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Real-life workload: 9.5

• 1 = no work pressure
• 5 = middling
• > 5 = please don't expect much
• 10 = frenzied

Please note that I don't normally (1) copy-edit articles, or (2) review articles that are not candidates for promotion to featured status.

books to read for 1a?

Hi Tony,

what books should I read (books, not wiki links) to help me be at better judge of 1a? Thanks Ling.Nut 16:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Ling.nut, let me ask Noetica, the ultimate guru; he's on an extended wikibreak, but I'm in contact with him. Tony (talk) 15:05, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Noetica says, "alas, there's a shortage of the type of book you want. I'm all for structured show-and-tell exerices, and the instruction that arises by observing the diff from a good copy-editor of your draft text. I guess this shortage is why I prepared my five tutorial pages. Tony (talk) 15:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Date autoformatting

Please, where was there a discussion with more than twelve editors supporting this change? —Locke Cole • t • c 00:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Try this for starters, gathered only at the very beginning. Tony (talk) 15:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I've actually read this page recently, but many of the supporters seemed to be under the belief that autoformatting would never work for unregistered users. As you may or may not be aware I've recently left comments at WT:MOSNUM offering my services to "fix" this (as well as a comment by a dev with SVN access to MediaWiki indicating such changes would not be hard to do). —Locke Cole • t • c 22:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

You were claiming there was no support for ending DA. As for the scheme to resurrect it from the grave: there are several reasons this will not work. I suggest you join me on trying to make year pages better instead of wasting time on a non-problem. Tony (talk) 00:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly a lot of "support" spread out over many pages isn't exactly the kind of thing you go using to make large changes to the 'pedia. Most changes of this scale require a straw poll of some sorts that runs for at least a week and typically involves over a hundred editors (the more the better). And please be careful when "quoting" me; I never said there was "no support", only that it was not enough for this kind of large change. Date autoformatting is important enough to put a stop to this while the developer avenue is further explored. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Given the proportion of readers it actually affects, no, it isn't. Trebor (talk) 02:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Dates in other wikis

As one who is very active in dates per WP:MOSNUM, would you know if the same rules apply to other wikis? For example, should I delink dates in the Simple English Misplaced Pages, like in this article as I would if the article were in the English Misplaced Pages? Or should there be a separate discussion and consensus in that wiki first? Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 14:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Such decisions are taken separately in each wiki; all Wikipedias are independent, and the English one has no precedence or authority over the others. You should find the appropriate venue in the Simple English Misplaced Pages and raise the issue there. The good thing with smaller wikis is that they are more flexible, and decisions can be reached without the fuss and chaos we are familiar with here. This flexibility can somewhat counterweigh, I think, the general inertia; decisions can be taken, and thus applied, more easily. The de-linking of dates throughout the various Wikipedias will take time, sure, but I am certain that, in the end, selective linking will become the norm throughout the Mediawiki sites. Waltham, The Duke of 15:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I see that in the Danish MOSNUM, they seem to advise that full dates should be linked, even though only one format is used in Danish. Crazy ... did someone there mindlessly copy our own folly? Tony (talk) 03:31, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Wagner

You edit pages on classical music so you will know the answer to this one, what is the name of the loud piece by Wagner with al the descending scales, not the famous bit from Tannhauser (I know that one) it sort of sounds like sex ought to be, if you know what I mean. Hope you can help. Giano (talk) 22:25, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Giano—glad to see you around. Hmmm ... Wagner's not my thing, beyond a professional obligation to know the minimum (when I was a musician). Aren't all Wagner's works loud and based on descending scales <grin>. I've completely lost interest in sex, which might account for my larger WP time budget. But even that is about to be severely constrained by RL work.

As compensation for drawing a nil with this musician, all I can offer is two W jokes:

1. The thing about Wagner's music is ... it's better than it sounds.
2. You know the feeling: the Wagner opera starts at 6pm. After two hours, you look at your watch and it's 20 past 6. Tony (talk) 14:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

FSC gobbleygook

Thanks. What do you think of Shoemaker's Holiday's voting proposal here? --Kleinzach 23:35, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Maria Sharapova

Few of them are linking the dates again and again. --SkyWalker (talk) 14:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Lightmouse is linking the dates?. I thought he was on our side?. --SkyWalker (talk) 14:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah oops. I misread then. I though lightmouse and Colonies Chris was reverting and plus Tennis expert was undoing the changes. If Tennis expert continue it is best to contact an admin or a Bureaucrat. I still don't understand why people want dates to be linked. It looks better when not linked. Is delinking of date finalized?. --SkyWalker (talk) 14:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It enjoys wide community support, but there is a small band of very loud complainers at MOSNUM talk and a few other places. They're VERY upset that I've told them to stop sniping from their armchairs and do some work, for once. Tony (talk) 15:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you check my talk page. --SkyWalker (talk) 13:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Tennis Player Infobox - Manon Bollegraf

Hi there. I have been idly fixing up tennis players with an infobox when I come across them...but you just reverted the above player. Was it something that I had put in there...or was it because of TennisExpert...whom I notice there is a lot of discussion around...(and had edits in there...)
Could you let me know, if I did something formatically wrong?Mjquin_id (talk) 15:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I had a faint feeling something might have been wrong in that edit of mine. Can you simply revert it for now? Tony (talk) 15:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. --SkyWalker (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Date overlink in aftershock list

Thanks for cleaning up List of 2008 Sichuan earthquake aftershocks. But sorting by date in the resulting table no longer works so I had to revert the change for maintenance work. Please make another try after this round - make sure sorting by date still works. Sillyvalley (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this valuable feedback; thought we had it fixed. I'll let Lightmouse know. Tony (talk) 02:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Halloween Dispatch

... in case you want to look: Misplaced Pages:FCDW/October 27, 2008‎. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Tony, you don't have to work on this (it's very rough still, and both Jbmurray and Awadewit will begin to work on it in a few days), but can you contribute a catchy title? Misplaced Pages:FCDW/ElectionTFA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Rewriting dates in templates

In the light of changes made so dates are no longer linked for auto-formatting, I was wondering if there was any kind of application that could run through an article and rewrite the dates in the date= and accessdate= fields... for example, 2008-08-04 to August 4, 2008. I was adding something to Valkyrie and wanted to revise the templates, though the manual update seemed time-consuming. Any suggestions? —Erik (talk • contrib) 19:47, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The only way to do this would be to write a module for AWB or maybe a java script. Either way its doable. I will see if I can make it work but Lightmouse and Rjwilmsi are better at it than I.--Kumioko (talk) 04:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Similarly, over at the WP:MUSICALS project, we have linked dates in the infoboxes of some of the musicals. Separately, I see that User:Paul A has been linking lots and lots of dates recently. I left him a note, but.... Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 06:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:HUSH and other important policies

I suggest that you read and become familiar with WP:HUSH, WP:AGF, and WP:CIVIL, among other important Misplaced Pages policies that you appear to be disregarding with regularity. Tennis expert (talk) 10:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I am familiar with those policies, thank you very much. Tony (talk) 12:56, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Pot, meet kettle :o --Closedmouth (talk) 13:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey Pot and kettle, meet water.. --SkyWalker (talk) 09:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Tennis stub rules?

Hey, can you tell me if you have a preference around placing the Tennis-Stub on a page? I have been placing it at the top - trying to increase visibility...but noticed some are getting moved to the bottom? (I would ask on the Talk:Tennis page, but not sure who actually goes there anymoreMjquin_id (talk) 16:07, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Is it Tennis expert who is doing this? If so, there'll be a dispute, since he has serious and troublesome ownership issues with the whole Tennis WikiProject. A lot of people are upset about his attitudes and actions WRT more than one matter. Tony (talk) 22:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Lying is an element of incivility, which you have displayed a lot of recently. Have a look at this when you get the urge to trash talk yours truly again. Tennis expert (talk) 08:59, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

So my post earlier today at your talk page, which I see you've scrubbed from the page, was "trash-talking"? Or was it "lying"? It's headed "Conciliatory potential". Please calm down and try to regain a sense of proportion; your behaviour is looking more and more manic. You're seeing everything as an attack on you by default. I'm sorry to see you in this state. Anything I can do to help? Tony (talk) 13:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

MDD

Tony, Major depressive disorder has received a lot of edits since I suspect you last looked at it. Do you have time for a quick look or tune-up? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Tennis expert

I see he/she removed your warning to them from their talk page. Are we able to take action against his/her edits? - Dudesleeper / Talk 21:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. To the ANI. --SkyWalker (talk) 13:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

No, He has not attacked me but reverting all mine and Chris edits is not every nice. --SkyWalker (talk) 16:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Joel Selwood FA nomination

Hey there,

Given your previous inputs and edits to this article, you're invited to wander down and express your opinion toward this article's current FA nomination here. Cheers! Boomtish (talk) 06:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Baseball Year

stop removing the Baseball year template per WP:CONTEXT#Dates.--Yankees10 16:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Indiscriminate script assisted delinking

Why do you consider that "Switzerland" should be delinked on List of members of the Swiss Federal Council and Swiss National Library ? Your edit summary doesn't provide much help. In the meantime, please stop this unless you can provide a clear explanation. -- User:Docu

You're right; I've reinstated the link in both articles. Tony (talk) 10:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Day of the year

Please stop de-linking dates on the year pages: they're date pages, so of course the dates are linked. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you referring to the ones I self-reverted a few minutes ago? I did them by mistake, having strayed onto them in an adjacent nav-box. Tony (talk) 15:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

No, I would be referring to this, this, this, this, this and this, which you most assuredly did not revert. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 15:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Done; thanks for pointing this out. Tony (talk) 15:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course they're done: I did them myself. Are you sure you're paying attention when you edit? --CalendarWatcher (talk) 23:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

In future, don't waste my time. Tony (talk) 09:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

You've already wasted mine, cleaning up after your unacknowledged carelessness: I'm simply hoping to prevent future incidents. So, again, please play closer attention when charging ahead on your peculiar obsession. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 10:04, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad your time was wasted. Next time, express yourself more clearly to save me needless trouble rather than accusing me, and I'll thank you for pointing out my mistake. As it is, I withdraw my thanks expressed earlier. Tony (talk) 10:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I stated myself very clearly. That you didn't understand--twice--reflects on your lack of awareness of your own editing, not any lack of clarity in my simple statements. As for your added 'Aggression usually ends up rebounding, as it has for you in this case'--does that mean you intend on making more and bigger mistakes to take out your frustration? I'd suggest that a little self-reflection would be helpful here. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 10:32, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• You can state yourself "very clearly" until you're blue in the face, chum, but that just makes you look like a prize fool. Rather than telling you to fuck off (which I'd never do in actuality—aggression never pays), I advise that you reflect yourself on the time you are continuing to waste. Your welcome on my talk page has been overstayed. Tony (talk) 10:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Format for "external links" and "See also" sections

Tony, I have a question I can't find the answer to in the MoS. I am working with an editor on Acid dissociation constant, which recently failed FAC and is (I hope) soon coming back there. I recommended to the editor there that they place short descriptions next to the "See also" links and next to each URL in "External links". However, I was surprised to discover that quite a few FAs don't do this. One that does is Enzyme kinetics, which uses spaced em dashes to separate the link from the description.

I think these descriptions are useful, but shouldn't be mandatory, since often a link name is all the reader needs to see to understand the value of the link. However, I'm not clear what the appropriate formatting is, or if it should be consistent across articles. I think spaced em dashes is probably OK, but is this specified anywhere in the MoS? Thanks for any help. Mike Christie (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Script bug

Hey Tony, there is/was a bug in Lightmouse's script and some/all of the 'years in music' articles are now a bit messed up. See this edit for example. See all the "$2"s. I think the articles should be reverted for now. I got to go to work right now, could you take care of it. Thanks. - kollision (talk) 23:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not a bug in the script, but a bad fault in the syntax in the first place. Instead of reverting, why not fix up what was wrong in the first place? This will have to be done manually. For example:

]–] was displaying as 7–March 16

which was hopelessly wrong. My advice is not to revert at all until Lightmouse advises whether it's possible to tweak the script to "translate" this error into a proper unlinked equivalent. If so, he'll advise whether it's better to revert and then run the script again or whether the script can be re-applied without reverting to correct the error. If not, the manual option needs to be pursued, and since the issue arose from bad syntax in the first place, I think it's the job of the editors to fix it. I'm glad this has been uncovered. Thanks for your vigilance. Tony (talk) 10:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Tony, the 'messed up' assertion is true. If you search the example for '$2', you will see what User:Kollision means. It was a bug and has now been fixed, see User_talk:Lightmouse#Script_bug. I believe that is all he/she was referring to. Lightmouse (talk) 10:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• Lightmouse: before the script,

]–] was displaying as 7–March 16

After the script,

]–] was displaying as 7$2–March 16

Are we looking at the same diff? It seems that one messed-up version was merely changed into another messed-up version. Tony (talk) 10:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I've just run the script again on the example provided by Kollision. Still the dollar signs:

Tony (talk) 10:27, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Cache

Some thoughts:

• If you add the script page to your watchlist or check my contributions you will see if the script has been changed. You can then clear your cache.
• Alternatively, you could simply clear your cache at intervals. For example, before you start a long session using it.
• You can set your browser to clear temporary files when it closes. I am not too knowledgeable on such things but that will have the same effect as clearing your cache at the time the browser is next opened.
• Some people like to reboot their computer from time to time e.g. once per day. That doesn't necessarily clear the cache but it can be a good idea for other reasons.

In most cases, the cache issue isn't something to worry about but it can be a nuisance sometimes. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 15:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Peer review/WrestleMania XXIV/archive1

Hey, do you have time to look over this article and give it a review? iMatthew 22:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Note

Hello, I've noticed for the last several weeks you have been edit warring at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Please remember that Misplaced Pages is not a battleground and we operate under the principle of discussing changes to reach consensus. None of us own any of the pages on Misplaced Pages and edit warring, even if one is certain they are correct, is never acceptable. I fear if you do not stop edit warring that I will need to block you for disruption and edit warring. Happy editing. MBisanz 01:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)