topic don't concern everyone, but it likely concerns more than have offered an opinion by now.

It seems fair to leave a link at Manual of Style/Words to watch. Or, maybe, the entire discussion should be moved. Maybe it should have been posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab) in the first place.

ProofCreature (talk) 13:35, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I tried to post an WP:RFC to start, but I got disagreement for that because there was no discussion (just page reversions). Maybe that's appropriate now.

ProofCreature (talk) 13:41, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

ProofCreature, I couldn't disagree more, and I think you are gravely misreading the situation. Editor time, as an admin recently mentioned at a User talk page, "is our most precious resource", and in my opinion, that is the likeliest reason that other editors don't respond at a discussion they see as already having consensus among the editors who are responding. I think if you post an Rfc now, you will be subject to opprobrium from some editors, shutdown of the Rfc, and possibly calls for sanctions either to stop you from posting at VPM, or to stop you from starting any Rfc, or possibly even calls for a WP:BLOCK.

The conversation at WP:VPM has run its course, editors there believe that your proposal has no support, and you are not the one that gets to decide how many opinions or forums are enough, even if in some narrow sense you are not forum shopping for agreement, you just love a friendly, college, bull session among a bunch of knowledgeable folks even with lively disagreement from just about everybody. I get that, but that brings us back to the admin quote above.

Wikipedia is about building an encyclopedia, not having interminable discussions on points that one editor is passionate about, but that is clearly not going to result in anything, certainly not an improvement to the encyclopedia or its procedures. Editors at VPM are indulging you, to a certain extent, because you are a new-ish editor, but I think that indulgence has now pretty much run its course, there's a feeling there that there's a certain amount of failure to hear what people are telling you, and there's even a very indulgent and friendly admin at the discussion who has already posted there twice in a gently critical manner, and that's like the red flashing lights going off and the gates starting to come down at a railroad crossing. I think if you go on much longer there, the gate will land on your head.

VPM is not for endless discussion about a proposal that is clearly going nowhere, and I think people's patience there is running out. I understand that you are enjoying the discussion and you'd just love to continue it even with more disagreement which you welcome in the "bring-it" spirit of a college bull session pile-on, and I sympathize, but Wikipedia just isn't the place to do it, and I think you risk sanctions if you continue. Maybe try Reddit, or some language blog devoted to such things, like LanguageHat.com. Good luck! Mathglot (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm curious about your requirements for consensus, statistically, factually. What is an appropriate proportion that validates a consensus? How many and from what common pool is it taken (i.e. what common denominator)?

ProofCreature (talk) 21:05, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any special "requirements"; I just stay open to what I am hearing in a discussion, the strength of the argumentation, and the ability to link that argumentation to the policies and guidelines of the encyclopedia. I'm afraid I cannot reduce it to a tidy little equation of this many statistics plus that many facts minus them there oppositions and expostulations divided by !votes. It's just something that comes with experience here. Mathglot (talk) 21:37, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I get it. It explains some comments. It is certainly easier and is not uncommon.

An echo chamber isn't a consensus. It can be difficult to recognize.

Maybe next week I'll research accepted statistics to determine consensus. If I do so I'll relay my findings to you and / or some Wikidedia committee or you could update policies.

This is information I found easily that should have some bearing on a consensus:

• "The total number of English speakers in the world adds up to around 1,430,000,000." List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
• There are currently 46,926,663 Wikipedia accounts, of which 127,021 have made at least one edit during the last month. Wikipedia:Wikipedians
• The English Wikipedia includes 6,781,913 articles and it averages 540 new articles per day. In 2023, 812,635 registered editors made at least one edit.Wikipedia:Statistics
• Nearly 4,900,000,000 people visited Wikipedia in February 2022. 22 Astonishing Wikipedia Statistics and Facts
• English Wikipedia has 868 administrators Wikipedia:Administrators
• There have been 7 Wikipedians who commented on "stint".

ProofCreature (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

• The survey response quantity that is required for statistically validity can be calculated simply from this website and the information above here.
• These websites have more complicated equations: https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/ppc/section3/ppc333.htm , Sample_size_determination ,https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050915015781 , Consensus-based_assessment

A quick evaluation suggests that at the very minimum, to get a consensus with a 10% error possibility Wikipedia should get responces from 86 Administrators.

ProofCreature (talk) 22:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I admire your passion and thirst for understanding based on empirical evidence. Regarding this:

Maybe next week I'll research accepted statistics to determine consensus. If I do so I'll relay my findings to you and / or some Wikidedia committee or you could update policies.

I'm skeptical, and it feels like there's a certain amount of WP:IDHT going on right here, but if I'm wrong and you're serious about that, find the right venue for it (here is not it, nobody will see it here), tread lightly, and be sensitive to feedback you get. Good luck! Mathglot (talk) 23:21, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Your calculations are based on false assumptions about populations, and your results are meaningless. I'm not going to argue with you about statistics, but if your population (not sample, but population) has little to no variance in the variable you are measuring, then those equations are meaningless. For example: if I told you that of all administrators at Wikipedia, 97% of them are almost ready to give you a 31-hour block per WP:NOTHERE, WP:BATTLEGROUND, or WP:IDHT, then you don't need a sample of 86 of them to find out what the general feeling among administrators might be; you only need one.

I'm pretty easy-going about discussions on my page, but I'm getting to the point where I think I've almost reached a limit, and I'm not sure I want this to go on much longer here. On your side, you should worry that all 86 of those administrators have an itchy trigger finger, and are just waiting for the one misstep from you so they can press the WP:BLOCK button and turn off the alarm bells and get some peace and quiet, so you don't need to sample all 86 of them, because they all feel the same way, pretty much. If I were you, your best response now would be something like this: "You know, I've been away from my main enjoyment here for too long, which is improving articles, and so I just added three references to article ABC, and I'm starting a new draft XYZ on a clearly notable topic I'm passionate about that will fill a gap in our coverage." Are you hearing what I am saying? Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I do not comprehend this last comment. The calculations seem backwards. One must sample 86 administrators to know that 83 would want to apply some policy and then one could state that "97% of them are almost ready to give you a 31-hour block per WP:NOTHERE, WP:BATTLEGROUND, or WP:IDHT". Also, you can check the population assumptions. They are directly from Wikipedia.

Most other comments I get even if I disagree. The previous comment: "if I'm wrong and you're serious about that, find the right venue for it (here is not it, nobody will see it here)" is comprehensible. You don't want to learn about statistical application nor hear this topic from me.

If you care to comment further, feel free to do so on my page.

ProofCreature (talk) 23:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Concern regarding Draft:Cisgender

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The Banner

Thanks for your attempt at mediation here. I've laid out a summary of some of the background to this disagreement in the section beginning "A quick summary". I'm completely at a loss how to proceed. I asked for input from a friendly admin here, but without success. I'm reluctant to escalate a petty disagreement to a full AN/I, but I really don't want to let The Banner play this game with anyone else. Do you have any suggestions? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, my suggestion is just let it go. If you take it to AN/I, I think you will experience a WP:BOOMERANG and are at risk for getting warned, or worse. We are only two editors, and you can't force another editor to do what they don't want to do, and that's even assuming other editors would see it the way we do, which is not guaranteed. Best strategy now, is just move on, and let other editors notice similar edits in the future, and maybe get a larger consensus about it. Or not. Either way, insisting now, will just make it worse for you. That's my two cents. Mathglot (talk) 22:27, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your advice. I sent the message above before I'd seen your nearly-simultaneous message elsewhere. The thing is that I've been walking away since last August, it's not working, and I'm tired of it. I'm curious though, why do you see WP:BOOMERANG as a likely outcome? The evidence of one-sided provocation seems fairly clear from where I'm standing. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:39, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a both-sides thing. Regardless of who is right, if one party stops talking, the problem goes away. You may be right, but why risk it? We've all got better things to do, and meanwhile, give some other editors time to get annoyed with his behavior (or not; which will imply all the more that it's better to walk away). Mathglot (talk) 22:58, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

In this case, the evidence is that if one party stops talking, the other goes on alternately provoking and playing the victim. It's precisely because the problem isn't going away that another approach seems called for. I certainly have many other things to do with my time. Perhaps I'll sleep on it. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 23:17, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

I've been meaning to send this for a while, but for kind and well thought-out responses to newcomers at Talk:Lines of amity and a few other places: have a cookie. It's obvious that you take time to consider what you're going to say and that you care about helping those who aren't very familiar with the particulars of Wikipedia. LittlePuppers (talk) 02:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: very kind of you; thanks so much! Mathglot (talk) 02:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a policy about breaking-news references

They're hard to define is one problem. Removing umpty ump dead links, or links that now go to something else, from the 2023 Brazil Congress attack article. Russian invasion of Ukraine had the same problem. They otherwise fit the RS definition. Usually it's Yahoo; currently seeing it at MSN Brasil. For the Ukraine war it was the BBC though, and and a Ukrainian source whose name escapes me atm but is usually also considered a stellar source. Just musing and thought of you. RfC maybe? Elinruby (talk) 06:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

PS Both those pages are highly referenced, and for the Brazil article it was used to document what happened at 4:15, 4:30 etc, so in this case counter-intuitive as it is we arent really losing anything but some recentism. It was a little less clearly so in Ukraine where the sentences was usually something like "Three people were killed by missile strikes in (location) on (date) that were harder to dismiss as unimportant. 06:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC) Elinruby (talk) 06:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

External links

It appears to me that you mistakenly applied the verifiability requirements for sources, which are cited in support of statements made in the body of an article, to the links to resources in a final section External links. The criteria for extenal links are much more lax. The videos of the RobWords channel cover a variety of topics and the video on Toki Pona is clearly well researched, informative, and not in any way fancruft. The videos are produced and presented by Rob Watts, who is not a professional linguist, but formally a newsreader, reporter and presenter in the UK on BBC radio, now working in Berlin as a reporter for DW-TV (and occasionally BBC World Service).  --Lambiam 12:25, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Wrong venue for a content question. Mathglot (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Toki Pona § External links

Re: Searle lecture

Thank you for the recommendation on Phlsph7's talk page. I think I was introduced to Searle's work "backwards", as it were, initially through the criticisms of his cluster theory in Kripke's Naming and Necessity. While I'm definitely still compelled more by the latter's notions, the lecture absolutely helped me appreciate the formulations of Frege and Searle better. I'm excited that naturally, his next lecture will be on Naming and Necessity. Cheers! Remsense诉 04:54, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Remsense, Now it's my turn to thank; I've got that on my list to check out, now! Mathglot (talk) 08:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

It's super brief and easy to read: I had a really brain-tingling weekend where I shotgunned it and then Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I felt I understood a lot more about my existing thoughts on language, both intuitively and through osmosis and engagement with related work.

Causal theory of reference is an article I think I'd like to work on, actually—it needs some love, but it's also the right size and scope where it's limited but I would really get a lot out of working on it. Remsense诉 08:13, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Could be a fun collaboration, if you need/want help, and don't need it soon, as I'm swamped in various directions, but it really sounds interesting. Mathglot (talk) 08:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd love to! I also have a lot of plates in the air at the moment, but let me know when a spot opens up for you, I'll make sure I have one open as well. Cheers! Remsense诉 08:18, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Regency of Algiers

I was just over there and realized how much you helped that guy out. I really appreciate it. It's a really important article and I was feeling helpless about improving those articles because the French stuff I was finding was so dismissive. A really important article. I just bragged about it at The Place We Do Not Name saying that this is what real inclusion looks like (a swipe at a Signpost article about WikiEdu that got cancelled)

Well freaking done. He and you both deserve barnstars and when I am feeling less tired and scatter-brained I think I may make that happen. Elinruby (talk) 07:35, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Aw, shucks... all in a day's work volunteership. Thank you kindly! Mathglot (talk) 08:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

He submitted to GA. Had I been consulted I would have said wait, let me do a copy edit, but since I was not I have been on a big push to get improvements in so tnat it won't fail again on technicalities. I do think it is a brilliant example of what can be done in a cooperation between an open-minded English speaker and a foreign-language subject matter expert so I do think there is potential for featured articles status and would really like to see that, both as a rebuke to the drek that usually makes the cut based on polished formatting, and as an example of an history that is largely unknown in English. He submitted to GA. Had I been consulted I would have said wait, let me do a copy edit, but since I was not I have been on a big push to get improvements in so that it won't fail again on technicalities. I do think it is a brilliant example of what can be done in a cooperation between an open-minded English speaker and a foreign-language subject matter expert so I do think there is potential for featured articles status and would really like to see that, both as a rebuke to the drek that usually makes the cut based on polished formatting, and a great example of history that is largely unknown in English. Elinruby (talk) 03:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I almost want to buy the movie rights (joke) but come on, a pirate flotilla rescuing victims of the Inquisition, conquistadors, assassinations, emirs, Napoleon, Ben Franklin and Victor Hugo :) It all makes me very happy.

But there is a point to this rant -- not sure if you are watching the page. If not I could use some help, even if only a quick scan like Scope creep did for us. The other editor is pretty burned out and who could blame him. But the article needs a read for what might not be obvious to the average reader for one. I've done some of that but am still finding stuff. For another, if you are in the mood to wikignome, trans-titles and image alts are not completely done.

For a third, I could use an opinion: the word jihad arises, and while I think it is appropriate in context given that this was the period of the Crusades after all, I think that post-9/11 propaganda may have created so many inappropriate connotations that caution is called for. The lede says "holy war", which is somewhat better. I realize you've probably worked on this more than I have at this point, and may have already thought about this, but these are the thoughts I am thinking.

Now back to clarifying which emir did what. Thanks for any thoughts. Elinruby (talk) 04:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby, will try to get back to this. Actually, you're probably in a better position regarding content matters on the article, as I mostly made a big push to get the refs whipped into shape. N was unfamiliar with {{sfn}} but quickly caught on, made a few mistakes which I fixed up (but who doesn't, in an article with ~300 unique refs, and many more {{sfn}}s?). Iirc, there are still a few ref issues outstanding: look for author first + last names stuffed into just the |last= field. Can't remember if the corresponding sfn's are working or non-working; the former, I think, but may do weird stuff like {{sfn|John Doe|2025}} in order to make it work; that should be adjusted to last name only. There weren't a ton of these, iirc, just a handful.

Your point about jihad is a good one; agree that this should probably be avoided. Or, if used, should have an explanatory note, giving the meaning as used in the article. Trans-titles I should be able to deal with. Lately have been busy with template stuff, some arcane things, but one with a pretty big impact, which is that all Talk pages that display a {{Talk header}} box and are bot-archived will now automatically have a bot-archive notice displayed in the header just above the archive search box, even if no archive bot parameters are explicitly passed to it. (What's new, is that it locates the bot config elsewhere on the talk page, parses it, and emits the correct bot notice). See Talk:Macedonia, for example. The parser was the fun part. This probably adds bot notices to about 100k Talk pages that didn't have them before. Mathglot (talk) 04:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Ok. Will concentrate on content review for now. Elinruby (talk) 04:39, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby: had another look, and whatever the problem was with first/last being combined in {{sfn}}s before, they are not there now, so either N. fixed them up, or you did, so all's well with the refs (less some trans-titles; t.b.d.) Mathglot (talk) 11:45, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for checking that. Elinruby (talk) 11:53, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Thank you for fixing my incorrect revert over at the Steven Anderson article. Had meant to restore an earlier version. Sorry to make you clean up my mess there! Have a wonderful rest of your week. Phönedinger's jellyfish II (talk) 19:22, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Steven Anderson (pastor)

No problem! Mathglot (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

After reading some more of your talk page, hope I can be as helpful, polite, and as knowledgeable as you are in future interactions with editors. People like you make editing here more than tolerable. Thank you again! Hope we cross paths for something more positive next time. :) Phönedinger's jellyfish II (talk) 18:54, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Phönedinger's jellyfish II, much appreciated; and, me too! Mathglot (talk) 11:47, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment, and at Talk:Ram Mandir and Talk:Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on "All RFCs" request for comments. Thank you for helping out!
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Mathglot (talk) 08:02, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Your contributions are fantastic, and I honestly didn't realise you weren't an admin until recently - if you ever start a RfA, it'd be an easy support. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 17:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Mathglot (talk) 18:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Mail call

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Invitation to join New pages patrol

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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Taking your name in vain

The attempt at ANI to CIR a Portuguese speaker might be urgent. Asked that the brakes be applied while a solution is discussed. Elinruby (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Radicalesbians

 Courtesy link: User talk:Edenaviv5 § Radicalesbians redirected to Lavender Menace

Hey! So I have been considering your feedback and I see the confusion, as the Lavender Menace article misrepresents the topic a bit... the action/protest was called the "Lavender Menace," though, not the group.

Would you mind looking at my sandbox page and letting me know what you think after I clarified some of that? I think, honestly, the Lavender Menace may be better as the redirect since its title isn't helpful. Edenaviv5 (talk) 20:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Edenaviv5, absolutely, I will. I have no preconceived notion or personal interest one way or the other as to how this should turn out, other than it should comply with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, especially with article title policy, WP:Notability, WP:Verifiability, as well as things like Content fork. It could be that this should go the other way, that is, the article content should be under Radicalesbians and the redirect should be from Lavender Menace. Since Lavender Menace was there first, I did the redirect that way, but that is subject to community consensus and could flip the other way. I'm pretty sure they shouldn't both exist as separate articles; at best, one of them should be a section of content within the other, and in that case the redirect could be tagged as a Redirect to section.

As to the name being the group vs. the protest, I seem to recall lots of actions much later (80s–90s) that were ascribed to "Lavender Menace", but whether that was the name of the group, a rallying cry, or something else I couldn't say; I would have to research it. What I'm certain of, is that the idea of "Lavender Menace" by no means disappeared in the 70s and was alive and well decades later. That would have to be backed up by research and sources, of course, but just something to be aware of, so you can look into it if you wish. But this is only a side-issue of your main question.

There should be a discussion open to the wider community about your question, and imho, you should open one either at Talk:Radicalesbians, Talk:Lavender Menace, or maybe even at WT:LGBT since more than one page is concerned, and that would be a good place to find informed opinion or at least more eyeballs for this question. I would probably pick the last for a venue. If you open a discussion there, please link the two articles concerned, your sandbox, and probably this discussion as well, and ask for feedback from the community there. I thank you for your work on this, and I look forward to working with you on this. Mathglot (talk) 20:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Fragmented discussion: see User talk:Edenaviv5 § Radicalesbians redirected to Lavender Menace. Mathglot (talk) 22:11, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi again -

So, Radicalesbians is central to my work off Wikipedia, and the sources I provided detail that the group lasted from May 1970 until December 1970. The "lavender menace" protest was them, but the phrase resonated far beyond them, of course. There were likely other groups (as you reference) using the phrase -- that, specifically, is beyond my knowledge as I research Radicalesbians specifically, not the phrase.

This is largely why I initially made a separate article, however: the phrase "lavender menace" did not die with the group's protest in May 1970, of course. But, if we're discussing groups of lesbian-feminists, "Lavender Menace" is not the same as "Radicalesbians." From cursory searches, I see many groups and establishments with the name "Lavender Menace," but there is only one "Radicalesbians." Edenaviv5 (talk) 22:50, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Edenaviv5, yes, and it's often conflated, even by sources that should know better, with radical lesbians. Don't know if you noticed I added a lot of in-links to Radicalesbians yesterday, but it takes some careful reading to know when a source that writes Radicalesbians really means Radicalesbians and not radical lesbians, and vice versa. Sometimes it isn't even clear, and in one case or two, I removed a wikilink because we can't put our interpretation onto the quoted words of a source, or even the summary words of a wikipedia editor to guess their intent.

I am kind of hoping you will stop responding both here and at your Talk page, and take this to a central venue where interested editors will find it and perhaps comment, because they sure won't find it here. Try WT:LGBT. Mathglot (talk) 02:06, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I do not see the links you mention in the history at all.

And I know, I was just trying to understand what to improve based on your confusion (since I have already read all the links you threw in to Wiki rules), hence replying off that page and just to you, but ok. Edenaviv5 (talk) 05:19, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Did I mention history? I'm not sure what you are referring to. I'm happy to keep the discussion going here, if you want to discuss specifically with me, but it seems like it would be more productive to open it up, that's what I meant. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Pyxis Solitary, can you help unscramble this? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:19, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot: I've been away. Sorry to not have replied sooner. But I see that a Radicalesbians article exists separate from the Lavender Menace article -- as it should be. Lavender Menace was created in 2005 and since its creation 89 editors have contribute to it. As you suggested, this discussion should have taken place at "Talk:Radicalesbians, Talk:Lavender Menace, or maybe even at WT:LGBT".
Lavender Menace was a group, not just a phrase or a protest. I know this because I came out in NYC in 1980 and a friend, who was 12 years older than me, had been a member of LM (in the 1970s she also got to hang out at Mother Courage). Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Teahouse question – hide edit notice

Hi, I just wanted to follow up about a question I asked at the Teahouse, to which you responded. The thread was archived. I wanted to remove an edit notice, and you gave this advice:

"Add the following line to your common.css page, purge your common.css, and refresh the Star Wars page:

body .refideas {display:none} /* Turn off {{Refideas editnotice}} in edit mode */This will turn off the notice on all pages that have it. See H:CSS for some help with common.css. Let me know if you have any issues applying it."

I did what you suggested, and the edit notice changed, but didn't go away. Now instead of a large box with text, it is a very small box with no text, but it's still annoying and I have to close it every time I edit. Do you have ideas for a next step?

Thanks! Wafflewombat (talk) 06:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Wafflewombat, If it works for me and not for you, it must be you have a different skin or are using a different view or something. I might be able to help if I can see the html source code that is being generated in your environment. Can you send me a link to the page you are viewing as a test, then edit it so it shows the small box, then place your cursor on the page somewhere, hit context-click or right-click, which should give you a pop-up dialog box with choices like Copy, Paste, Select, and others. Look for one that says, 'View page source', which might be right there, or it might be under a heading like 'Developer tools' on some browsers. If you don't see it, scroll the dialog box. Click 'View page source', which will open a new browser tab. Go to the tab, select and copy the content, which will save it to your Clipboard. Go to my user page, and then find the link, 'Email this user' and click it. Depending on your skin, it might be in the left sidebar, or elsewhere; look around. Paste your clipboard into the email input field, add a subject line like, 'Hide edit notice with CSS', and send it to me along with whatever message at the top might be helpful. If you can do that, I might be able to help you. Mathglot (talk) 07:04, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I sent you an email with the Page Source for the Star Wars page, which currently has the "small box" version of the edit notice.

Did I understand correctly what you wanted me to do? Wafflewombat (talk) 08:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Wafflewombat, yes, perfectly; email received. I'll look at it tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Wafflewombat, I looked at your source, and can see that you are on (default) Vector 2022, but I was hoping to find the page content including the Edit notice, but apparently the page view you sent is from before the server loads the page. Can you try the same thing again, but this time, once you are in Edit mode, hit Show Preview to let the server load the Star Wars page at the top, and then after it does that, place your cursor anywhere in the Star Wars content and click on any white space or black (non-clickable) word, and then do the right-click, 'View page source' thing again, and mail it to me. Mathglot (talk) 23:32, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. In doing this, I discovered that the edit notice only appears when visual editing is enabled, which is how I do the vast majority of my editing. Wafflewombat (talk) 00:18, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Progressing discussion

Look, we could - and maybe you want to - have a full debate on how Catalan surnames are used and written, but teaching you that is not the point. We are at the point where I asked you a direct question on a proposed improvement (that is neither long nor inaccurate), and in response you went on a disruptively long rant about why you think your edit was correct. It doesn’t matter if it was or not, the template has an issue and I don’t know how many different times or ways I need to tell you that I want to discuss an improvement - which you can think of as simply further improving on the edit you made if it helps - before you finally realise that nobody wants you to rehash your decision making for the sixth time but actually progress discussion. I don’t know if you have always genuinely thought that I wanted you to convince me of your edit even when I explicitly said otherwise and proposed solutions, or if you just don’t want to progress discussion and maybe learn something in the process, but if it’s the latter, just say so and stop wasting everyone’s time. Kingsif (talk) 13:39, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Template talk:Family name explanation § Catalan name amended

The discussion is hopelessly deadlocked. Please feel free to start an WP:Rfc, or proceed with any method of dispute resolution that appeals to you. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:WikiProject talk other/scdecode

Template:WikiProject talk other/scdecode has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Concern regarding Draft:Donald Knuth (script test)

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Concern regarding Draft:Hierarchy of norms in French law

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if you want I will put this in my sandbox, Mathglot. I still have hopes of finishing that project Elinruby (talk) 03:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby I userfied it for a bit, developed it enough for release, and now it's at {{Hierarchy of norms in French law}}. Could still use more development, just be careful about adding new links; French sources are very specific about what belongs to the different levels of the pyramid; this constitution, but not that one; this Environmental Act, but not that one; this preamble... and so on. What needs doing, is research to see if any of the red-linked labels in the left column have English equivalents, or not. The term Constitutional block is definitely in use, but I'm not sure if there are English terms for the other ones or not. I also would like to get the pyramid/triangle translated into English, but that is secondary for now. I've linked the navbox into the articles mentioned. Turning the red links in the right half of the navbox blue is another area for expansion. Mathglot (talk) 04:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Nod ok.I understand the specificity issue though I may have to refresh myself on versionz of the constitution or whatnot. I'll ask any and all questions that arise, no worries there.Elinruby (talk) 05:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

In case this didn't make your notifications

meta:Requests for comment/Global ban for Slowking4 (2)[2]

Convenience links

• Category talk:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Slowking4
• Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English/Articles by user
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Slowking4/Archive Elinruby (talk) 03:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby Thanks for this. They almost fell off my radar. Mathglot (talk) 10:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I had mercifully forgotten them and am currently having flashbacks :)

I may as well copy these links to the discussion also Elinruby (talk) 10:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Helpful IP 2804:F14::/32

Note to self about helpful IPv6 2804:F14:80C6:A301:CF7:6618:2E02:A732 (talk · contribs), who answered my expensive parser function question at VPT, and even managed to stay on the same IP long enough to converse with at their UTP. They added this helpful tip about finding them:

The best I do to find my own edits is Special:Contribs/2804:F14::/32 (99% edits by me, although every once in a while it's an IPv4)

Mathglot (talk) 06:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Is that the Brazilian IP who was trouble-shooting ping with me the other day? And helped out at ANI with the Portuguese speaker? Elinruby (talk) 10:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby, Could be; it geolocates to Maringá, Parana state. The 2804 IP in this section helpfully provided me with a CIDR range link which targets their contributions without including a lot of noise (i.e., edits by other users that just happen to have nearby IP addresses), so just click that link above in the shaded blue part and see if any of those edits you are talking about are there. Or, click the Talk link in the first sentence, and ask them directly. (That said, it is a dynamic IPv6, and I managed to catch them at that address because I responded very rapidly after their edit at VPT; by now, it's several hours later, and their IP may have changed again, so they may never see what you post there. But you can use the CIDR contributions link (in blue) to see where they are now, and go to *that* IP talk page, and see if you can catch them before the IP swaps out again. That is the whole point of using the CIDR IP, so I can find them.) Mathglot (talk) 19:44, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Copying this off to a sandbox as possibly useful at some point. Elinruby (talk) 04:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Er what? Confused by the notification I just got, and the history. If I did something wrong, LMK. Currently thinking someone else's misclick. In which case fine then, moving on. I was thinking of my intermittent need for SMEs if the issue is why I am interested in this person. This last comment can be deleted once read if so desired. Elinruby (talk) 04:33, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby, You did nothing wrong. Seems like there was a fat-finger error (see page history) that rolled back your edit, quickly spotted and repaired by the alert Firefangledfeathers. 👏 👏

Aarggh, missing sig: @Elinruby and Firefangledfeathers: Mathglot (talk) 04:40, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Just an admin gone rouge no biggie. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:42, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Just checking. Elinruby (talk) 04:44, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The proseline tagging conundrum

I recently came across a pretty bad example of proseline at Uber § History and sought to tag it with a maintenance template for cleanup. Seeing that Template:Proseline still redirected to the unsuitable-for-the-situation {{Prose}}, and that there is no template listed at the essay, led me to the TfD in which you valiantly but ultimately unsuccessfully tried to clean up the mess.

It seems to me that there is probably enough consensus among experienced editors that proseline is bad that it would be possible to create a dedicated proseline tag, which would suggest either turning the content into a list or rewriting it from a broader perspective with more natural language, with parameters that would allow the editor who placed it to optionally indicate a preferred fix approach. What would you think of this, and how would you say it'd affect the handling of the existing redirects? Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 23:34, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Sdkb, thanks for raising this. I am interested, but am overloaded and cannot take lead on this just now. If you can and wish to, please do; I can maybe play an assisting role from time to time. Ping me the first time, and after that I'll be subscribed. One thing that had occurred to me back when, and I just now recalled, is that maybe new naming could help. I think the term proseline is not helpful, and could be part of the problem. The term prose timeline, while longer, seems much clearer, and less subject to confusion. Maybe that could be one ingredient to add to the cauldron. Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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 Done; declined. Mathglot (talk) 07:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Your understanding of WP:AVOIDYOU

Look, I have pinged an admin to what I would call your most recent egregious accusations, but I would like to explain to you that simply referring to, describing, or questioning user conduct is not considered a personal attack. You do not seem to understand this, as in your aforementioned most recent accusations at my talkpage, you have outright said that me saying the fact you edited something causing a dispute is, in your mind, an attack. Civilly and openly discussing user behaviour when that is indeed relevant is not an attack, and I would like you to stop writing paragraphs at me every time this happens. Because unjustifiably accusing someone is an attack. Kingsif (talk) 21:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: User talk:Kingsif § AGF at 3O: comment on content, not on the contributor

 Courtesy link: User talk:Kingsif § Template talk:Family name explanation (permalink)

 Courtesy link: Template talk:Family name explanation § Catalan name amended

 Courtesy link: Template talk:Family name explanation § Third opinion

Thanks for the heads-up. Nothing I said was unjustified: it's justified either with diffs (e.g., here) or by quoting your comments (here). I stand by all of my comments, none of which were uncivil. There is already a pattern of this behavior from you; if I am unable to point it out on your Talk page, that leaves me little recourse if it keeps happening. Mathglot (talk) 22:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

(For the attempt to progress discussion, skip to the last paragraph.) Mate, you cannot just say "this comment (insert diff/quote) is uncivil" and say that makes it justified. Look, WP:AVOIDYOU even says that accusing people without reason is uncivil, and I can explain that - while your words may be polite, albeit with a tone I have already told you can seem arrogant, accusing someone can be intimidating and threatening, which is uncivil behaviour.

Again, referring to another user's behaviour in a discussion is not by itself any kind of uncivil. I am truly sorry if I have made you feel attacked, but just judging by your responses, am I correct in assuming that you are just going by the letter of examples rather than anything else (i.e. you have read the guidance that commenting on user behaviour and too many "you"s is often an attack, and are just going off that)? Apologies if not, but I repeat: I have only referred to your behaviour when it has been relevant to discussion, either in attempting to prompt you towards useful discussion or to explain this to others.

The only pattern of behaviour here is, as I noted, yourself not contributing to useful discussion. Is your repeated uncivil accusations towards me part of that? I will also note that you saying if I am unable to point it out on your Talk page, that leaves me little recourse if it keeps happening is a fundamental misunderstanding that there is nothing to point out, no need for recourse, and your 'pointing out' of perfectly valid references to your behaviour is what is really uncivil; it (the comment here quoted) is also a clear insinuation or threat towards further action, which is explicitly uncivil.

Look, I have no problem with you, and I hope you have no problem with me. If either of us is meanly insinuating anything about the other, it is you, not I, but I also don't have much of an issue with that as I do not see it as a barrier to working together productively. So let's try and do that: I will outline how I see our editing dispute, on the positive presumption that my perspective has not been clear so far and that is why no progress has been made.

In short, your combined original edit reason and first explanation gave me all the information I needed on why you did it. I then attempted - I think casually at first - to steer the thread towards discussing improvement options. I.e. while I believe it is clear the hatnote needs to mention i, I am not wedded to any particular phrasing and I can accept your premise in where the original can be improved upon. To each of my attempts, which ultimately became explicitly asking "what do you think of this potential phrasing", you simply repeated an explanation of your motivation for the original edit. This is why I had to refer so much to your behaviour: I hope you'll appreciate that not addressing the point so frequently can be considered disruptive. If it is now clear to you that this is a dispute between myself trying to find the best middle ground and yourself (if I have interpreted correctly) trying to preserve one phrasing, I hope you will want to find the middle ground with me, or at least be open to discussing options even if your preferred phrasing doesn't change. That is all I ask. Kingsif (talk) 23:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Conflating Spanish and Catalan

I don't know if this is relevant to other issues, but I am not here for that, these are totally unrelated notes. Based on edit reasons here and here, you seem to be conflating Spanish and Catalan in unhelpful ways. A word and convention in Catalan that does not exist in Spanish, will not necessarily be used in Spanish, so a Spanish search is as irrelevant as English in determining the commonality of something that is Catalan (besides common searches, again, being irrelevant to actual names - nobody is removing middle names because they are not commonly searched for). This message is to warn you of this mistake so that if you handle Catalan names in future it is not repeated.

Of course, in the first of those edit reasons, the prevalence of simply [first name] [first surname] (i.e. Jordi Pujol) has been your explanation to remove the "i", though leaving "Soley" there (i.e. Jordi Pujol Soley). I don't know if this is a misunderstanding or what, but with a mind only to warn of potential mistakes so they are not repeated: one similarity Catalan bears to Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian even, is that most people are most often generally identified only with their first surname (including Pujol, hence he is referred to only as Pujol throughout the article) - not universal, especially in the case of more common names - and that this also doesn't mean the rest of their surname is any less real or important. The message here is that general news sources, for example, are likely to just use the first surname and that these should not be considered something like "evidence in absentia" to suggest there is no second surname or anything else. Kingsif (talk) 18:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Kingsif, thanks for providing a citation in this edit; now that it's sourced, I have no problem with it, and afaic, we're done. However, since you raised a question about conflation, let me set your mind at ease: I never conflate Catalan and Spanish and am well aware of the differences between the two (and to some extent even between Catalan and Valencian, although that is tricky and more sociopolitical than linguistic, imho). A searchable Google ngrams database is unfortunately not yet available for Catalan, and data from Spanish sources are the closest we have. By the way, there was a typo in my original ngrams link, and shortening the date range helps as it is pointless to show data from 1800 about Jordi Pujol; the results are no different in the corrected link but the story told by the data is easier to see: here; in sources Google identifies as Spanish there are about 50 times as many books that use "Jordi Pujol" as "Jordi Pujol i Soley". (A separate search shows that Google ngrams shows no data at all in Spanish sources for "Jordi Pujol y Soley" with a 'y', but they do have data that include the "i" term. Re-executing the search in English sources shows almost identical results.) So, no misunderstanding and no mistake, just going with the best sources available as far as the question about how he is referred to at home in Spain. A more detailed search among reliable web sources would help provide more data about that.

I have a quibble, though; you said:

revert misguided edit: most common English language google searches mean absolutely nothing in terms of what somebody's actual name is.

I'm not sure what "actual name" is, did you mean "name in their native language"? We don't go by that at en-wiki; in fact, "most common in English" is how we determine the article title here, even if the title is different in their native language Wikipedia, or even how they call themself, so those google searches do mean something, to the extent that they reveal what the WP:COMMONNAME is, and "most common [in] English language" sources is at the heart of that. And for the article body, English sources are preferred.

Other than the ngrams link above, a google books search for "Jordi Pujol" in any language shows results mostly in English (partly because of my IP address no doubt) and only a handful with a second surname, with or without the particle. The first Catalan result is #22, Culture - Issue 29: Jordi Pujol, que encapçala aquest projecte moderat en les formes però profundament in-novador en una nova concepció del que ha de ser l'estructura de l'Estat espanyol and an all-sources search in English shows a large predominance of just "Jordi Pujol" over the two-surname version, with or without the "i"; the point being that it's easy to see what he is called in English, and harder to get a clear result showing how he is referred to in running text in Spanish and Catalan.

Nobody is suggesting that Pujol's full name in formal context in his native language be struck from the article; obviously that is relevant information for the first sentence or at least the first paragraph; such inclusion is de rigueur among biographies of foreign individuals (Xi Jin Ping, Viktor Orban, Carl Friedrich Gauss) even if they are almost never referred to in English by the name they are commonly known by at home, although we always include the native version early on, and that is as it should be. It is perfectly appropriate (and I would say, obligatory) to do so, cited of course, and all is well at that article now, afaic. Mathglot (talk) 20:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Mostly clear. As for your quibble about "actual name", I was meaning well, full legal name - and I did not mean in reference to the article title (hence no issue with the article title of Jordi Pujol) as that should be at the name most likely to be searched for. The edit referenced was not to the article title, of course: I think there is an issue if someone is suggesting (as it seemed) that a person's full name being less commonly searched for than the common name they are known by, means it should not be written in full in the opening paragraph. If that is not what your reason was suggesting, there's no problem. Kingsif (talk) 22:05, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Kingsif, good, I'm glad we got there. At the risk of prolonging this (I surely hope not), the title is by no means the name most likely to be searched for, but the name most commonly used in English RSes. I'd need to check Wikipedia access logs (or Google Trends) to be sure, but very likely people search for Einstein and Gandhi (and Ghandi) and not the article title; what people search for is probably the #1 reason why we create redirects and disambig pages. Mathglot (talk) 22:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Been busy for a while but, yeah, to not overexplain, I think you know what I meant when I said that - I hope, at least. "Searched for" as in looking for, like in a reference text, not search trends ;) Kingsif (talk) 21:52, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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{{sfnref}}

I found the discussion Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_92#Best_practices_for_a_full_citation_with_no_author,_when_linked_by_shortened_footnotes and realized I have no clue on the history of {{sfnref}}, and would appreciate your pointing me to a right direction in finding why it came to be.

The automatically generated anchor in the case of having no "|author= " entry in the journal citation template defaults to CITEREFpublicationnameYEAR, so the reason for adding "|ref={{sfnref|anchorname|YEAR}}" may be to enable using a shorter anchorname in place of full publication name. But since the full publication name is automatically used without adding "|ref=", wouldn't it be better to abolish {{sfnref}} and make "|ref=" do what "|ref={{sfnref}}" does now? In other words, isn't "|ref=anchorname(YEAR)" (which does not work now) much better than "|ref={{sfnref|anchorname|YEAR}}" because it's shorter and with one less template to do the same thing?

This may well come from my total lack of knowledge on the history of the sfnref template, and my question may be re-worded as: "when is |ref= used without a {{sfnref}}?" As far as I can tell, the answer to this question may be "when anchorname is in the form CITEREFanchornameYEAR" which, in my mind, is not a good practice (or is it?). Yiba (talk | contribs) 08:42, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Yiba, not sure if I'm the best person to give a history of {{sfnref}} (a.k.a., {{harvid}} ), even if I have participated in some of the discussions about it. Also, others more familiar with it may have helpful comments for you, but no one will see your question here. I suggest you move or re-post your comment at a more apt venue, perhaps Template talk:SfnRef—although that is a slow-moving page—so something more central like Module talk:Footnotes might be better, as that is where {{SfnRef}} is implemented. If you do start a new discussion, please {{ping}} me to it, and some of the other participants like Rjjiii and Redrose64 as well. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much.Yiba (talk | contribs) 00:31, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Template:Cite journal/doc

Hi Mathglot, thank you again for your support in the discussion on Module talk:Footnotes. Given what we just discussed there, could you re-visit and examine the revert you did on my edit on Template:Cite journal/doc on 24 March? I now realize I worded the description on my edit very badly/wrongly, and that I should have used {{SfnRef}} in the example. But otherwise what I did on the page, I feel, is basically in line with the result of that talk:Footnotes discussion, and hope you'll see that too, if you revert the revert (with or without saving). If you still stand by your revert, we could discuss further here. If not, we could move to its talk page and discuss how to improve the doc further with my edit as the base. Yiba (talk | contribs) 14:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Moved to Help talk:Citation Style 1 § Template:Cite journal/doc

Please follow up at the link. Mathglot (talk) 18:15, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Possible splitting help

I believe anal fingering should have its own article split from Fingering (sexual act) as anal fingering comes with its own techniques and risks. Do I have to be patient when it comes to consensus? Autisticeditor 20 (talk) 20:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Autisticeditor 20, At 17kb and only 673 prose words, I think it is way below the normal threshold for a WP:SIZESPLIT. In particular, "own techniques and risks" is not mentioned as a reason for a split afaik, and your split proposal should quote or link reasons from the WP:SPLIT guideline about why your proposal is a good idea. You can, and have, proposed it on the Talk page, which is the right way to do it. At this point, imho you are right to be patient, and I would avoid making a unilateral split unless you gain consensus for it. Thanks for asking, and good luck! Mathglot (talk) 20:33, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Autisticeditor 20 (talk) 20:35, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Queen of Sheba y did you unadd

In the Quran, Queen Sheba is mentioned in Surah An-Naml (27:22-44). While the Quran does not explicitly state that she was from Yemen, it describes her kingdom as being wealthy and powerful. Scholars have interpreted these descriptions as indicative of the legendary kingdom of Sheba, which was believed to have been located in the region of modern-day Yemen.As for the Bible, Queen Sheba's visit to King Solomon is described in the First Book of Kings (1 Kings 10:1-13) and the Second Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 9:1-12). These passages depict Queen Sheba bringing gifts of spices, gold, and precious stones to King Solomon, suggesting the wealth and prosperity of her kingdom. Based on these accounts and historical interpretations, scholars widely associate Queen Sheba with the region of Yemen. KnowledgeSeeker899 (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Closing br tags is no longer needed

This sort of edit is no longer necessary, thank goodness. The syntax highlighter works fine with unclosed br tags now if you add this code to your .js file. The change has been a boon for my gnoming workflows. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:55, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: thanks for this really worthwhile tip! It will be a boon to mine, as well. Mathglot (talk) 16:57, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

On GNG/SNG

For your reference, there has been extended discussion of the relationship between SNGs and GNG at the WP:N talk page, including the pre-RfC discussion in this archive that led to the well attended RfC here that produced the current text of WP:SNG. Consensus can certainly change (and probably will, at some point), but any such change ought to receive as wide consultation (and preferably as much thought) as the last such revision, I think. Newimpartial (talk) 18:09, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, no doubt; thanks. Too bad I missed that one. I'm starting to think that the locus of the problem I'm perceiving has something to do with the inconsistent use of the word presumption at the main page and at the SNGs, where the former clearly lays out "sources" as the basis of presumption, while the latter talk about reviews, prizes, college courses and so on, without mentioning sources, making N seem like an either-or. And in the end "presumption" is what it is, and should be seen as an evaluation process or time-management tip, and not a criterion for N which is significant coverage in reliable sources, and is not watered down by presumptions that turn out to be wrong in a given case. I probably need to think about this some more. Thanks again for the links. Mathglot (talk) 18:25, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

One lesson I took from those discussions is about "presumptions", and one is about sources. The word "presumption" is indeed used in two ways in notability guidelines: sometimes as a presumption of having an article (direct presumption), and sometimes as a presumption that sourcing exists (an indirect presumption, since it is a predictor of a presumption of having an article rather than a direct presumption of same). I ended up not being sure how important this ambiguity actually is, though, because no degree of sourcing, no matter how strong, offers more than a rebuttable presumption of a standalone article. Indirect presumptions can be rebutted at either of two steps while direct presumptions can only be rebutted at the final page decision, but again I'm unsure of the salience of the difference.

On sources, what I learned is the real salience of the distinction between WP:V reliable sources and SIGCOV reliable sources. The way many SNGs work at present, a WP:V RS that back a claim to significance (like a Nobel prize in Economics) is sufficient to trigger the presumption of an article even when "solid" GNG sourcing is unavailable. The fact is that editors cannot agree about what is actually required to satisfy GNG, as illustrated in a long, (and inconclusive) discussion last year about the number and depth of sources needed. Some editors think it is fine for GNG to be somewhat ambiguous and flexible, as it can then handle more cases more adroitly. Other editors want GNG to offer more robust universal rules about sources (i.e., SIGCOV, which is the yardstick for GNG sourcing), in which case there are more obvious "exceptions" needed to GNG (which is the way many editors interpret PROF - as an exception). The tension between "one source standard for all notability decisions" and "WP:V is enough in certain contexts" is real, and having sat through many discussions of this I can't predict it being resolved any time soon. I'm actually not certain that "resolution" would even benefit the encyclopaedia... Newimpartial (talk) 18:44, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this additional detail, and your insights on them. I suspect this point may be key:

The fact is that editors cannot agree about what is actually required to satisfy GNG

and I need to follow up on those archives, and think about it some more. Meanwhile, David Eppstein made a good comment at the discussion, and I need to think about that, too. And regarding "resolution" not being a benefit, you may have a point there; maybe this is a "fuzzy logic" situation. Mathglot (talk) 18:57, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Since I was pinged here, one other point: my understanding of the word "presumption", as used in notability guidelines, is that the real test is what happens in an AfD, and anything else in the guideline can be used to guide the outcome of an AfD but is not itself determinative. So GNG provides a presumption of notability, not notability itself. If a topic appears to pass GNG, because there are multiple sources which appear to be in-depth, independent, reliably published, etc., it may still turn out to be non-notable, for instance because AfD participants come to a consensus that the sources were not as reliable as they initially appeared, or because they determine it fails some part of WP:NOT despite the sourcing. "Presumption" does not really mean that we'll let GNG override; it means that we'll let editor consensus override. This is true of all notability guidelines, SNG and GNG. Some SNGs do let GNG override. Some SNGs (such as NPROF) do not, but do also allow some topics to be considered GNG-notable even when they do not pass the SNG. And some SNGs (such as NORG) are strengthenings of GNG, and do not allow GNG to override that strengthening. Regardless, they are still rules that require interpretation, that interpretation might be mistaken, and an AfD provides the forum for straightening out any such mistakes. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

"Notability" is a mess, and it's always going to be a mess, because there's no way to answer the question "Does this deserve an encyclopedia article?" in a few bullet points — not when the domain of the encyclopedia covers all human history. If we took the GNG out of the page where it lives now and elevated it to a policy, a new rule at the level of WP:NOR, WP:V, and WP:NPOV, we'd still have to develop more and more sub-pages to clarify what is "routine" or "substantial" in each topic area. ("Man, [Wikipedia] has all these crazy social rules. They just create drama." "Let's agree to change them, and make [Wikipedia] simple!" [3]) XOR'easter (talk) 21:58, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Ancien Regime

With ref to your recent edit to the History of France..

Oups! .. I misread your edit. Carry on as you were! Scarabocchio (talk) 10:11, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

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Vichy France during the Liberation of France

Many members of the Milice were captured during the liberation of france. Some were even executed. Other Vichy French involvement includes the withdrawal to a government in exile and anti partisan actions Salfanto (talk) 15:01, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Salfanto, I’d be happy to discuss at the article talk page. This is not the place. Mathglot (talk) 15:59, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

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Concern regarding Draft:Brazilian criminal justice

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I'm so sorry

I thought I was on your user page and I was crying. I will miss that courtly and unflappable old man, whom I just assumed was immortal. Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff would never have happened without him, not to mention all the rest of it. It is some comfort that the last entry on his memorialized user page is the Teamwork barnstar I gave him. So at least I told him so.

I will fix the draft talk page shortly.

A very fast answer to your question is that there is no lede to speak of. And the topic is huge,

How long do you have?

It is very sketchy in places. Those places are however those that will be the easiest to fill in, I think, given a little concentration, like the structure of the judiciary. I copied it off to my sandbox, but come to think of it, doesn't the clock reset if I just edit it? I will make sure I do something over there tonight. As I recall I was supposed to working on this, and one shiny object led to another. Oops. I am sorry. 05:04, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby Yes, if you edit, the clock resets, but then no more warnings five months later. But if we can get it to pass a minimum bar, we can just release it and then let anybody improve it. P.S. Who are we sorry about, did something happen to Paolo? Mathglot (talk) 05:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

He died. I am sorry I reacted on the draft talk page. I doubt that it would get through AfD as is. Not that we use them, but as a metric. Possibly in the next month. Elinruby (talk) 05:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

User:PauloMSimoes Elinruby (talk) 05:56, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Wow, didn't know that. Mathglot (talk) 05:57, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

me either Elinruby (talk) 05:59, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

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OK! Draft has been edited

Just once so far but it's a pretty good, substantive and referenced edit. I have a couple of tabs open and will see what else I can do. I am trying to get Algiers out of my hair, tho. Should I go ahead and write an Agriculture section? Elinruby (talk) 03:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Elin, Yeah, go ahead, and sorry for being AWOL on that one. Mathglot (talk) 04:14, 16 April 2024 (UTC)