User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 156

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November 2019

Category:Motorsports portals has been nominated for discussion

 Done
 – Commented in favor of the merger.

Category:Motorsports portals, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:36, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Intentionally blank

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Please comment on Talk:Rojava

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New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Extended content

Hello SMcCandlish,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 816 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.

To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Help talk:IPA/Standard German

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islands

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Notable Paralympians

Hi Mac, hope you are well.

I recently came across this list Snooker at the Summer Paralympics, which has a list of medal winners for snooker players. Any ideas if WP:NOLY applies to the paralympics such as this (are the winners of medals all notable)? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:25, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

NOLY already covers that if you pore over it: "Athletes from any sport are presumed notable if they ... have won a medal at the Paralympic Games". I'm not sure this is really true in practice. I would be surprised if one-time winners of Paralympic medals (especially bronze or silver) have never been successfully AFDed. "Presumed" doesn't mean "guaranteed"; anything can still fail WP:GNG. That said, a) I doubt people would go after any well-developed and sourced stubs on Paralympic medalists in snooker; but b) there may be more notable missing cue sports bios to work on (even just within snooker, such as amateur world champions, and women's champions). Up to you what you want to focus on of course! Someone somewhere probably would think I'm being anti-disabled or something. To me, it's just a matter of competitive field size and difficulting, thus relative achievement level. Paralympics winners are a subset of amateur world champions, of a sort, but only within a very narrow competitive field compared to open IBSF amateur championships. I'd put Para. medalists about on par with SEA Games or other broad regional winners (though for those, likely only the first-place winners are notable, absent some other kind of unrelated RS coverage, e.g. because one is also a politician or a murder suspect or whatever). PS: Hope you are well too! I'm tired of moving, but may have to do it again in Feb. [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
Oh, it wasn't next on my list to do, I am steadily working my way through pool bios and tournament articles before I get that far (I've been powering through a number of GAs/FAs in these recently for the WP:CUP.) I just wanted to know if they were suitable to work on, considering a few don't even have first names. There are some European Pool Championships winners in the wheelchair division (such as Henrik Larsson) who would be higher priority. I was just going to add them to WP:CUETODO.

Glad that the moves went well though. I hate moving, hoping I'll eventually be able to afford to buy a house and never have to move again - but unlikely. Is it a big move in feb? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:55, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Nah. As I rambled about somewhere higher up the page last week, I divested myself of decades of clutter and white elephants, and several thousand books. That part hurt, but it had to be done. My back at my age can't take that much lugging. Anyway, next move should just be across town. It'll all fit in a single moving van now. But it's still a hassle.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I did see that. I don't even like moving the three boxes of kit that I own down the road, it's such a headache. Great to see you back, regardless. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Basketball portals

Disregard
 – Just routine removal of a now-empty category.

A tag has been placed on Category:Basketball portals requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 15:35, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:2019 Hong Kong protests

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Please comment on Template talk:Canadian party colour

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Question was answered on CfD for Subsidence craters

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I answered the question Marcocapelle asked and you seconded in the CfD for Subsidence craters. He came back and added support. I'm sorry to ask on your talk page - but as I understand it, the CfD would fall short of a discussion without at least 2 responses, right? Thanks! Ikluft (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

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He's back

Welcome back, Saint McCandlish. North America1000 11:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Pshah! I'm an Anti=Pope=.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:44, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:IPhone 11

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Rules for Fools

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 – Sorta.

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Forced into Glory

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Your actual edits to the article seem to be OK, as far as I can tell now, but your edit summaries contained some semi-inflammatory and pointless remarks. I'm not sure that anybody cares about Bennett's "tone"[sic] -- what they care about is that he's basically incapable of evaluating things within their historical context. Also, it's interesting that his book has been embraced by neo-Confederates and white supremacists. I wonder if you read some of the previous comments at Talk:Forced into Glory? AnonMoos (talk) 13:45, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not interested in what the drive-by commentary is; I actually read the book, and other scholarship in the area. Have you? The majority of editors at that article have likely read nothing but reviews of the book, most of which were written by Bennett's opponents (whose work was criticized by him in great detail and for good reasons). It's not "interesting" that his book has been embraced by X, any more than Hitler liking cake is interesting, or a bad reflection on cake. It's the oldest fallacy in the book.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:17, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
PS: I have now read it, and what I see in that very meagre talk page is that others have previously raised some of the same concerns I have, going back more than a decade to 2009.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:23, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
The category of "Bennett's opponents" is something that you basically invented and is not particularly useful or interesting. They're professional historians who go about their work on various topics, and only devote a very small fraction of their time to Bennett. Claiming that 1950's physicists defined themselves as "Velikovsky's opponents" would be just as inaccurate and pointless. If you ever incorporate the loose, inaccurate, and semi-inflammatory language you use in your edit summaries and on this page into your actual edits on the article itself, then you will probably find yourself being quickly reverted for very good reason. AnonMoos (talk) 21:27, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Um, the article has – and had before I ever touched it – an entire paragraph beginning "Bennett's critics ...", so no I did not "basically invent" anything. Most currently/recently active "Lincoln aficionado" historians like Foner have written scathing reviews of FiG; most of them had also already had their material specifically criticized in FiG in great detail; various other reviewers are less critical and have no self-defensive reason (though some may have a patriotic doctrine-defensive one) to skew their reviews; yet our article gives WP:UNDUE weight to the critics like Foner who were previously criticized by Bennett in FiG. It has nothing to do with exactly what percentage of someone's output is Lincoln-praising work versus other historical biography. And comparison to the advancement of a hard science like physics is a false analogy. I have no idea why you'd say something genuinely inflammatory like your closing sentence, as if someone here since 2005 somehow doesn't know the difference between encyclopedia content, and editorial talk and edit-summary rationales – or needs to receive some kind of WP:OWNish threat in that regard. It'd be easy to take that as deliberate escalation instead of collaborative consensus building, but I'm going to instead assume it was just a heat-of-the-moment thing. None of us are robots or Vulcans, after all.

What really needs to happen at that article is a separate section on the dispute between Bennett and other Lincoln critics versus more Lincoln-praising "traditional Lincoln narrative" historians. This is a research and doctrinal dispute within the field, and one about which material has actually been written. Then have a separate section on independent critical response to the book (i.e., by people who have not published their own Lincoln books!). Foner, McPherson, Morel, and Dirck are firmly primary sources, not neutral reviewers, when it comes to Bennett; they have a vested reputational and fiduciary interest in discrediting him. You should agree with this distinction regardless whether you think Foner et al. or Bennett are in the right about Lincoln. This isn't about who is right (WP:TRUTH, WP:GREATWRONGS), it's about (perhaps unwitting) misuse of source material to effectively pick a side in a real-world dispute among professional authors of reputably published source material within a field. In particular, the treatment of Dirck's review as if it is independent, by excluding it from "Bennett's critics, including ..." is extremely misleading of the reader, since Dirck is also a major Lincoln-praising book author. It's just not right for us to treat opposing and criticized authors as typical academic book reviewers in the sense that our readers expect. We should not forget (or pretend to forget) that academia is highly politicized. We should approach this the same way we do other internecine academic-consensus disputations in other fields.

PS: We may have similar problems with Woodrow Wilson and women's suffrage, though I have not looked deeply at our coverage. He was largely a blockade to it, until Congress forced his hand, making it clear that a veto by him would be overridden. WP should not be helping to perpetuate the "Wilson got American women the right to vote" myth. This is not DeificationPedia. :-)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:22, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Some additional stuff to work into this article:
  • I think we're all aware of WP:CONTROVERSY: We describe the controversy and its sides, quoting or paraphrasing as necessary for balanced treatment; we don't give the article over to one side of the debate.
  • Even some curricula for American history education seem to be getting this right, and include the views of Bennett, even DiLorenzo, not just those of McPherson and company [1].
  • Various reviews in mainstream, major publications are also going to be critical or skeptical, but they'll be so with more credibility (not being side subjects of the book itself), and with more balance. A good example is Steve Chapman's in the Chicago Tribune (which took under 5 seconds to find). It actually says pretty much all the critical things our article mentions (i.e., can be used as a drop-in replacement citation instead of Dirck, who should move to the material on in-field critics/dispute) while also conceding various important points that Bennett got right.
  • The principal criticism toward the book (from other than academics with their own competing Lincoln books) isn't that it's an attack or factually incorrect in its details, but that it sometimes misapplies modern standards of how to define racism to an earlier era. This is something pretty much all the critics agree on (including ones essentially independent of the subject), so it's not a criticism about which Wikipedia needs to hedge much. Most or all of the other criticisms, however, are limited to particular critics and thus need to be attributed directly to them.
  • Another thing we need in there is details on support Bennett's analysis gets from some other historians and political scientists, including Michael Lind (U. of Texas at Austin, What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America's Greatest President), Stephanie McCurry (Columbia U.), and Howard Zinn (Boston U.), among others.
  • The book has been cited in at least 162 journal articles (not always positively, and not always in notable journals, of course. But it's worth looking into, by someone with access to a full-text journal search site.
  • When in-the-same-field academics (with their own highly praising Lincoln books or online equivalents) title their "reviews", their attempts at rebuttal, with things like "Lincoln the Devil" (McPherson, New York Times Book Review, 2000), and "Great Emancipator or Grand Wizard?" (Steers, of the obviously one-sided AbrahamLincolnOnline.org), and "Emancipation Deniers Target Lincoln’s Reputation" (Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg College, op-ed in Wall Street Journal [2]), they're childishly mischaracterizing Bennett's views in a transparent straw man fallacy. Guelzo in particular has made up a fake and patently dishonest label under which to shove Bennett, Zinn, and others. There is no doubt that there's an ideological "opponents" camp, and that it is a camp set up in opposition to another camp. We are really obviously not in a position to treat them as neutral and reliable; they're impassioned opinion pieces, and are the other side of the real-world dispute we're supposed to be neutrally describing. Their orthodoxy, virtually unquestioned for generations, is being challenged and they're clearly pissed off.
  • Not only is something ideological going on, it's been going on a long time and The Chronicle of Higher Education makes no bones about it. In their review of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012, with Daniel Day Lewis), they not only observe that it's a Hollywood "challenge[ to] a decades-long scholarly, if not popular, vision of [Lincoln] as halfhearted and reluctant in his efforts to eradicate slavery", they also call out to Bennett's book, in the same paragraph as analysis of the civil-rights movement's ambivalence toward Lincoln and the middling results of his version of emancipation.[3] I.e., BBC is providing several forms of context, which our article sorely lacks.
  • And we really need some non-American sources on this, for less myopic context. This BBC News piece [4] puts Bennett's work in the same context as Lincoln re-examination by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Harvard) and Donald Yacovone (Harvard), as well as the culturally broader context of post-Obama American society and of the Lincoln bicentennial. Some key quoted material: "But amid the commemorations, it is easy to forget that Lincoln ... never lacked for critics. Even in this anniversary year, there has been vigorous debate over his legacy. One lingering source of controversy among historians is Lincoln's moderation on the slavery issue. ... Yacovone says complexities have been lost in celebrations that have focused on hero worship." (I mean key material this thread; it's probably off-topic for quotation in the article, but would be good for a broader article like Abraham Lincoln and slavery.)
  • Most criticism of Lincoln comes from far-right quarters, yet Bennett was the opposite, with very different concerns. (Same goes for Zinn.) This has been commented upon in the press and in more academic circles. It relates directly to the reason the book, among a sea of Lincoln books, is independently notable. As even a conservative reviewer put it, Bennett is "no conservative or friend of the Confederacy".[5]
  • There's no question that the book was "controversial" and "provocative"; even some African-American academics have said so [6][7], but we don't cite any of them.
  • What of later American politics? Not always what a reader might expect. Rand Paul, for example, endorsed the book [8] – not in some kind of Tea Party, pro-Confederacy, crypto-racist, weirdo-'Publican way, but as a defense of abolitionists and abolitionism among the American public of the era.
  • And what of later re-consideration in academic and mainstream-news material? It's not right to only look at reviews (and opposition) from ca. 2010 when the book came out. Bennett died in 2018, and there's a lot of high-end obituary material out there, most of which mentioned the book. The more it's "news" the more primary-source it is, and subjects like this benefit from time for analysis and impact (and analysis of impact).
  • The US Supreme Court's official blog goes into some detail about a Justice Kagan-hosted Supreme Court Historical Society lecture by Lucas Morel (Washington and Lee University). Not only did Morel directly quote (in agreement) one of Bennett's central points in the book, so did SCotUS's blog.[9]
  • Singling out DiLorenzo as someone whose work should be compared to Bennett's is bullshitty, since DiLorenzo has known extreme/fringe political leanings. There are numerous other writers who should be mentioned for balance. An obvious one is Robert W. Johannsen (Lincoln, the South, and Slavery), plus aforementioned ones like Yacovone.
  • In closing, for now, I'll just point out that I dug up all of this in the space of under five minutes. It took far longer to put it in a bullet list.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:38, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

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

It'll be more productive to continue this at the article talk page. Article-improvement threads tend to do nothing useful when they sit in user talk and archive away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:50, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Side chat about running for ArbCom again

Funny. When I saw this heading come up on my timeline I thought it was about someone insisting you go for Arbcom again! Hope you're well! The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 19:22, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Heh. The long break (aside from occasional pop-ins under one of my alt accounts to comment on some RfCs or fix typos or whatever) was helpful. I don't think I'll go for ArbCom again, not until the voting system is fixed. It's farcical that it's rigged so people can vote multiple times (once for whomever they support most, and then several more times against each opposing candidate). I won a seat on ArbCom by actual support, but someone with less support than me got the seat. It's a sham. And a shame. The current and previous ArbCom seem to've been doing as little as possible, and particularly resistant to ArbCom community and self-review. I would have pushed hard within the committee for overhaul of WP:AC/DS, following on the majority community support in this advisory-to-ArbCom RfC at Village Pump; among other reforms.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:43, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Same here - the reality was a bitter disappointment! You should run - there may never be as good an opportunity as this year. You have my vote if you promise to archive your talk page at reasonable intervals. I still have a number of supports in my pocket (even after giving TRM one). Johnbod (talk) 03:33, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate the sentiment, but it's a time commitment I wouldn't be able to practicably make right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:23, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Stretch yourself, lad! Cut back on the eight-balling and the cat-fancying. You can always set up auto-archiving on your talk page - that should save a substantial amount of time. Sleep is far over-rated as well! William Harristalk 11:59, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Pie chart

 In progress
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Hitlet

Peeps are still talkin' 'bout that ~ cygnis insignis 16:38, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Eh? I must've missed (or forgotten) something. What's a hitlet?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:42, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
typo, I meant Hilter! ~ cygnis insignis 14:07, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
urban dictionary agrees Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
I think I like that word. "Skinheads and white power twits? Ain't got time for none of them Hitlets."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:29, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

Disregard
 – No such RfC when I went looking.

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You're a policy wonk

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 – (I hope.)

I think you may be able to help at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Mainstream_newspapers. EEng 22:30, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Mottainai

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Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Username policy

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Please comment on Talk:Textus Receptus

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ArbCom 2019 election voter message

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Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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Some really short-lived, silly drama. I think people know how to remove a template from a page.

Disregard
 – ANI closed before I could even respond to it.
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


My ACE guide

Hi SMcC, I have reverted the edit you made in my user space (to User:Fish and karate/ACE19). I don't need or want pages in my user space labelled as essays, particularly when they are not intended as essays. Thanks, Fish+Karate 12:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

AN/I

I've started a discussion on WP:ANI that concerns you. It's at this section — Ched (talk) 12:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)


All I'm going to say on this

Glad I slept through this nonsense. It's completely normal WP:GNOME stuff to tag userspace essays as such, so they are not mistaken for encyclopedia content and so they're categorized properly (and doing it with the tag instead of with bare category markup makes later maintenance easier). Userspace pages are not WP:OWNed by their authors, especially not against routine metadata gnoming. And, yes, admins should already know this. I'm pretty amazed that two commenting admins at the ANI didn't understand this and somehow got the sysop bit. I gotta start paying more attention to RfA, I guess.

And wow.... At the ANI, Ched wrote: "I just didn't want to escalate things - but it appears the SmcCandlish insists on escalating them." That's quite literally one of the most senseless things I've ever seen written on Wikipedia. Gnoming the categorization of some pages doesn't "escalate" any "things", but running to ANI to suggest a block for something that's not disruptive, and confessing you were considering abusing the admin tools to lash out at someone in the course of posting that ANI, that's definitely escalating several things, out of the blue, and to one's own detriment. And other Ched ramblings made even less sense, if that's possible. How is Ched unaware that different editors are in different time zones? How is editing when Ched's not around some form of sneakiness? Back when I was a drinker, I used to edit when I'd had a lot of beer sometimes, and even then I made more sense than that. That ANI was a multi-leveled WP:CIR failure if I've ever seen one, and should actually have resulted in a WP:BOOMERANG sanction. If I weren't averse to WP:DRAMA, I would actually propose a de-sysopping over this, since Ched clearly has no idea what the block tool is for, and is thus likely to misuse it soon enough. Like, seriously, WTF? That's a rhetorical question. I don't want any chit-chat about this on my talk page. I've said my piece in response to this weird abuse of a process, am going to decline to pursue any further action about this, and will just archive this entire pile of brain-farting and my response to it without further ado.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Your voter guide comment

 Fixed

Hi. I respect your grounds for opposing me in your voter guide. I actually wasn't planning to run this year, having served several terms already, but a few days before the filing deadline several editors whom I greatly respect urged that there would be value to my being a candidate in the circumstances of this particular year, and I decided to go ahead and give the voters the option. I'll be satisfied with their decision either way. One minor factual correction, though: I am not a sitting arbitrator this year (nor are DGG or Casliber). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Derp! Fixed. I think I got confused by the "A" tag in the candidates table (for Admin, not Arb). I'd been away most of this year, so my head has been fuzzy about who exactly is an active Arb. Thanks for the correction.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 36

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Senate of Canada

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Senate of Canada. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Ship gender

You said "We've been over this many times before, seemingly about every year or so..." which was also very much my impression, as a distant and uninterested onlooker. But when I asked, a little way above you, for links to the equally interminable previous discussions, the guy who raised the matter said he didn't know of any... Do you have links? Johnbod (talk) 01:29, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Not right off-hand. It comes up in different venues. I know it's been discussed at various MoS talk pages, and at a number of article talk pages, and in some wikiproject ones. Maybe also Village Pump. It's not the kind of thing I keep track of. I directed VPPOL, and various additional wikiprojects (since ships and MilHist were already notified) to the current thread, so the input should be broader this time. Maybe put an RfC tag on i?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
PS: If it's important, I would start with searching the MoS archives for "ships".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:51, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox officeholder

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox officeholder. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Arbitration Case Opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 20, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, SQLQuery me! 20:38, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Noted. I'm going to start gathering diffs, but not at a fast clip. I want to see how much the scope gets constrained.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:13, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Question about Senate of Canada's seating plan image

Hi @SMcCandlish:

I was mousing over your miniature userbox and user rights' icons at your your userpage and, noticing your file mover rights, wondered if you might be able to resolve an outstanding question I had in this discussion. Long story short, I don't think it's a caching issue or a problem with my web browser because the updated seating plan image that MikkelJSmith2 uploaded to the Commons on 21 November 2019 at 19:14 loads fine when you maximize that version. However, notice the thumbnail for that version shows the older version from 15 July 2019? Similarly, at commons:File:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province.svg, it still shows the old version (without the new Senate groups). Likewise, here, it shows the older version. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I suspect there's something we're not doing piping it over to the Wikipedia file namespace maybe.

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 00:23, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

DmehusIt honestly shows the new version everywhere for me just like Huon said in the original discussion. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
MikkelJSmith2, Nevertheless, there's something somewhere that needs to be corrected—that you and I aren't doing to get it to show up properly on the Commons and on the "File:" namespace. I'm hoping we can get it resolved, so we know what we're not doing for next time. I honestly think Huon prematurely closed, or short-circuited, the discussion I raised to close an active "help me" request instead of taking the time to properly show us what we hadn't done. Doug Mehus T·C 15:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
@Dmehus: If page reload doesn't work, try deleting you WP-related cache and cookies, and re-login. If that doesn't work, try WP:PURGE (or maybe do that first, then the cache/cookie/login thing). I use a user Javascript (in the "Gadgets" section of the "Preferences" menu) that puts a UTC clock top-right (near "... Contributions   Log out"). Clicking that clock will purge the current page and everything it transcludes. That's probably one of the best userscripts ever, since you get two useful features in one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:45, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:26, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Disregard
 – I was already knee-deep in this one before the RfC bot came around.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Legobot, Oh the WP:MOS, that's right up SMcCandlish's alley. Thanks, Legobot. You do us proud. ;-) --Doug Mehus T·C 05:03, 28 November 2019 (UTC) (talk page stalker)
Yeah, pretty rare for this thing to drop of an MoS RfC notice for something I haven't already commented in (or opened as the OP).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:26, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Giving thanks

Thanksgiving
Cassia javanica, Torremolinos
... with thanks from QAI

Happy Thanksgiving! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:24, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

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