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Revision as of 17:26, 12 January 2019 editRathfelder (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users548,588 edits Notification: listing at categories for discussion of Category:Israeli revolutionaries. (TW)← Previous edit Revision as of 05:20, 14 January 2019 edit undoBrownHairedGirl (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, File movers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers2,942,733 edits →Request that AWB access be revoked: suggest 6-month suspensionNext edit →
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*{{U|Ritchie333}} I welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you. ] (]) 23:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC) *{{U|Ritchie333}} I welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you. ] (]) 23:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
*:Oh, NOW you want to discuss it? ]] 02:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC) *:Oh, NOW you want to discuss it? ]] 02:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

* {{yo|EEng|Ritchie333|Headbomb}} I am very disappointed to see that this is continuing.
:Back in 2017, there was a persistent issue with {{U|Hmains}} disruptively using AWB for categorisation. It appears that Hmains was manually editing the wikicode within AWB's edit window, but not checking afterwards whether the categories used actually existed. The result was a steady stream of entries at ], which other editors had to clean up.
:The final round of warnings can be seen here. That page does not include many many earlier warnings to Hmains over the preceding months, because sadly Hmains simply deletes old messages from his talk, without archiving them.
:That led me to issue a final warning to Hmains on 5 June 2017,, followed by yet more notices of errors he had created, and then by Hmains's removal of all those warnings with the misleading edit summary "maintenance"
:Finally, on 29 June, after the problem had recurred, I blocked Hmain for 1 week. After that block, the categorisation problems stopped entirely.
:So this is a long-standing problem, to which Hmains responds meaningfully only when sanctions have been applied (as in 2017) or when they appear imminent, as is now the case.
:At this point, I think that sanctions are needed.
:#I would suggest a topic ban on cosmetic changes
:#A 6-month suspension of AWB rights, with a clear warning that if problems continue with Hmains's use of AWB after the suspension, any admin may remove Hmains from ].
:I like Hmains, and am sorry that it has come to this. I accept that every AWB user is human, and that even the most conscientious AWB may make errors, sometimes extensively. However, I expect any AWB editor to be careful to avoid AWB-driven errors, diligent in identifying AWB-driven errors, proactive in fixing their AWB-driven errors, and above highly responsive to concerns from other editors. Sadly, there is a persistent problem of Hmains failing on all 4 points, which wastes huge amounts of other editors' time and energy ... so I think the time has come for restraint.
:As noted above, I woukd ''prefer'' that Hmains's AWB rights were suspended rather than revoked, because I think that Hmains has shown ability to learn when faced with loss of privileges. But if others are not wiling to accept suspension, then I will not oppose revocation of his AWB rights. --] <small>] • (])</small> 05:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

==] has been nominated for discussion== ==] has been nominated for discussion==


Revision as of 05:20, 14 January 2019

This user is one of the 40 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

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Misplaced Pages:Lists

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June 29

Special:WantedCategories


#REDIRECT ]

all included manmade: remove the colon below

all included natural: remove the colon below


non-diffusing: remove the asterisk and the colon below; this is to be paired with all included above


nothing in MOS says to use the following:


TOC without numbers

Default sort

  • {{DEFAULTSORT:xxx}}

Container category

Maintenance note

I maintain this page by deleting items after a week or two or more. Hmains (talk) 16:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

work

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{{Non-diffusing subcategory|(name of cat)|(1st part of cat name)}}

Monobook

You may wish to make use of a 'Dates' tab in edit mode that will help with unlinking unnecessary date links. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. It also provides a 'Units' tab. If you know what you are doing, you can copy and modify the subfiles as you wish. I just thought you might be interested. Regards. bobblewik 20:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason it fails is because you refer to User:Hmains/monobook.js/dates.js and User:Hmains/monobook.js/unitformatter.js and these articles do not exist. You have two options:
Try again. I am happy to walk you through the process. So feel free to ask me again. bobblewik 12:03, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

etc

Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Categories

for list filter:

January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Year|MCD|MCC|List of state leaders in

to create a 2 up

info

User:Magioladitis

how to use wild card in 'skip text contains/doesn't contain box'

\]+ County, Arkansas\]\]


\]+, Arkansas\]\]


Misplaced Pages:Categorization Misplaced Pages:Categories, lists, and series boxes Template:Americans WP:BLPCAT WP:LISTPEOPLE

  • 12 to 12 handled by find/replace table; not by module

public public

to fix

to avoid disambiguation pages use: |{{.*dis}}

etc. Plantations plantation

plantation house

Plantation complexes in the Southern United States

planter

sort

Autofill

  • to auto fill edit summary: "I haven't found a way to get autocomplete in IE at https with the current setup on Misplaced Pages's side. If http is acceptable to you then you can disable "Always use a secure connection when logged in" at Special:Preferences, log out, close IE, start IE again and log in at http://en.wikipedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:50, 31 August 2013 (UTC)"

it may also be necessary to force the WP address to be http: instead of https:

bot

Reviewer Right Granted

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

For the guideline on reviewing, see Misplaced Pages:Reviewing. Being granted reviewer rights doesn't change how you can edit articles even with pending changes. The general help page on pending changes can be found here, and the general policy for the trial can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. The Helpful One 17:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Autopatroller

Hi Hmains, just wanted to let you know that I have added the autopatrolled right to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature should have little to no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the patroller right, see Misplaced Pages:Autopatrolled. Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! — ξ 21:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


etc

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^ Typographical, or curly, quotation marks and apostrophes might be read more efficiently, and many think they look better. However, for practical reasons the straight versions are used on the English Misplaced Pages:

Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers do not distinguish between curly and straight marks, Internet Explorer still does (as of 2016), so that a search for Alzheimer's disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa.

Straight quotation marks are easier to type reliably on most platforms.

MediaWiki's use of series of single quotes to create italics and boldface makes using these features complicated and error-prone for content that begins or ends with apostrophes.

Linking Dates (centuries, decades, years, months, days, etc)

Delink dates per WP:DATELINK, WP:YEARLINK and MOS:UNLINKYEARS

As always, the content of the linked-to article must provide substantive content to the linked-from article. The MOS decided most dates do not do this. Hmains (talk) 03:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

what links here

  • filter by name: (used where?)

calendar|day|week|month|year|decade|century|millennium|Showa|Shōwa|Meiji|Taisho|Taishō| in |Other events|(number)|(disambiguation)|Aught-|SO 8601|Timeline|acronyms|initialisms

  • skip: used in bot

{{Decadebox|{{Year dab|{{Year nav|{{Month header}}|{{Day}}|Category:Days of the year|{{Portal:Current events/Events by month}}|{{Portal:Current events/Month Inclusion|{{Months in the|Eastern Orthodox liturgical days|#REDIRECT|{{disambig}}|{{disambiguation}}|to disambiguation page|{{events by month links}}|month category|Month of the|The following events occurred in|{{Millenniumbox|{{Centurybox|This page indexes the individual|February 30|January 0|Calendars|title=September 11 attacks|numberdis|{{00sbox|{{.*dis}}-|{{GOCEinuse}}|{{In use}}|{{Under construction}}

  • filter: to skip article names with these words

s in |9 in |8 in |7 in |6 in |5 in |4 in |3 in |2 in |1 in |0 in |in Wales|calendar|day|week|month|year|decade|century|millennium|Showa|Shōwa|Meiji|Taisho|Taishō|Other events|(number)|(disambiguation)|Aught-|SO 8601|Timeline|acronyms|initialisms|September 11 attacks|Fons memorabilium universi|List of millennia

avoiding delinks

14 January 2025 can be used to avoid future delinking of dates. For example, 2012 → 2012 2010s → 2010s 21st century → 21st century Friday → Friday June → June (l, ldmy or lmdy also work) June 2012 → June 2012 (l, ldmy or lmdy also work) 29 June → 29 June (l or ldmy also work) June 29 → June 29 (lmdy also works) 29 June 2012 → 29 June 2012 June 29, 2012 → June 29, 2012 29 June 2012 → 29 June 2012 (l also works) June 29, 2012 → June 29, 2012

Web page has expired

I follow the directions in the message shown on the screen.

"Click on the Refresh button on the toolbar to reload the page. After refreshing, you might need to navigate to the specific webpage again, or re-enter information."

On my computer I have to remember that "refresh" looks like a circle with an arrow at the top, and it's the fourth of five icons to the right of the URL. I don't even know what the others are. Then a box pops up and I have to click on "retry".— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:04, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Since you are very active in the project, would you like to be an administrator? Do you need tools to move/delete pages for example? Are you active in WP space, involved in xFDs or something similar? -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:03, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll second Magioladitis here. I think you'd do fantastic as an administrator. The choice is entirely yours, but just know that should you ever submit an RfA, you'll have my support. Kurtis (talk) 03:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Understandable. Do whatever you feel comfortable doing, it's not my place to pressure you.
But in the off chance that you ever change your mind, know that I would feel confident in entrusting you with the tools. =) Kurtis (talk) 04:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Delinking

  • The delinking of dates was exhaustively discussed by WP prior to the current wording of WP:DATELINK and WP:YEARLINK and MOS:UNLINKDATES being agreed upon. Days, months, years, decades, centuries, etc were all included in the long discussion.

WikiProject Cleanup

Hello, Hmains.

You are invited to join WikiProject Cleanup, a WikiProject and resource for Misplaced Pages cleanup listings, information and discussion.
To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000 14:11, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

problem

Whatever it is, this problem has not been fixed and there seems to be no activity by the people responsible for this mess to fix it. Hmains (talk) 02:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC) Hmains

I'm sorry that you're still having this frustrating problem. BJorsch named above the three different places where this problem may be caused: 1.your own computer, 2.the WMF's servers, or 3.a server in between you and the WMF's servers.

Each user is necessarily responsible for cacheing problems that appear in his own browser. Please follow all the steps at WP:BYPASS and let us know if that (hopefully!) solves the problem for you. If the problem is the WMF's caches, then it will likely be fixed relatively soon. If the problem is at a third-party server in between you and the WMF (e.g., on your corporate or university network or your local ISP), then I'm afraid that there is often nothing that either you or we are able to do about it except wait for the third-party server to update its cache. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:53

xxx

BrownHairedGirl

Mitch Ames

User:JimmyJoe87


"...{{nbsp}}

{{nbsp}}..."

Duplicate categorization - British Leeward Islands etc

Tagging Category:Leeward Islands (Caribbean) and Category:British Leeward Islands as non-diffusing does not justify putting Montserrat into them directly as you did with this edit. The article is already in those categories indirectly via Category:British Leeward Islands in World War II, Category:History of the British Leeward Islands, Category:British Leeward Islands. WP:SUBCAT is clear on this. If you want Category:Leeward Islands (Caribbean) and Category:British Leeward Islands to be all-inclusive you need to tag them as such (or tag the intermediate subcategories as non-diffusing).

Likewise Antigua and Barbuda is already in Category:Leeward Islands (Caribbean) via Category:British Leeward Islands (which is a non-diffusing subcat of Category:British West Indies, but not of Category:Leeward Islands (Caribbean)).

Likewise tagging Category:British Leeward Islands as non-diffusing does not justify putting Category:Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla into it directly as you did here because Category:Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla is already in Category:British Leeward Islands via Category:British Saint Christopher and Nevis. If you want Category:British Leeward Islands to be all-inclusive you need to tag it as such (or tag Category:British Saint Christopher and Nevis as a non-diffusing subcat of Category:British Leeward Islands).

... Or you could just follow the general guideline of WP:SUBCAT and not include the article in both child and parent categories (which would be much simpler). Or you could propose a change to WP:SUBCAT.

I also invite you to look at the closed loop(s) described at WT:WikiProject Caribbean#Closed category loop; what would be the best way to break those loops?

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:43, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Removal of linked dates

Hi Hmains - can you give a direct link to this non-usage of linked dates - as I wrote in edit - where would these entry pages which are very helpful be used? Why do they exist? Cheers --Iztwoz (talk) 17:35, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Ellipses

Your script is adding redundant or unwanted spaces inappropriately before and after ellipses. See the two reversions I've made in the last hour. Please fix your script and recheck the changes you've made; you may need a new script to detect the errors you've introduced. EEng 14:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks please tell me in what way I am not following this Manual of Style section? MOS:ELLIPSIS Thanks Hmains (talk) 16:43, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

You're adding a space after {nbsp} thus creating two spaces in the rendered text e.g.

there are two spaces here  ... when there
should be 1 space like this ...

and also adding a space at the beginning of lines, which makes lines look 

... totally weird.

Furthermore, the space you add before an ellipse should be an {nbsp}. EEng 18:52, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I will fix the first two items above; the 3rd item in MOS in optional and I will will not work on that. thanks Hmains (talk) 18:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
No, the use of {nbsp} in conjunction with ellipses is not optional (I've modified the ELLIPSIS to make that clearer) even if many people ignore that specification. If you're going to go around supplying the missing spaces they should be of the right type: {nbsp} on the left of the ... and regular space on the right, except where there's punctuation on the left of the ... instead of a word, in which case there's no space on the left and the space on the right should be {nbsp}) . Also, since the script doesn't seem to have been carefully written there may be other errors than the ones I've described. You need to really think about various things your script might have done wrong and search for them all. Did you write the script or did you get it from someone else? EEng 19:15, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Cute. Change the MOS to match your beliefs, with no discussion. In any case, your changes have changed nothing about the what the MOS means. Hmains (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
No, I didn't change its meaning. It said to use nbsp "as needed", then gave an explanation of where it's needed. You apparently misinterpreted "as needed" as meaning it was optional; it's not, so I fixed the text to avoid that ambiguity. In fact, you just said yourself that my changes "have changed nothing about the what the MOS means", completely contradicting your statement in the previous sentence that I had changed it. Let me ask you again: did you write this script, or did you get it from someone else? Can you point me to it? EEng 19:24, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I see that, subsequent to the above discussion, you've continued to make incorrect edits such as this one (which just happens to be the second on the list of your latest batch of edits, so it wasn't hard to find). Please immediately confirm you will stop using this faulty script, and instead turn your attention to finding and fixing the many errors you have been introducing, or I will have to ask for your AWB access to be revoked. This kind of gnoming is helpful, if done carefully -- not when it fixes some things and breaks others. EEng 20:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
thanks for noticing. I do my own work, not from someone else. Ellipses seems like a great deal of trouble, so I could just remove my ellipses logic after going back to make corrections. But how will I know that my cleanup will satisfy you without getting more threats? Hmains (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Well, you could start by not continuing to use a broken script after someone shows you it's broken. Can you point me to it? EEng 20:39, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
It is not a script. It is a find/replace table in AWB. Would you like to review/correct the find/replace table entries I would set up to do cleanup? And I will remove all the ellipses entries from my table. Hmains (talk) 20:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Problem is, I have no experience with AWB. I'm pinging John of Reading, who may be able to help. It would be fine, and helpful, for you to continue fixing the spacing around ellipses, but only after the specification of what to replace with what is corrected to take proper account of context and to use nbsp as needed. It occurs to me that if this specification is done properly, it will find and fix the errors you've introduced as a matter of course. Without seeing the current table I can't say exactly what the introduced errors are, but clearly the problem stems from not considering whether what precedes or follows the ellipsis (other than spaces of course) is alphanumeric vs. punctuation vs. line boundary vs. I'm not sure. EEng 21:10, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
@EEng: Yes, AWB's Find&Replace rules can use regular expressions, and that level of complexity would be needed here. For example, the regular expression \.\.\.(?<!\bbibcode\s*=\s*+) matches the three dots in the text at User:John of Reading/Sandbox but not the dots in the dummy bibcode parameters. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:42, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
John of Reading, since I don't have AWB and would have no way to test any REs I might suggest, can you step in to help with the cleanup? EEng 18:37, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
@EEng: I'd prefer to steer clear of MOS-only edits. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:39, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Wouldn't we all. Well, in the grand scheme of things I guess some mixed-up spacing around ellipses isn't a big deal. They'll get sorted out sooner or later. EEng 21:08, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Sorry. I think will find that AWB tables are not sharable/downloadable or even cut/pastable. But you can help with cleanup: I can give you a series of find/change pairs such as below (have to go into edit to read these) and you can tell me if they meet standards or fix them. The pairs are evaluated one at a time, from top to bottom.
find    change
"...	"&nbsp; ...	
'...	'&nbsp; ...		
" ...	"&nbsp; ...	
' ...	'&nbsp; ...

Is this ok? Hmains (talk) 22:10, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't it use regular expressions? EEng 22:33, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
it does but I never learned how to safely write them, so I don't --Hmains
Can you point me to the manual? EEng 23:08, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Of course. Everything starts on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser Hmains (talk) 23:42, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
OK, it will be some days before I can concentrate on this. In the meantime I suggest you remove all the ... entries. EEng 01:09, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
I am no longer touching ellipsis Hmains (talk) 01:28, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Plural ellipses. Latin, you see. Or Greek. Or something. EEng 01:33, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Bibcodes, again

Again, please take care with AWB and find/replace logic. This busted dozens of citations, not only here, but on dozens of articles as well. It's at least the third time I tell you this, the next, I will move for revocation of AWB privileges.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:25, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

      • I reverted everything that broke, so nothing else that needs to be done. If you want to rerun your fixes without the ' ... ' → '...' (or verify that the changes are OK and don't touch things that shouldn't be touched), that's up to you. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:32, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Wait, what? SPACE...SPACE --> ... isn't right at all. What makes you think you found all the problems? EEng 01:52, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019!

Hello Hmains, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019.
Happy editing,
Meatsgains 01:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Xmas

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 00:47, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Hello Hmains: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Misplaced Pages. Cheers, Walk Like an Egyptian (talk) 06:13, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message

Antoine Lefèbvre de La Barre

I have reverted your edit to Antoine Lefèbvre de La Barre. See User:Aymatth2#ine breaks. Single line breaks are not visible to readers but make it easier for handicapped editors like me to make changes, as explicitly mentioned in the MoS. Please do not remove them. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:55, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

For the last time

AGAIN I need to ask you to stop making these mass edits that combine (a) tinkering with markup while making no change to what the reader sees, while at the same time (b) here and there changing something that the reader does see for no apparent reason, or sometimes (c) screwing something up, and just now and then (d) actually doing something useful. For example, last month you made this edit which messed up the formatting of ellipses. Now you've visited the same page again and made a large bunch of useless no-change markup changes, scattered among which you scattered some arbitrary visible changes (like inserting double-hyphens for dashes), and – oh yes – you fixed one curly apostrophe into a straight one.

In between I see complaints from other editors that you're messing up bibcodes and tinkering with line breaks. I know you're trying to help but you need to stop making mass changes of any kind. Your apologies aren't enough. Find other editing to do. EEng 04:11, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

You need to control your temper and language. There is nothing wrong with my edits. Hmains (talk) 11:17 pm, Today (UTC−5)
Why such anger? Surely this is not common in WP and is unhelpful. Hmains (talk)
And I am not making mass changes; I deliberately make one change at a time following the MOS--whether or not you think the MOS is important. And I am also working on repairing some things that you wanted me to do. Hmains (talk) 04:41, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
I'm not angry, but your page is littered with complaints from other editors and yet you just keep blundering on to new screwups. Do you deny that, in the second of my two links above, you prefixed double hyphens to quotation sources? Double hyphens are explicitly forbidden by MOS:DASH (and even if you'd used a proper mdash or ndash, you shouldn't be going around arbitrarily inserting dashes in these places at all). And what was the use of all the other changes? It's only because I looked carefully through all those do-nothing changes that I found the double hyphens. EEng 04:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
thanks for the info on dash. I will now use ndash and correct any that I did wrong. What I see as editing to follow the MOS, you call 'arbitrarily inserting' and 'do-nothing'. That just sounds like an unhappy opinion. The MOS calls for blockquotes to not have quotation marks so I remove them. What else do you specifically not like to see? Hmains (talk) 05:06, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
MOS doesn't call for you to downcase template names, add and remove whitespace and linebreaks in the source, and all that other useless stuff on top of the things you mess up. You keep doing stuff like this. Just in the last three weeks there have been four threads opened by people pointing out that you're screwing something up either by your misunderstanding of MOS or misunderstanding of some syntax, or by your not knowing how to use regular expressions effectively to safely make the changes you're trying to make; one of those threads says it's the third time you were being warned about that particular problem. We're past the stage where you start by denying there's anything wrong, then after it's rubbed in your face you apologize and swear you'll do better next time. You need to find something to do other than this kind of gnoming. Reluctantly pinging Headbomb and John of Reading again. EEng 05:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Your anger is overflowing, but unhelpful. I asked for specifics for me to fix and you give me this outburst. Difficult to rationally discuss anything. Sorry. Hmains (talk) 05:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  • (talk page stalker) I think EEng holds a legitimate view that the example given on Memorial Hall (Harvard University) does not have any obvious benefit to the end reader. Saying "I think you made made a bunch of useless changes" is not a personal attack like "I think you are useless". I don't see a problem with his temper or language; I merely see somebody getting frustrated at somebody else making changes for seemingly no reason without explaining themselves. If you're not prepared to discuss, I'm afraid that sanctions will become inevitable - see Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Magioladitis 2 as an example. I'm not saying that's a good thing (it isn't), but if you can't come to terms with your differences with other users, we won't have any choice. The MOS is not legally binding. Ritchie333 11:04, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
    Just to be clear, I'm happy to see edits that correct user-visible formatting so that it's compliant with MOS. The problem is that many of Hmain's edits either have nothing to do with MOS (e.g. changing {{Quote}} to {{quote}} or inserting or deleting whitespace in the source text) or actively introduce violations of MOS (inserting hyphen-hyphen as a dash). Plus, even where Hmains seems to be trying to do something that's appropriate and useful, he doesn't know how to formulate regular expressions to make the changes correctly in edge cases, so that he introduces new errors. He keeps promising to do better but he seems to lack the skill to avoid moving on to make new ones. EEng 16:08, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I think it's time we move to revoke AWB privileges. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
    Given that Hmains refuses to recognize the problems with his editing, I'm afraid I have to agree. The fixing of curly quotes and so on is useful, but unless there's someone who can mentor him in how to do such things appropriately, and he will accept such mentorship, all the confusion and new errors aren't worth it. EEng 16:08, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks all. I am happy to discuss anything with interested parties. I would just like to discuss one thing at a time to straighten things out. First I would like to discuss what I am trying to accomplish. Item-1: removing quotation marks surrounding block quote contents. Reason: MOS says not to use quotation marks for block quotes. These do show up on reader's screens. Is it ok or not to remove them and why? Hmains (talk) 04:00, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
    You want to discuss specifics; we're talking about a generality. Do you or do you not understand the chronic problems with your editing? Headbomb, I don't know where we go to ask for AWB privs to be revoked, but maybe there's a venue there to find Hmains a mentor. EEng 05:42, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
"MOS says not to use quotation marks for block quotes. These do show up on reader's screens. Is it ok or not to remove them and why?" I have no idea. What do the New York Times and the Washington Post do? If you can find a consistent and respected format, use that. I searched for "top Boris Johnson lies" expecting to find a good source with block quotes, but couldn't find anything that matched the formatting. The trouble is, the MOS doesn't tell you why you should do something, and if you're doing mass editing without understanding why, then it's almost a given that when you clash with somebody who disagrees with you (as has happened here), you'll be stuck for an answer. I see WP:AWBRULES says "If challenged, the onus is on the AWB operator to demonstrate or achieve consensus for changes they wish to make on a large scale." and if you can't do that, you shouldn't be using it.
As an admin, I have the ability to remove Hmains' AWB right. However, I'm reluctant to come down like a ton of bricks on an issue that I haven't been involved with too much, so I would first like to see a thread on WP:ANI which shows it has community support. I'm certain that EEng shares my opinion that it's not big or clever for admins to come charging in on horseback and unilaterally dishing out bans on the say-so of a few people. Ritchie333 11:11, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Of course I share your opinion on that last point. As for removing quote marks around block quotes, that's absolutely useful. The problem is he's doing 20 other things at the same time that aren't useful – they're either counter to MOS, consistent with MOS but arbitrary and therefore not appropriate to be done on a mass basis, or meaningless fiddling with internal markup that doesn't change what the reader sees. And every week it's a different set of these oddities popping up on my and others' watchlists, because he keeps trying to do new things. We're still waiting for Hmains to acknowledge that he understands that. I see now that since AWB is just one of those rights any admin can add or revoke, there's no special venue where getting mentorship for Hmains would be a natural part of consideration of removing the right. But if he won't even acknowledge that he's got a general competency issue he needs help with, then I'm afraid Headbomb and I will need to ask for his privilege to be removed. There have have 20 posts to this thread alone and he still doesn't seem to know what we're talking about, much less agree or disagree with it. EEng 16:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
@Ritchie333: The problem is systemic, long term, and sustained. Repeated promises to improve hasn't yielded results. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Request that AWB access be revoked

Ritchie333, I'm now asking you to revoke Hmains' AWB privileges.

Instead of engaging the concerns above, he has gone back to blundering around making a mess of things. Today I find on my watchlist this edit adding an ndash, which his edit summary calls "standard quote handling in WP" – which it's not, and by the way in doing that he made that one quote's formatting inconsistent with the other one in the very next section. Then he followed that up with this edit fucking up the location of an image. (Similar edits today: .)

I notice, actually, as I write this that those particular changes do not appear to have been made using AWB. So what I'm asking you to do is (1) warn him in no uncertain terms to stop making random changes to articles this way, using AWB or not; (2) revoke AWB to limit the amount of mess he makes when, inevitably, he goes back to doing it anyway. There's a very limited need for this kind of gnoming, and it has to be done with near-100% accuracy if it's to have a positive cost-benefit ratio. Editors without extensive experience editing articles in the normal way are almost never able to achieve that, because they don't understand why things are done the way they're done. This needs to end, permanently. Pinging, again, Headbomb. EEng 23:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Back in 2017, there was a persistent issue with Hmains disruptively using AWB for categorisation. It appears that Hmains was manually editing the wikicode within AWB's edit window, but not checking afterwards whether the categories used actually existed. The result was a steady stream of entries at Special:WantedCategories, which other editors had to clean up.
The final round of warnings can be seen here. That page does not include many many earlier warnings to Hmains over the preceding months, because sadly Hmains simply deletes old messages from his talk, without archiving them.
That led me to issue a final warning to Hmains on 5 June 2017,, followed by yet more notices of errors he had created, and then by Hmains's removal of all those warnings with the misleading edit summary "maintenance"
Finally, on 29 June, after the problem had recurred, I blocked Hmain for 1 week. After that block, the categorisation problems stopped entirely.
So this is a long-standing problem, to which Hmains responds meaningfully only when sanctions have been applied (as in 2017) or when they appear imminent, as is now the case.
At this point, I think that sanctions are needed.
  1. I would suggest a topic ban on cosmetic changes
  2. A 6-month suspension of AWB rights, with a clear warning that if problems continue with Hmains's use of AWB after the suspension, any admin may remove Hmains from WP:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Approved_users.
I like Hmains, and am sorry that it has come to this. I accept that every AWB user is human, and that even the most conscientious AWB may make errors, sometimes extensively. However, I expect any AWB editor to be careful to avoid AWB-driven errors, diligent in identifying AWB-driven errors, proactive in fixing their AWB-driven errors, and above highly responsive to concerns from other editors. Sadly, there is a persistent problem of Hmains failing on all 4 points, which wastes huge amounts of other editors' time and energy ... so I think the time has come for restraint.
As noted above, I woukd prefer that Hmains's AWB rights were suspended rather than revoked, because I think that Hmains has shown ability to learn when faced with loss of privileges. But if others are not wiling to accept suspension, then I will not oppose revocation of his AWB rights. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Category:Israeli revolutionaries has been nominated for discussion

Category:Israeli revolutionaries, 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. Rathfelder (talk) 17:26, 12 January 2019 (UTC)