Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:38, 25 September 2009

Greetings, welcome to my talk page. Please leave me new messages at the bottom of the page; click here to start a new section at the bottom. I usually notice messages soon. If I think it is important to keep a thread together I will respond here; otherwise I may respond on your talk page. Or maybe both. A foolish hobgoblin little minds consistency.

Viola d'arco

The redlink viola d'arco says it all: surely you must be the one to write something under this head: I've just enjoyed your Alfonso dalla Viola.--Wetman (talk) 18:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

greetings

Hi Antandrus. Thank you for your message of last week (we'll say--it probably wasn't!). I do intend to reply, though it's a shame I have to announce that in advance because the reply may not be commensurate with the amount of time waited. However, since I mentioned being annoyed by lack of reply in my little missive, it is only proper that I acknowledge your message. I'll stop being Woody Allen now. Have a good weekend (I liked your photo at the top). Outriggr (talk) 01:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Stalker

Damn, that was a test. You get so many people asking if they can use your user page that I was going to ask too, and then... Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:58, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Use it any time in any way you like! You may even find that the first letters of sentences, read backwards, spell the table of contents in the last of the works of Lenin.  :) Antandrus (talk) 03:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and you misspelled sockpopers. HTH. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Editors group

Now located here. Peter Damian (talk) 09:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Getting editorial tags off the default view

Hi, I have thought about this problem of articles getting littered with distracting and often pointless editorial tags and banners. I think the simplest solution is to change the wikipedia so that the default view does not show editorial tags. To see them you must be logged in and have on or something like that.

A similar idea is to create another tab. For example now we have a "user page" tab. We change this to the "reader" tab and create a new "editor" tab that would have the editorial markup. This tab would be an identical view except with editorial tags and banners enabled.

What to do about templates: the beginning of the end

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Template:Cite plot points

Hi Antandrus. I had started to work on a Windows Notepad reply to you which would morph into a general essay on the subject of article templating—which came up on your talk page recently. It could make for a long essay, and I'm not going to finish it, but here's what was on the platter. If I retire thinking, thinking, I may as well end on a quasi-productive note. Outriggr (talk) 02:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

You asked if I had any ideas on how to address the problem of the "templating of mainspace". I think we still need a problem definition, and then some determination of whether there are more than 4-6 people on Misplaced Pages who are concerned about it. I have not previously written much on the problem definition, probably for two reasons: one is that I have difficulty working up a treatise on something that seems so bloody obvious to me ("let's go write an essay on why vandalism is bad", this is to me); the other is that my own analyses have something about them that tends not to generate much comment. Call it idiosyncracy, nuance, being over people's heads in some sense, poor communication--I'll accept any of them.

So the six of us agree that the liberal use of templates that comment on the "deficiencies" of an article, placed at the top of the article page, is a problem because:

• Articles should present themselves to readers without having intrusive "meta" content that comments on the article's quality. Identifying issues with articles is what the talk page is for.
• Adding templates is a passive activity that does not engage with the article. The template adder is making a bold, essentially "ex machina" statement about the article without engaging the problem, or any prospective editor of the article. Templates are increasingly being added in a thoughtless way--as a mechanic, bot-like operation--based on intellectually inadequate notions about articles and knowledge (how people use Misplaced Pages, how people form knowledge with respect to an encyclopedia article). (Recent absurd examples that have come across my desk: ) This has repercussions for the "community spirit" behind content improvement. (See next point.)
• We are concerned that the passive, "drive-by" template-adding discourages the very people who are building Misplaced Pages most substantively. Content experts--editors who may have a nuanced sense of what is appropriate for the article they're working on--have the significant potential to become frustrated by having their product passively "tagged" as deficient, without comment, without engagement. We believe that article templating has some role in Misplaced Pages losing valuable editors. (It's unrelated but thematically familiar: did anyone notice that the fellow working on Aramaic language in the face of the "not-good-enough"ers appears to have given up?)
• Templates make articles ugly. Templates that are originally more important (i.e. those suggesting serious point-of-view debates) are being watered down because every third article now has some box at the top. We learn to ignore them as we ignore the screen space devoted to advertisements on our favorite news site. Templates are self-fulfilling, reinforcing the dirty-carpet, unprofessional appearance that they purport to be commenting on.

Other bullet points:

• Reductio ad absurdum re templates. Would this activity, carried to the extreme, make Misplaced Pages a better place? There are many templates that say "this article needs to be improved", but it is commonly understood that few of our articles don't need improvement. The templating hobby suggests that it must be fine to place an arbitrary number of tags at the top of an arbitrarily large set of articles that I determine to have a problem: too few references, bad layout, too listy, containes proseline, needs citations, needs more citations, needs more citations in this section, needs more sections, needs copyediting. Clearly, carrying the templating project to its logical conclusion would make "article space" a thing of the past; we'd have to scroll down a screen just to find the beginning of the article. By comparison, the activity of typo correcting, done no matter how manically or repetitiously, carried to its logical conclusion, does make Misplaced Pages a better place, so we view it favorably.
• What cognitive model allows someone to think that once a template is in place, it carries more weight than the content associated with it? Once a citation-needed tag, or any other template, exists, it seems to take on a mythic status with literal-minded editors. "Templates can be added without any comment, but you can't remove them unless you fix or remove 'the problem'." (Importantly, the editors saying this are almost never making case-specific arguments.)
• Tagging is a projection of insecurities with the Misplaced Pages model. Disclaimers about Misplaced Pages need to be global, and bold; but in leaving content disclaiming up to individual editors, some of whom increasingly view tagging as a game, we have very specific assertions being made about specific articles by the parties least able (relative to the topic) to make a specific assertion.
• Problem-solving 1: the pragmatic approach would be to have a third page where people can build semantic webs and article meta-data to their heart's content. It would be here that people would use some markup language to say that Bach's Air on a G String was used in the soundtrack of movie A and House episode B (the web of "this is connected to that" that clearly fascinates many people, but which an encyclopedia calls trivia).
• Problem-solving 2: encourage more prominent global disclaimers to deprecate article-specific ones. Prominent disclaimers about content have a number of other good reasons to exist, and they might mollify the critics a bit.

Regards, Outriggr (talk) 02:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a superb start.

I'm not feeling terribly hopeful. This is purely subjective, and based on the responses I've gotten the few times I've complained about tagging (and boxing). Adding to my pessimism is that the others I know who share our disdain for the tagging activity -- which you have wonderfully analyzed above -- have largely retired, left in frustration, or even worse, been hounded off the project for other reasons. I detect a very large-scale trend in Misplaced Pages away from content creation, and towards meta-content: tags, ratings, assessments, categories, and other automated and semi-automated offenses against the general reader (shall we say, "assault and bottery"?)

Thank you for those examples. The S&P 400 is a stock market index from Standard and Poor's? You don't say! That's a howler!

Did you see the post at the Village Pump? Apparently those of us who remove tags are directly attacking verifiability. I had no patience, so I walked away. Maybe there is a silent multitude who would support the common sense evident (obviously, to me) in your list above, but it seems most of our current crop of editors want to play the meta-content game rather than do hard work of writing and citing. Looking strictly at the numbers, and the trend, tags are multiplying so much faster than cites (try random-paging) that they will shortly have metastasized through our entire encyclopedia, and I don't think any amount of expert therapy will be able to eradicate them. Since we are always a work in progress, not completely verified, not completely done, not completely reliable, our general disclaimers should be quite good enough: maybe they should be displayed more prominently, as you say. Not sure where to go from here. Antandrus (talk) 03:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree with it too. I don't actually think it has got worse of late - I just think the level of serious content-addition has fallen, leaving the crap that was always there more prominent. Johnbod (talk) 03:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Drive-by comment: change the templates to add the articles into categories, instead of expanding into boxes. Having a hidden category of "Articles with POV problems" is at least theoretically a good thing, and much better than having "THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN TO CORRESPOND WITH A PERSPECTIVE THAT I THINK IS WRONG" plastered on top of the article. Since it would be done at the template expansion level, you wouldn't even have to visit the templated articles.—Kww(talk) 03:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Maybe there are enough of us to try something. Thank you all for commenting! I've become so short of patience on this topic, though, since it seems so obvious to me. A Wikiproject Detaggify would be fun, but think of the drama it would engender.

What I would like is a bot-generated list (tens of thousands of pages, I know!) of articles with top-of-article-banners of the more odious sort, which have, at a minimum, no comment on the talk page by the same editor who added the banner -- i.e. it was a drive-by bannering. Still, we need some sort of discussion and community agreement (fat chance!) before organizing a search-and-destroy campaign. As it is, I delete them now and again, particularly in articles in my subject area. Antandrus (talk) 04:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

A friend had a habit of saying "Nike that," meaning "just do it (without a lot of fuss and discussion)." Just delete misused, outdated, undiscussed, or otherwise stupid templates without a WikiProject or official sanction. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Simple! I like it. As a matter of fact that's how I solve bureaucratic hassles at work. Now why didn't I think of that? Come to think of it, I don't need to fill out a form to clean the bird poop off my windshield either. (Yet, anyway.) Antandrus (talk) 04:31, 31 July 2009 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertG (talk • contribs)

But then aren't we reduced to the "reversion game"? I could follow around a couple of CiteSquad members, who are adding reference-needed tags to articles about everything, including those describing the magnitude of exponents and measures, and year articles that say three things happened in 1023... and revert it all, but we're supposed to operate by consensus, no? Wasn't the onus on them to gain it? Somehow it's been implicitly gained because too many wield policy like a club (or hammer, choose your tool). Everyone should be shouting, and they aren't. I'd prefer to see a Miscellany for Deletion on the project, but that, I understand, is equally bad! Outriggr (talk) 06:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I'm very sympathetic to what has been said above -- very sensible and thoughtful.

I hope this isn't too far off track, but here goes. In Misplaced Pages, power seems to come from the ability to summon a (usually modest) number of editors to the scene of contention, creating a (usually spurious) "consensus". Might there be room on WP for a talk page dedicated to "content editors"? I don't mean an association; that was tried a few weeks ago and didn't work at all. I just mean a page anyone can edit, but whose heading states that the intended audience is editors who read books and use them to write whole paragraphs and articles. It's this kind of editor who ought to be running the whole show but sadly they are usually outvoted by the template/infobox/chatroom crowd. Just a thought. Opus33 (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Opus33, there is the Misplaced Pages:Content noticeboard. I had thought of posting something there. I think it would be a good idea. Outriggr (talk) 23:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Delisted 1023. I didn't think "Association of Established Editors" was mainly about finding content editors, but I could be wrong. Though it might be regarded as a violation of WP:POINT -- I do think that it could be instructive to run a script that took every page with "No references" and blanking it, every section with "missing references" and removing it, and every sentence with "fact" and deleted it. That way taggers could see what WP would look like as an information tool if they had their way. For me, if it's scary enough to tag with {{fact}} then it's important to remove this information if a citation isn't found quickly. And if CiterSquad isn't willing to do this, then they shouldn't be tagging.

Or one could create a bot to replace every {{fact}} tag with a random title from LOC w/ a random page number. Then everything is cited and CiterSquad is happy. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Myke Cuthbert, I fear that your POINTy suggestion would actually be welcomed by taggers. They seem to be awfully literal-minded (there is a better way of saying that, whatever it is) and I don't think they'd get the point. The only thing stopping them from blanking "all unreferenced content" now, I'd venture, is that there is still consensus that that activity is vandalism, when done without considering the specific circumstances (like libel in a BLP). I'd also like to point out (unrelated) that so much of what is tagged is the random and usually crappy long tail of Misplaced Pages articles, which are so obviously underdeveloped that adding templates to them gives them more legitimacy than they present to the reader in the first place. (I'm not being holier than thou: some of what I've created would fit the bill.) Outriggr (talk) 00:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, some of the stuff I added in 2004, before we were citing, avoiding original research, and carefully avoiding opinions of any kinds, needs to be fixed (some might even be tagged; not everything is even on my watchlist any more). Yeah, I'm hesitant to do anything remotely militant since that will get the tagging squads to entrench, determining that they will never change their minds, and then nothing is solved. Gentle, kind persuasion is the only way; when someone yells at me for being a heretic I'm trying to walk away (not always successfully) so as not to cause that entrenching response.

That "Association of Established Editors" is probably not going anywhere. At first I thought it had a germ of a good idea, but the hostility and politics surrounding it have made it about as popular as gonorrhea. And if you're associated with it, you are likely to attract the wrong kind of attention (in abundant supply on Misplaced Pages, since it's become so much harder to write articles than it was, say, four years ago).

Maybe it's best to work on interior lines of defense. Cite what we write; remove tags on articles in our subject areas, or peripheral to them, once there are at least a few cites, even from general reference books. Expand outward from there. While I'm tempted to use rollback on the mass tagging, the consequences would be bad, since content contributors are clearly outnumbered, and rolling back the disruptive tagging would itself be seen as disruptive by the non-writers, and the 'template/infobox/chatroom crowd' (thank you Opus for that accurate description). Antandrus (talk) 01:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Three sorts of user: reader doing research, casual reader, contributor. Good articles serve the first two, and no-one else. This service is good if it includes the provision of useful information, resources to check up and find out more, and not being patronising. A banner saying "this may not be true" is archetypical patronising.

I see the citation banner posting squad as conceptually related to the article assessment processes - I think these processes are where the criterion of slavish conformance to useless standards has come from. It is one of these processes (a FAR that resulted in this being viewed as an improvement) that killed my zeal for contributing substantive content on Misplaced Pages (see no. 70). --RobertG ♬ talk 09:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think the only action, apart from individual pruning efforts, that could realisticly succeed is to move the banners to the take page by adjusting the templates. This certainly needs community approval, but I think could succeed. For one thing, I think any lingering belief from the early days that a banner on the main article is actually likely to attract editors capable of, and willing to, make improvements must surely have vanished by now. The few people who actually look for clean-up work can find them by the categories etc. I think we should start a discussion at one of the less common templates, with a notice at the pump, & see how that goes. Johnbod (talk) 14:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

• • How long do you think will last? I'm curious to know if the members of the "CiterSquad" project actually have any interest in "citing." Antandrus (talk) 05:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I came to comment on the original discussions at Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erik9bot_9. I did not read the whole discussion until now, but the compromise that some of you had achieved was an improvement... until the spirit of it was violated. The compromise was "The bot will not add visible templates to any pages. It will only add an invisible template (to add maintenance categories), and only to those pages that clearly have no references in any format." True, but the unmentioned next step was that people would do, in only a slightly slower fashion than a bot, exactly what the compromise had avoided. (Ironically, another bot comes along and fills out the template added by the person. So what could have been one or two edits, with an ugly result, has turned into three edits for the same result.) This reminds me of what you see in dysfunctional (overly bureaucratic) workplaces, where it is decided that B is undesirable, so people work on A, and never notice that A leads logically and directly to B. That's why I went back to read that discussion: I had a funny feeling that I was witnessing another instance of this blindered thinking style (either that, or I've been tricked into considering it a cognitive thing when it's actually a political trick—but never attribute to malice...). Outriggr (talk) 07:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

• I am glad to see that some editors are are using momentum of WP:CSQ to add references to articles. As to the question of do volunteers of WP:CSQ actually have an interest in citing, some times I add one reference and request more, other times I add {{unreferenced}} , (though this was prior to WP:CSQ and the template was more in line with what {{refimprove}} is now) and then come back and add 30 references . After reading some of the comments above, I see that you are interested in actively adding references, I encourage you to become members of Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced articles and join us in adding references to articles. Jeepday (talk) 12:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Jeepday I know that you mean well, but do the changes to 1144 really indicate that CiterSquad is making a positive contribution to Misplaced Pages? The "uncited" mark there caused a experienced and respected article writer to stop writing articles and copy a reference from the Ljubljana article and past it next to a fact that has no importance separately from the 1144 article. And in the process annoy someone by seeming to assign work to someone else. If it is very important that articles about years have references, why not use CiterSquad to copy references from the relevant Misplaced Pages articles and then mark specific facts that you could not find on the Misplaced Pages article or on a Google Web/Scholar/Book search? -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 02:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently I am not in the category of "experienced and respected article writer"? I was not aware that we had two categories of editors, one who writes content and other who is goes around cleaning up other peoples messes. Last I checked I was both an experienced content adder and a cleaner up of other peoples messes. In response to "the process annoy someone by seeming to assign work to someone else", I don't disagree. It is unpleasant and unrewarding cleaning up all the content added prior to 2004 when the standards were different. There is a lot of work to do and we have been working on it for years at Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced articles, every tag added puts another article on the "to do" list for that project. And when 20 years from now we finally get caught up to Category:Articles lacking sources from August 2009, I will look for a reference if someone has not added one, if I don't find one... Jeepday (talk) 18:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, please, try not to personalize; try to step back a notch, assume good faith and all that. It is much more likely that Myke, who is my friend, is trying to prop up my sagging morale, which is close to despair over the state of Misplaced Pages and the departure of expert contributors, than he is trying to belittle you. Really. Trust me on this. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI to any discussion followers: I've posted a message at the Content noticeboard on the template issue and the actions of the wikiproject. Outriggr (talk) 02:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to see most tags banished to the talk page. Either way, I think if a project called CiterSquad isn't first and last citing content, it might more helpfully be called TaggerSquad, as in graffiti. Gwen Gale (talk) 02:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm done with my annual venture into the policy fora of Misplaced Pages. (The issue could be put up for discussion at another couple of venues and draw the same response, I reckon.) It's fairly clear that most of the people editing Misplaced Pages regularly don't care about excessive tagging. I am always struck that no one (and really, I mean no one, other than us) is willing to address the principles involved. I admit that I have little idea how to discuss "issues" with people who don't want to examine principles... so, from my perspective, they win because of their ignorance. Yeah! Let that be my over-the-top elitist-sounding exit!

Template away, and don't stop to question what it means. Outriggr (talk) 00:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Of course, the "bot culture" on Misplaced Pages is intimately connected to the templating problem. And we've reached that critical point (probably one or two years ago) where people actually think it correct reasoning to make decisions about our encyclopedia based on how if would affect programming, bots, etc. I couldn't even remove spurious reasoning in this regard on the "Perennial proposals" page about maintenance tags in article space: . I'd been managing to stay fairly uninvested in this whole business until today. Now it's driving me nuts again. I tend to conclude from the cumulative (lack of) argument provided by all these editors that Misplaced Pages is basically run by teenagers now. (I mean, the narrow focus reminds me of that age. I'd probably be doing the same things if I were still that age; but that isn't an excuse for the slow degradation of the encyclopedia with all these junk edits.) This concerns me most because of the sense that we've only just begun: the bot culture, the template culture, the idea that prose is only a series of atomic "verified facts"... they'll ruin the encyclopedia qua encyclopedia if they go unchecked. I guarantee that. Misplaced Pages won't have articles, as we know them, in four years: it will have heavily marked-up "fact lists" that are so uneditable as to further reduce the potential base of contributors. Anyway, I don't mean to keep using your talk page for editorializing. Time to turn off and tune out (or become an edit warrior!). Outriggr (talk) 08:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Outriggr, I agree. So is the only answer to fork Misplaced Pages now? - Before the encyclopaedia becomes Wikipédia engloutie, rotting under the sludge, to be excavated in 200 years time by cyber-archaeologists studying the decline and fall of the great Web 2.0 civilization? --RobertG ♬ talk 10:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I've been saying for some time, there is no reason to think en.Misplaced Pages will still be the leading online encyclopedia (open or not) in 4 years. The further it strays from straight text, the less meaningful it will be to readers, there are reasons why folks are drawn to pithy text in narrative form and I've yet to see even a hint of anything that might one day pop up in its stead. If Apple, Google, MS or whoever does one day come to market with a Vulcan mind meld, think thrice before plugging in, it won't be anything like a Melrose Avenue soundstage. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

observations on Misplaced Pages behavior

Hello , to be honest this was one of the best essays that i have red in my wikilife , just wanted to say Well-done --Mardetanha 23:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! I appreciate that. I've put more thought into that page than probably anything I've ever done here, so it means a lot to hear that from you. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 01:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

E-mail

Non-urgent music inquiry. --Folantin (talk) 19:52, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Replied. I hope -- maybe foolishly -- that there's not too much more of that. Antandrus (talk) 03:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I certainly hope so too. I've probably erred on the side of caution and practically butchered the article to remove anything suspect. I don't have the time to perform micro-surgery. Now to see where the damage might be elsewhere. --Folantin (talk) 09:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Encourage

The choice is completely yours, but I wonder if this edit might better meet your stated goal of encouraging article citation by directing potential volunteers to one of projects that you consider more constructive maybe something from Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects? Jeepday (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to contribute cites. I wish you, and others, would follow my lead.

I have also noticed that you and others on the project continue to add "unreferenced" tags as though there were no dissent to your project at all. You have a group of people, many of whom have been Wikipedians for many years, objecting to you; most of us -- indeed, all of us, as far as I can tell -- are the people who actually write the content for the project. Am I imagining this, or do you just consider our objections to be nonsensical and worthy of ignoring? Do you think we are crazy? Do you think there is no substance to our objections? Do you think we are just an annoying noise, and if you look the other way you can proceed with your tagging? I'm genuinely curious. Why are you blithely proceeding with your tagging as though we didn't exist? This is what is pissing me off. Antandrus (talk) 00:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

With no offense intended, I am hearing you tell us, "Don't waste energy telling other people what to do, by adding {{unreferenced}} to articles, go out and find the references yourself and added them". You also repeatedly accuse me of not referencing.

• In response to what I am hearing you say, I see you spending considerable effort to tell me what to do, and no effort actually going out and adding references. It makes it pretty hard to take your position as anything serious, when you are not motivated to follow your own demands.

• In response to your, attacking my for not referencing. I think you would be hard pressed to find a dozen editors on Misplaced Pages that have added more references to unreferenced content written by others, then myself. Yes I tag a lot of articles, and yes I reference I lot of articles, but it has probably been 2 years since I added one sentence to Misplaced Pages with adding reference.

• In response to your happiness to add citations, I hear you talking but I don't see you acting. You are not signed up at Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced articles nor do I see Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced articles; ] in your edits.

Still with no offense intended, it's like your demanding that we confirm to some standard to always add references to other peoples work. There is two problems with that, one WP:PROVEIT, and two you are not going out and doing what you are demanding others do. Clearly we disagree on approach to Misplaced Pages referencing and I don't have a problem with that, different perceptions can lead to wonderful solutions. If you truly beleive something you should make your best argument and try to change consensus. But when you repeatedly attack, me personally and other editors while placing your self in a separate category of the people who actually write the content for the project, you devalue your position. Every person brings different strengths to the project, try looking for that strength and encourage it. Jeepday (talk) 18:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Um, yeah. Disagree with much, agree with some, think you're misinterpreting other. Could answer at length but doing so at this moment would be counterproductive, as I'd rather improve Misplaced Pages than argue, and what I need to say would extend this thread by ten thousand words and many hours of stress for all of us. By the way thanks for this; I'm always looking for those, and now I can bookmark it. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Understood, been there. Question - can you make a valid argument that will gain community consensus that year articles like 1144 don't need references? Maybe something that expands on this User_talk:Jeepday#Edit_to_Xander. I know I can't write it and if it was proposed I would probably argue in opposition, but I would welcome a solid consensus to not reference them, similar to Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#References. It would probably need to be proposed at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability. Jeepday (talk) 23:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Myke, do you have an idea? It seems if all the content in an essentially list-type article, not a narrative, is referenced elsewhere, it may not be necessary to go through the exercise of carrying the references across, but I think the common objection be -- why not just copy them from other articles where the subject is covered in greater depth? As a practical matter, most of those articles could probably be referenced to a handful of comprehensive paper encyclopedias (but once you get into modern times, and popular culture entries appear, it's a different game). Antandrus (talk) 00:47, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Just an idea. Consensus says (or it did last time I looked) that the lead paragraph of an article, being a summary of the articles' content, does not require citations because the facts will be referenced in the article's main body. Can we not say that similarly, for summary articles, citations are not required provided the reason that they are in the summary article is referenced in the main article(s) linked to? That could apply to disambigs, year articles (x happened in 1144 - documented in article x), summary lists (foo x won prize y, it says so on article x), and perhaps many other classes of article. This would apply equally to modern times and popular culture. Actually it's how we used to deal with categories, although things may have changed since I bothered with them. --RobertG ♬ talk 06:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

restoration: second edit

Glad to see the second edit to the user page. After the first one I tried to commit the faux pas of editing your user page by reverting. But alas it's only editable by admins. more soon. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 07:22, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I feel the same. Opus33 (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Was just having a momentary lapse of ... enjoyment. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 22:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Invite

I would like to invite you to agree to disagree Wikipedia_talk:CiterSquad#Summary_of_objections. I would also appreciate it if you would participate in the the discussion on Priority of goals. Jeepday (talk) 22:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. In an attempt at stress reduction I have not been watching that page, or the issue in general, for the past week or so. I'll try to state my ideas concisely there. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 17:53, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, good comment. Jeepday (talk) 11:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Not trying to raise your stress level, but your comment needs clarification on one point, bringing the question here so you can think about it quietly before addressing on the project page. Your comment "If it relies on specialist material out of the range of a Google search or what you have available, you may place an {{unreferenced}} template" would seem to be counter to policy "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Misplaced Pages should not have an article on it." Existing policy is pretty strong that if you look for references and can't find any, the article or content should be deleted. Most of the articles (not including years) in the category Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) were written pre-2004, many of the editors are no longer with the project, and many of the sources were only available to the original editor. Even those editors who are still here don't have access to the references any longer . Many/most of the articles fail WP:OR, WP:N, and/or WP:V, though most seem to pass WP:NPOV. When an article is tagged {{unreferenced}}, it gives the whole community the opportunity (and motivation?) to check for and references, not just those few looking at a hidden category. The {{unreferenced}} puts the article in Category:Articles lacking sources, where if it does not get referenced (and over the years many do), it will be in scope of the project Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced articles (and other prohects), where they (myself included) actively look for references. Then given years for the community to try and find references, and a focused search by one of more editors they are referenced or not.

I was just passing by and noticed your example, the 100 Classrooms page. As I expected, it took me around 30 seconds to run an appropriate Google search and come up with the references needed, and then maybe a minute or two to format them using the cite web template. This is what is wrong with your project. The effort to help with unreferenced articles is appreciated, but the mechanical way you're doing it (the bot stamping disambiguation and year pages with the template, this endless talking in a case when just 30 seconds were enough to find references, etc.) is not. Unfortunately, I don't have time to argue about this, here or on the project page. So I really hope other people will eventually be able to convince you to change your ways at least a little bit. --Jashiin (talk) 13:09, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I am glad you had time to find references for one article, I would encourage you to spend 10 minutes a day on Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot), you should easily be able to reference 10 or 15 articles. Jeepday (talk) 14:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of reliable sources that are not on Google: copyrighted books, for example. I use them for the majority of work I do in music. And the Grove encyclopedia I use is not available to most people either, since I buy a subscription to get online access. Thought I was clear. Google doesn't find everything. Antandrus (talk) 13:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree 100%, part of the problem is that there is no category unreferenced music articles, so an editor with the desire and the references could go find and reference those type of articles. What if we asked Erik9bot, to put articles in categories like Category: Music Articles lacking sources, maybe he can read categories the articles are in, then add them to these (I am imagining maybe 25 to 100 special unreferenced categories) We could then divide the work up to groups that people would be more willing to work. Not sure if he could do it, but off the top of my head it seems doable. Jeepday (talk) 14:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Jeepday -- I agree that such a category would be great. (I just wish the Misplaced Pages would let you do an AND search, so that I could just do a search on Category:Music AND Category:Articles Lacking Sources). What I find enjoyable is finding references in articles that can't easily be found online; it lets me use my library and my skills and it means that Misplaced Pages is truly adding to the knowledge available online rather than collecting it all in one place.

I looked at 20 random pages and found that 9 had no references; if these percentages are representative, then your project has a goal of placing a banner at the top of 40-50% of all English Misplaced Pages pages. I don't think that that should be done without larger community and board approval. What I think would be great would be to have a separate no-web-citation template that CiterSquad puts up that says, "This article contains no references, and a web search on SEARCH-DATE found no reliable on-line references (References may be available in print-only sources). The lack of sources will hamper your ability to verify the accuracy of statements on the page." Or something like that. That would be useful to me as a reader and as an editor who wants to improve Misplaced Pages. After doing this, if it were possible (maybe a bot could do this?) to put on Wikiproject:Classical Music a list of music articles with no-web-citations found, I think you'd get huge writer response. (And similarly with other topics). It'd be a big help in finding possibly erroneous, out-of-date, or hoax articles. It'd take more time than adding a template but not so much, and it'd be fun. If the direction of the group went that way and away from templating without searching, I would commit to joining and doing 100 articles in the first month.

(btw -- Jeepday, though I think that aspects of the project has proceeded without consensus, I do appreciate the civil tone you have in writing with those who disagree with you. I think that you may have misinterpreted one of my statements on above. by calling Antandrus "experienced and respected" I didn't mean to imply that you weren't. I just meant that there are few (and I'm glad if you are; I don't know your article-writing contributions directly) and can't afford to lose any for trivial reasons. All the best -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC))

Myke, there is a template {{prod-nn}}, unfortunately it is counter to your goal. You can't make a template that says I looked for references, and did not find any but the article should not be deleted. It would be counter to all the core content policies WP:V and WP:OR, in addition to WP:N. If you can think of way to make it work I am all ears, but I don't see how. You might ask User:DGG if any one could think of a way to make it work he could. Jeepday (talk) 20:48, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking that the search for references needed to be exhaustive (as prod-nn requires); on the other hand, I'd be fine with using prod-nn to get rid of articles that really have no references anywhere, so I wouldn't mind if CiterSquad, after doing a web search, Google books search, and Google scholar search added prod-nn to an article that had no references to it--it'd mean that only articles that can't have references located for them online would have templates added to them, and those templates would only remain for a maximum of seven days. (I don't think that NN is exactly the same as no references. but it's not that different...). but it's a good direction for thinking. Trust me, I'm not counter to WP:V,OR,N,RS; but I am a realist about the danger to WP in being too dogmatic in their enforcement in one particular way or another. I think that you are too, Jeepday, hence the room for discussion. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 07:07, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, are we having all the relevant talks at Misplaced Pages talk:CiterSquad? I think this chain is about talked out but am not sure if I missed something. Post to my talk page if I missed something. Jeepday (talk) 22:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

This idea of subcategories is intriguing. I like it a lot. Seems like simple SQL to me -- (select distinct 'page' from 'Erikbot's big category' where 'page' in (select distinct page from 'Wikiproject blah')) more or less, for each project, run as a process, but I don't know the SQL dialect for Misplaced Pages, nor do I have access. I presume this is basic stuff for the people writing bots. Anyway, I too would join and commit to referencing articles in my area of expertise (since I have a large library of hard-to-find books) in this case. I might anyway, if I can figure a workaround. Antandrus (talk) 18:05, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Antandrus - Lets bring this to the project page User talk:Erik9bot and see if we can make it work. If editors are looking in areas of their specialty they would have the best chance of working on articles they cared about, and finding references. I think the SQL to do it is able the biggest problem is getting 25 to 100 categories, then writing the rules for Erik9. Ok posted at User_talk:Erik9bot#Unreferenced_by_Category, and I forgot a tilde in my previous sign Jeepday (talk) 21:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I would think that as a programming exercise it's not extremely difficult. The method would be: bot goes to article in unreferenced category, then bot goes to talk page, bot collects Wikiprojects, bot adds entry to new category/list of Unreferenced-by-that-Wikiproject, bot goes to next article. I tried randompaging ten times and every article was in at least one Wikiproject, so I'd think it would be doable and produce something at least partially useful (the worst problem is that Wikiproject Biography is sometimes the only owner, and it's probably too large to be useful). I left a message on the Erik9bot talk page. Antandrus (talk) 21:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Antandrus - the project on the talk page as group definer is a great idea, I was trying to figure out how to do it with categories on the main page and there are so many it was going to be painful. Jeepday (talk) 21:54, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your participation in my recent RfA. I will do my very best not to betray the confidence you have shown me. If you ever have any questions or suggestions about my conduct as an administrator or as an editor please don't hesitate to contact me. Once again, thanks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Spraberry Trend

On August 21, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Spraberry Trend, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Orlady (talk) 11:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for the welcome back--it's good to see you're continuing to make an impact here. I only hope I can find my way back to making some kind of small contribution here: I look forward to working with you again. Best regards, Jwrosenzweig (talk) 05:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Just introducing myself

Hi Antandrus,

I made an edit to your Vincenzo Galilei page, leaving a short explanation on the discussion page. I am sure that you somehow get warned of this anyway, but just thought I would introduce myself. It is neat to see that you have degrees in music and geology -- a rare combination! My father played French horn with the Syracuse Symphony for almost 30 years, and I still play jazz piano with a trio on a regular basis. I also have a PhD in geology, and I teach this among other things as an elective course at a private high school in NY. Anyway, nice to know that we have similar interests . . .

Best regards, Jeff Jdlawlis (talk) 04:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Answered on your talk page. Welcome to Misplaced Pages! Antandrus (talk) 18:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Oops

I created that sub-page in mainspace by mistake. Now moved to userspace (I hope). Cheers. --Folantin (talk) 18:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Oops from me too -- when I saw the note on your talk page I thought it was already a user space page -- only discovering it was not when I went there and saw the background was the wrong color. Oh well, I guess we're members of that small band of humanity (and Wikipedians) capable of making mistakes. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

E-mail. --Folantin (talk) 21:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Note

Thanks Antandrus; nice to have a compliment from an editor whoes work I have long admired. Anyway, I know waht you mean about Goya, not exactly the sort of fellow you bring up in the pub on a saturday night. My friends have already barred me from mentioning Bacon, who is perhalps the more depressing of the two;). Ceoil (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

While you're blocking trolls...

...perhaps you could take care of 68.245.134.106 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) also. :) Baseball Bugs carrots 03:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

• Looks like that one's already done ... I'll check to see if there's another IP open. Antandrus (talk) 03:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
  • They seem to be coming out of the woodwork tonight. Must be the end of summer, and they're restless about going back to junior high school. Baseball Bugs carrots 03:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Indeed; school may start tomorrow for many (when I was a kid, it was always after Labor Day) Antandrus (talk) 03:27, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Likewise, we started after Labor Day and continued into June, which was fun, what with buildings that were not air-conditioned. Now it's in ahead of Labor Day and out in May. Baseball Bugs carrots 03:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
• I suggest lobbing More Precisely (talk · contribs), More correctly (talk · contribs), et al. in the direction of a passing CheckUser. Uncle G (talk) 03:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

We could do that -- "poor man's checkuser" already tells me it's the same user, in the Baltimore -- Chesapeake Bay area, possibly on the other side in Delaware. Slightly too large of a range to flatten with a range block. I don't do that much anti-trolling work any more ... burned out on that in 2005-6 ... so I don't recall offhand which particular kid that is. Antandrus (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

That might explain his attitude: It's tough being an Orioles fan these days. :( Baseball Bugs carrots 03:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah -- and if you're a University of Maryland basketball fan, it's even worse. Antandrus (talk)

DYK nomination of Beverly Hills Oil Field

Hey, PFHLai, thanks for the nom! (I don't like nominating my own stuff.) I fixed the problem -- evidently I forgot to add the cite for the 2008 numbers when I was writing the article. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 01:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, Antandrus. (I like nominating your good stuff.) Thank you for fixing things so quickly. Looking fwd to seeing this article of yours featured on MainPage soon. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 06:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Beverly Hills Oil Field

On September 7, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Beverly Hills Oil Field, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Mifter (talk) 11:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: Chaparral talk page

Hi Antandrus. Thanks for the kind words about my talk in SB. Looks like I'll be heading up there again at the end of the month to do a presentation in Montecito. After the Station Fire in LA this past week, people are back in panic mode. Hopefully I can bring back some rational perspectives. After taking a look at your involvement here, I am very impressed with all you have done to make Misplaced Pages an excellent source of information.Rick (talk) 03:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedihol

Nice word, Wikipedihol. But nice is not as meaningful as, well, wikihol.

Misplaced Pages is the big sister of all wiki's. Long live Misplaced Pages. But wiki in general is a sort of global, new-democratic, nerve-center brain.

There are other sister wiki's to come, and I propose that although the Encyclopedia one is your forte, and that wikipedihol is your word, that you make wikihol instead, widespread wikihol. CpiralCpiral 16:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I drink less of it than I did in times past, but you have a point. A good one. It's quite a change in the way we use information, and participate in its creation, diffusion, and interpretation. Ten years ago there was none of this. I'm enjoying your essay, by the way; perceptive.

Lots of people have studied Misplaced Pages and wikis. I'd like to see someone study the reactionaries who fight against them. Curiously, they're often "progressives" (c.f. "Misplaced Pages Review"), in the same paradoxical way that Schoenberg, the famous "progressive" composer, actually tried to stop progress forever by devising a system within which nothing would ever change. Antandrus (talk) 17:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

You are amazing. ;) —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  04:32 15 September, 2009 (UTC)

On the subject of talk page stalking...

168.215.215.52 —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  04:49 15 September, 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration#RS and Fringe Noticeboard and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration guide.

Thanks,