Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:01, 29 July 2012

RFC/discussion of article National Union of General Workers

A request for comments has been filed about the use of anonymous sources in reliable publications. The RFC can be found by the article's name in this list, and the actual discussion can be found on Talk:National_Union_of_General_Workers#Request_for_Comment_-_Use_of_anonymous_sources_in_reliable_publications in case you wish to participate. Thank you for your contributions. Sparkzilla 06:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

April 2010

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added to the page HTML do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Misplaced Pages is not a collection of links; nor should it be used as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because Misplaced Pages uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Adrian J. Hunter 04:10, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't look so bad on review. Adrian J. Hunter 13:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, LittleBenW, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Introduction
• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• How to edit a page
• Help
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there.  Again, welcome!

Adrian J. Hunter 04:25, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Tokyo Electron and Horiba

Thank you for your contribution to the Horiba article. Keep up the good work!

As for Tokyo Electron, I downloaded two images, the company logo and the corporate slogan, from the official site and converted them to SVG with Inkscape. Can we upload them to Wikimedia Commons? I'm worried about copyright issues because both of them are TEL's trademarks.

I think that TEL's Annual Report 2009 is a good source of information on the company.

Regards,

--Shinkansen Fan (talk) 08:17, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

> As for Tokyo Electron, I downloaded two images, the company logo and the corporate slogan,

> from the official site and converted them to SVG with Inkscape. Can we upload them to Wikimedia Commons?

> I'm worried about copyright issues because both of them are TEL's trademarks.

Sorry I'm not an expert on such issues. I recommend that you as about this somewhere like User talk:QwerpQwertus

Re: HTML e-mail link deletion

Sorry LittleBenW but that was a long time ago and I can't remember my reason for removing the link. Looking at the site again I can't see any obvious problem (has the site changed since then?)... It has more advertising than most good external links but looks permissible per WP:ELYES point 3 or WP:ELMAYBE point 4. If I made a bad call then I apologise, and I don't object to you re-introducing the link. You might consider removing some of the dated links, being sure to state why in the edit summary and not marking the edit as minor. Adrian J. Hunter 13:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: Misplaced Pages 10th Anniversary

There was a Japanese Misplaced Pages 10th Anniversary get-together in Kyoto!? Damn. Wish I'd known. Organizing a similar event in Tokyo would be a great idea, and I'd consider making the trek up there to attend it. I'll be in Tokyo on the 11th of February if you care to discuss things in person. Shoot me an email via my talk page if you're interested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrianAdler (talk • contribs) 15:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Please contact me at bryan@mackinnon.org Bryan MacKinnon (talk) 12:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Monty₈₄₅ 16:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

An invitation...

Hi. I invite you to join the Outline Wikiproject. Your enthusiasm and initiative are greatly needed there. The Transhumanist 19:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Outline traffic

LittleBen,

Thank you for your interest in improving outline availability.

The search engine blindness issue will probably have to be dealt with at the search engine level (bugzilla, etc.).

In the meantime, there is a lot we can do to improve access to outlines.

First and foremost is to finish their initial development phase by cleaning them up.

1. Reformat the lead sections of the regional (country, state) outlines (the leads in the non-country outlines have already been reformatted). Country outline lead paragraphs need to be trimmed or condensed down to a single paragraph of one or two sentences.
2. Remove redlinks that are unlikely to turn blue.
3. Place the links from "general concepts" into the rest of the outline, and remove the general concepts section. (It's a temporary holding bin).
4. Place the links from "lists" into the rest of the outline and remove the lists section. (It's a temporary holding bin).

When the quality rises, repeat visits and word-of-mouth communication about the outlines will increase. Speaking of quality, the main enhancement lacking in most of the outlines is annotations. For outlines with annotations, see Outline of chess, Outline of forestry, Outline of cell biology, Outline of basketball, and Outline of tennis.

Another thing we can do is place links to the outlines wherever they are relevant. There are plenty of places to put links to outlines:

1. See also sections of the corresponding subject articles
2. See also sections of the articles corresponding to outline subheadings (section links)
3. Navigation footers, which can in turn be placed where they are relevant
4. Infoboxes
5. Series boxes
6. {{Main}} links

The placement in Misplaced Pages's search engine's results varies. For geography, Outline of geography comes in second (right after "Geography"). For the United States, Outline of the United States is not in the first couple of thousand results.

For another example, take a look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Outline_of_chess.

There are still a few hundred chess articles that don't yet have the {{chess}} navigation footer.

But, the same day links were placed leading to the outline of chess, its traffic increased significantly, and it has remained at an increased level ever since.

Now in Google title searches of Misplaced Pages, it shows up 122nd. In a normal site-specific Google search of Misplaced Pages, it shows up 130th. It didn't used to show up at all.

Let's see what more we can do to improve its rank. Then the same methods can be used on the rest of the outlines. The Transhumanist 19:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

P.S.: I hope you join the Outline WikiProject.

Preview button

Hi!

• I noticed your work on Cascading style sheets required a great number of edits.

Are you aware that you can see a preview of the work you're doing (to check everything looks good, and check spellings and punctuation etc.) before submitting the work as a finished draft?

Just to the right of the Save page button, you'll see the Show preview button. By using this to check our work before saving the page, we can save a lot of space on the Wikimedia database servers, and other editors a lot of bother trying to keep track of the page history. Please try to get into the habit of using it.

• Also, it's good practice to always leave a short comment about what work we did in the edit summary (the text entry field just above the Save page and Show preview buttons.)

This helps other editors tell at a glance what you have done. Sometimes, without an edit summary, your work may be considered thoughtless, and be undone.

Whatever you choose, happy editing!  fredgandt 19:05, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

June 2012

Thank you for your contributions. Please remember to mark your edits as "minor" only if they truly are minor edits. In accordance with Help:Minor edit, a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Minor edits consist of things such as typographical corrections, formatting changes, or rearrangement of text without modification of content. Additionally, the reversion of clear-cut vandalism and test edits may be labeled "minor". Thank you. SudoGhost 22:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Does anybody care?

Hi, Ben. This is in response to a post you left on the article titles talk page.

Lack of an edit summary can be a good reason for reverting an edit. As you say, "the spirit of Misplaced Pages is to cooperate and communicate with other editors" and I hope you can see how someone might view an unexplained edit as uncooperative and uncommunicative and delete it rather than attempt to start a conversation first. At least they gave a explanation (inadequate perhaps) for their deletion. Perhaps you can also understand that complaining to a general audience about specific poor treatment does little to improve cooperation and communication. I suggest you start a calm and polite conversation wherever the edits were made and see if you can come to an agreement about the issue. You also might review guidance on the BRD process. Jojalozzo 16:36, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the BRD link. Most new editors don't know about watchlists. When a new editor finds that somebody has been following them around and reverting all their work without saying a word, he or she will — in many cases — conclude that any attempt to contribute to Misplaced Pages is wasted time. Even for editors who have been around for five years, repeated reverting — by people who admit that they don't understand the content but are reverting solely because there was no edit summary or discussion that they could understand — is very disconcerting. A Dilbert-office environment where you have to devote a large part of your time to watching your back is not a welcoming or productive environment. Vindictive, obstructive people who keep hit lists and who brag that their opinion will never be changed — that they can argue the legs off a table — are surely not an asset to Misplaced Pages, regardless of their English grammar skills. The survival of Misplaced Pages surely depends on maintaining a welcoming and civil environment, free from hit squads. LittleBen (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I find this a bit indirect and obtuse, I think you're attempting to say something specific is happening but instead presenting it as a general problem. Are you describing your own or someone else's experience, something you've heard about, seen happen or experienced first hand? As I understand it, you haven't been editing Misplaced Pages for long. If you've made enemies already, I suggest you consider your own approach to the project as well as that of others. That said, harassment as you describe is unacceptable whether you mis-stepped or not and there are procedures for dealing with it that will be much more effective and constructive than bringing it up on a policy talk page. Jojalozzo 20:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been around for a couple of months more than you, it seems, but almost certainly your contributions are more awesome.

The reason for my Does anybody care? rant was:

On 28 June, I added links from Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style#Foreign_terms to Regional MOS guides, but my self-evident edits were reverted by User:Noetica for lack of edit summaries.

On 1 July, I edited Misplaced Pages:Article naming, and User:Dicklyon reverted my edits. So I clarified my edits, to make it obvious that I was just creating a logical link between Recognizability in the Deciding on an article title section and the criteria for Recognizability in the following Common names section, and he again reverted my edits.   I made similar edits to Misplaced Pages:Categorization/Naming and he reverted those as well.

I explained my reasons on Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles#Deciding on an article title: Consistency and he jeered at me for not being able to find Misplaced Pages:Article titles, as mentioned in Misplaced Pages:Village pump (idea lab)#Research guidelines.2Ftutorials for new editors.

I then discovered that I was being discussed at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style#Edit summaries.

In the end, only User:Darkfrog24 felt that edits should be judged on their merits, not automatically reverted for lack of edit summaries and lengthy discussions. But finally User:AlanM1 chipped in to support Darkfrog24.

The position of User:Noetica and others is that "lack of an edit summary wastes my precious time, which is far more valuable than that of any mere Misplaced Pages contributor. Why should I treat contributors kindly? They deserve to be reverted". The position of User:Darkfrog24 seems to be essentially, "Why should lack of an edit summary waste your time? The existence of an edit summary doesn't guarantee that the edit is correct, appropriate, or not malicious. The only way to evaluate an edit is to read it".

Noetica implies that she is going to continue to revert even simple and self-evident edits that lack edit summaries, and she even tries to intimidate Darkfrog24 with I can talk the legs off a chair if called upon to do so. Do not call upon me to do so. She is not going to listen. She is going to continue to punish anyone who doesn't leave an edit summary. And she is going to continue to keep a hit list of such people that she is going to get even with.

The Pageview numbers that I cited here suggest that few people are finding Regional MOS guides, but when (on 28 June) I tried to remedy this by adding links, my edits were all reverted by Noetica. My latest edits have not yet been reverted. I won't try to fix the problems with Misplaced Pages:Article titles again until Dicklyon has had time to cool off. LittleBen (talk) 05:19, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for message.

I had a look at the 28 June links from Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style#Foreign_terms to Regional MOS guides, and saw where self-evident edits were reverted by User:Noetica for lack of edit summaries. Noetica is a good chap and I can understand his reverting for lack of edit summaries - remember WP:MOS is not a normal article - the header on talk page says so, I wish the page itself also said so. But Noetica is a good chap who quite probably would agree with that edit once you tee it up on the talk page and then do it slowly. As I said it looks like one I'd support.

I haven't quite got my head around your search engines edit yet as its not an area I'm familiar with - but the same Talk first then edit will work wonders. And Jolazzo is giving reasonable advice above, to make what I'm sure will be useful contributions more welcome. Feel free to leave links to where you're editing/talk on my talk, I'm very happy to look. :) In ictu oculi (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

-- John of Reading (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Heads Up! New Reply!

At least one new reply has been posted in this thread Talk:Gmail#Renewed_Official_Help_Center_and_Official_Product_Support_Forums --Tito Dutta ✉ 17:18, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Heads up again! At least one new message has been posted in the same thread! --Tito Dutta ✉ 05:45, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

My account is set to "watch" the Gmail article, so I will notice if you post something even if you don't send me a heads up, thanks ;-) LittleBen (talk) 07:09, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Capitalization of titles

Please also see here. --Sundostund (talk) 10:40, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

See this too - Talk:List of Presidents of Brazil#Requested move. --Sundostund (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Also see WP:CANVASSING. You don't need to recruit votes like you did here, especially from people to whom I have already advertised the RM via a page (Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters) that they have a long-standing interest in. And if you care about such things, you might consider making comments relative to existing policy or guidelines, or data in evidence, instead of just pure opinions that are out of step with consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I simply notified him of the discussion. I didn't threaten to have him blocked if he didn't see things my way. I didn't make his life miserable by rigid and inflexible application of my rules such that he quit Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages needs fewer Grammar Gods and more Tolerant and Cooperative Contributors. LittleBen (talk) 04:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

?? what's with the tantrum? Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't think Misplaced Pages is a good place for starting pointless political wars, crusades about creeds or (honorary / job title or article) capitalization. Wars turn friendly, fertile and productive countryside into barren wastelands. I think that Misplaced Pages should be more about ease of use / ease of participation, inclusiveness and diversity than about imposing complex rules. Just my opinion, of course. LittleBen (talk) 05:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

LittleBen, you're completely right. --Sundostund (talk) 09:55, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

French bios

Hi. I was welcoming to you when you appeared and supported some of your suggestions re search engines, so I am somewhat surprised with you going into a forum and saying "caught" when there have been a whole series of RMs on French names, on whether or not we should follow WP:FRMOS or not, do you want the links to the French RMs? French is not Japanese, and François Hollande is not 野田佳彦. Can I ask, who told you "caught", did you get that in an email from someone or is that your own personal wording? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:30, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi. The link to the Admin. Noticeboard archive where you were discussed was in my post. I have also explained there why I think the rammed-through decision to use foreign names in article titles in English Misplaced Pages looks very dumb to me. I agree that French is not Japanese—and Spanish and Vietnamese are also not French. I think that the best way to handle international naming issues is to defer to the regional MoS, and to reach out to involve local people in decision making, rather than arbitrarily imposing naming rules on all languages without involving people with local knowledge. I would leave decisions on minor issues, e.g. whether to link foreign and English-version names at the head of articles (like the tennis articles)—to the people involved in creating and maintaining them. But no "absolutely required" or "absolutely forbidden" universally, please—I don't see why everything has to be hammered down to the same level. I don't see any problem in handling the naming of sports figures, who are known by nicknames, differently from the way presidents or historical figures (from an era with different style "rules") are handled. I would not want policy decisions to be imposed on and interfere with creation of useful new content—so I'd really have wished that you had involved others (working on tennis articles) in the diacritics-in-titles issue rather than upsetting them by ramming it through and then presenting it as a fait accompli. The objective of Misplaced Pages is not to upset as many other editors and users as possible by sneaking through or forcing through one's own viewpoint and disregarding other people's opinions. Regardless of a person's knowledge, if that person cannot create (or always destroys) a friendly, inclusive atmosphere where everybody feels that they can contribute, then that person is a huge liability to a diverse community like Misplaced Pages, and Misplaced Pages would benefit from his removal. If he insists on winning every time on hyphens versus en-dashes, or capitalization, "NO EXCEPTIONS", and all the productive contributors and editors get fed up and quit Misplaced Pages... As I have said repeatedly, maintaining Misplaced Pages as a respected and trustworthy resource depends more on verifiability (ability to research the optimum title and category, and get facts right) than on minor points of style (en-dash vs. hyphen, capitalization of emperors and presidents) and here is where I tried to add links to make the importance of research and the "how" (process) clear, but was repeatedly reverted. LittleBen (talk) 14:31, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be forgetting that WP:TENNISNAMES was not accepted by all tennis editors either. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

• It is also easy to find which rendering of a word or name is most searched for, by using Google Insights for Search (note: sports category). Since articles are unlikely to be read if people don't find them when they search, this is surely one of the strongest WP:COMMONSENSE reasons for generally not using diacritics in article titles. This is why I think that knowledge of Internet research techniques is a critical part of making verifiable, neutral POV, commonsense decisions. LittleBen (talk) 02:01, 29 July 2012 (UTC)