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Status: Busy

Welcome to SMcCandlish's talk page. I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, rather than replying via your talk page (or the article's talk page, if you are writing to me here about an article), so you may want to watch this page until you are responded to, or let me know where specifically you'd prefer the reply.

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User:SMcCandlish/IP addresses


Unresolved old stuff

It says here in tautology to remind you...

Unresolved – Photo not uploaded yet.

It says in a comment on Tautology

Remind User:SMcCandlish to provide a photo of a street sign; might be a nice enhancement to the article. It's only about 2 miles away.

So I have. Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 15:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Right, thanks. I'll try to remember to take a pic of it next time I drive past it. — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 21:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

New stuff

Cueless billiards

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.
PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Kevin Trudeau

Not sure if you were referencing the edits I made, but I didn't make any biased positive comments about Kevin Trudeau's occupation. All I did was delete the negative ones. I personally happen to think the guy is a fraud and a con artist of the worst kind, but as I said in my edit description, it's not neutral or necessary to list as part of a description of who he is "convicted felon". That's what the section on his legal disputes is for. 72.85.193.72 (talk) 07:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I was responding to someone's addition of a claim that Trudeau was a "consumer protection advocate" and something else, too, contradicted by the evidence. I'm not fan of Trudeau's either. I side with you on moving the legal material to the legal section, other than that the lead must at least summarize it per WP:LEAD, as it is frankly the principal source of his notability. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 08:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Sad...

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

CARING

I wanted to state for the record that I think you are a great editor. However, I believe you care deeply about issues (as do I) and that this is a difficulty for Admins. What I am saying should be taken as a compliment. Keep up the good work. - Ret.Prof (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

That may well be the case! It's not a big deal to me, really, or my 2nd RfA would have been in like Nov. 2007 or so. Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 14:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to say that I'm impressed with your withdrawal statement. Too often, editors doing this want to blame other editors or groups of editors, whereas you didn't. Hopefully you will pay attention to what people said, and use this as an opportunity to improve yourself as an editor. Regards, -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 14:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I will. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 14:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Your RfA

Sorry with the way it went. I'd really like to see you run again soon, because I think you'd be a valuable addition to the team. I like the way you see truth in some of the opposes and seem happy to respond to them in a positive manner. Good luck with that and if you go to WP:ER in say, six months' time, please drop me a line and let me know. --Dweller (talk) 11:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Okey dokey! Thanks. And I'm not in any huge hurry. I've done fine without admin tools for years. I could be more efficient and useful with them, but it's not like my to-do list is empty and I'm just sitting here picking my nose or anything. ;-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Flag of Japan/archive2

I saw your name at the copyeditors guild page. I was wondering if you would like to copyedit this article for FAC. The lead has already been done, so everything after that needs checking. Thanks for your help. User:Zscout370 03:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to have a look at it in the morning (my time; it's about 11:20ish p.m. now). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion invitation

Resolved – Declined; responded at RfC already.
WikiProject new user welcome invitation
British Royalty
Click here to
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watchlist 		Hi SMcCandlish, I would like to invite you and anyone watching who shares an interest in moving forward constructively to a discussion about Biographies of Living People

New editors' lack of understanding of Misplaced Pages processes has resulted in thousands of BLPs being created over the last few years that do not meet BLP requirements. We are currently seeking constructive proposals on how to help newcomers better understand what is expected, and how to improve some 48,000 articles about living people as created by those 17,500 editors, through our proper cleanup, expansion, and sourcing.

These constructive proposals might then be considered by the community as a whole at Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people.

Please help us:

>> User:Ikip/Discussion about creation of possible Wikiproject:New Users and BLPs <<

Ikip 05:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm loath to get involved in userspaced quasi-projects, especially when they are partisan on an issue I've already taken a position on, as I have at the RfC in question. I'd rather see what comes out of the RfC than devote pre-emptive energy in a direction that may not prove viable. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
(refactored invitation) sorry about that, I was naive, and made a mistakeIkip 04:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Image links

Resolved – Will participate in discussion/comment on proposal at an appropriate forum

Hi SMcCandlish. Today you edited template {{caution}}. You added "link=" which made it so that images fed to that template would not be linked. I had to revert your edit.

Most image licenses require author attribution and that the full license text is sent along or linked to. So we have to have links to the image pages where we state the authors name, type of license and link on to the full license text. We may only unlink images that are public domain and with some other licenses. Unlinking other images is illegal (copyright crime) and means the image authors can sue you and/or Wikimedia Foundation and win in most courts in most countries. Sorry about that, copyright is a hassle.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:51, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about that. I don't actually agree with that legal analysis at all, but I do recall that it is the one that consensus has settled on. I don't agree because simply providing the location of attribution and licensing information is sufficient; there is nothing at all in copyright law to suggest that one must provide an actively clickable link to that information. If that were the case, the entire Internet would collapse, since all the free software in the world would be illegal for using code comments to provide attrib. and lic. info instead of having the end-product applications provide links to it. I guess we'd have to get rid of books and stuff too, since they don't have links (but do note that when they provide photo attribution and licensing they very frequently do not do it right where the image is but somewhere else in the volume).
Not something I care to argue about, though I think the community needs to get wise on this, as linking to every image is a completely dirt-stupid thing to do from a accessibility and usability point of view. Its one of the absolute worst interface "features" of MediaWiki, as a default. It should only happen (and would be good) when the editor intends to create a link to a bigger, better version of a thumbnailed image. In other cases, iconic images should act as buttons, just as they do in, well, every other machine-human interface on the entire planet. And when neither case applies (i.e. the image is just fluff) nothing should happen at all. This has been basic Web usability and accessibility horse sense since the mid 1990s, and based on user interface studies going back to the late 1960s. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 17:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
"Free" Software licenses like GPL usually don't require that the attribution and license is showed to every end user, but instead only to those that install and run the software. And you might have noticed that during installation such software often show a lot of stuff.
In books we know we can first look around the image, if the attribution isn't there, then we look at the first and last pages of the book. Also, the images in books usually are not GFDL or CS-BY-SA, instead the publishers have commercial agreements with the image owners, agreements that allow the books and newspapers etc to use less attribution.
The same goes for most commercial web sites: They have (or are at least required by law to have) agreements with the image owners that let them use the images the way they do.
While here at Misplaced Pages we mostly use images with GFDL and CS-BY-SA licenses or similar. We don't have special commercial agreements with the authors who made the images. We don't pay the image authors anything. So we have to obey by the requirement to attribute those authors and make the licenses readily available. If we don't link to the image page it takes specialised technical knowledge to find the image page. Thus that means we are hiding away the attribution and license. Copyright law says we must abide by what the image license says, even if it says we should jump on one leg and scream "I am a monkey", or we may not use the image. So if we don't like the license, then our only other option is to not use the image at all.
--David Göthberg (talk) 18:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
As I said, I don't want to get into an argument about this. :-) I have given it a great deal of thought, and the general Wikipedian perspective on the matter appears to be legally flawed. I know more about online copyright law than most lawyers who aren't specialists in the matter. I worked with WikiMedia's own Mike Godwin for about 8 years. I understand why many Wikipedians come to the conclusion that they do on this issue; I just believe it to be an incorrect, and "paranoid", conclusion. Just to be clear: The reason that the rationale is wrong is that the licenses are already "readily available" simply by being on the system and attached to the image pages at all. There's nothing in copyright law that would require an active hypertext link to that page. That said, and my usability and accessibility gripes aside, I don't really care, because it's fine for the foundation and its userbase to be legally over-protective, as long as the cost is just annoyances like this. "Better safe than sorry", as the saying goes. It's like looking both ways 10 times before crossing the street: It's annoying, but theoretically it actually is safer. If your concern is that I'm going to ignore you and continue putting link= in templates, don't worry about it; I won't. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:36, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Could you be convinced to care about it a bit? And maybe get this settled once and for all? It also came up at Template talk:Asbox#Image alt text. We should maybe consult with Godwin and come up with a determination one way or the other. –xeno 18:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Okay. My stance is that the issue hasn't been important to me personally (I even have bigger usability/accessibility/standards compliance issues here than that one), but if multiple people want to have a discussion about it, I'll be happy to participate. I'm not in a position to champion one side or the other. Where would you like to take this? WT:COPYRIGHT? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, or maybe WT:Attribution would be better. –xeno 19:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Well, its name sounds good, but WP:ATT is just a munged summary of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:RS, and doesn't really relate much to copyright. If this issue is only about files (usually images, but also videos), then it might be better to discuss it somewhere pertaining to that instead of the general WT:COPYRIGHT page, but honestly I spend so little time dealing with images here instead of at commons that I'm not sure what the right venue is. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 19:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages talk:Copyrights seems to be a good place to discuss this. Feel free to move this discussion there, including copying anything I have written here.
But as Xeno said, this should be referred to the lawyers of the Wikimedia Foundation. As long as Wikimedia Foundation hasn't issued a formal decision on this, I think it is our duty to "better be safe than sorry".
And since I edit from Sweden I also have to take into account what the copyright law in my country says. Thankfully I know a bit about how the law works in my country, I've won all my legal actions so far.:)) I am pretty sure that our courts over here wouldn't accept this excuse: "Sure, the author name and license for that image are available here. We got 866,849 image pages here at Misplaced Pages, and another 5,818,319 over at Wikimedia Commons, you are free to search through them to find that author name and license. And you are free to hire some computer geek that can help you find the right page in a quicker way. So what's the problem?"
That's the actual number of files at the time I write this.
--David Göthberg (talk) 20:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Number of files isn't relevant, since that's not the rationale at all. The rationale is that the file name doubles as a file page, with attr./lic. info, which is given in every case of use of that image. No "searching" is necessary. If this system was one in which the attr./lic. information was in a page completely different from the image (i.e., the image was at File:FooBarBaz123, but the attribution was at Attrib:843lsFFx9dP, or even Attrib:FooBarBaz123, I would agree with you. But that's not the case here. Again, there's nothing at all in any copyright laws I'm aware of, anywhere, requiring active hypertext links, and again I've already said that I agree its okay for Wikipedians to be safer than sorrier on the issue, even if the results are a bit annoying. And en.wp doesn't care about .se laws, since the servers aren't hosted there. It's utterly impossible for the foundation to attempt to comply with every legal regime in the world, since they conflict is tens of thousands of ways. Anyway, I don't see why we're arguing about it at all. I've already agreed not to change any more templates to use a blank |link=. Just want to get back to my coding. And to have problems with {{Notice}} fixed. >;-) If Xeno or whoever wants to raise the issue elsewhere, that's fine, but my user page is for collaborating with me or raising issues with my editing, not policy debates, which can't possibly be resolved here, right? Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 20:18, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

subst

Thanks for the tip on when not to use subst. I have trouble knowing when to use it and when not. Sometimes it is supposed to be used and template instructions take it for granted folks like me already know. Is there a simple way to know when to use it and when not? --KenWalker | Talk 16:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Generally, never unless the template's documentation says to do so, or if the template spits up an error message usually in big red text if you try to use it without subst. Any user-warning templates like {{uw-vandal1}} are substituted. So are user welcome templates like {{welcome2}}. Most of the rest aren't. Some of the XfD templates are (others aren't, for some reason). It's complicated. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 16:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough, will tread carefully. --KenWalker | Talk 16:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Categorization of User Sandbox

Resolved – Just a chat.

Thanks for this. I had brought it into my user namespace while I was working on it and its accompanying template and had forgotten to turn off the cats. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 21:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries; I do it sometimes too! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 21:58, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Reference necessary

Resolved – Centralizing discussion at Template talk:Citation needed#Merge from Template:Reference necessary.

I just saw what you did to the template and I must say that I am shocked. Some of the work was necessary and good. But, overall you do not understand the purpose of the template. The way you have made it, it is now no different than {{Citation needed}}. But, the purpose of this template is meant to be fundamentally different than {{Citation needed}}. Whereas {{Citation needed}} is for indicating one sentence that needs references, this template is for indicating more than one contiguous sentence (i.e., a block) that needs references. Otherwise, you have to put {{Citation needed}} at the end of each sentence. Before making such dramatic changes, you should have read the talk page and made your proposals there. This particular template has already been vastly improved from its original and you have essentially come along and gutted it. You have all but deleted it. — SpikeToronto 06:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are getting at. All I did is remove code redundancy. It already looked exactly like {{Fact}}. The only functional differences that were actually in use were (and still are) 1) it took the challenged text as a variable (i.e. "surrounded" the unsourced statements), and 2) faintly underlined that text. None of that has changed. Can you explain what you see the issue as? It certainly has not stopped working for more than one contiguous sentence. I'm not sure why you are focused on sentences anyway. It's facts that are the issue. {{fact}} is useful for flagging one fact (often just a clause, not a sentence) as unsourced, and {{cfact}} is useful for flagging more than one of them, whether in one sentence or not. It's also, entirely incidentally, useful for flagging one specific one where it might be unclear to what extent multiple facts in one sentence are unsourced. Anyway, I'm not going to go on until I hear back from you on what the issue is. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
First off, all that matters to me is the multiple-sentence wrapper component, the gap that the template fills between {{Fact}} and {{Refimprove section}}. So, I was editing this article, and an otherwise well-referenced section had a paragraph devoid of references. So, I went to use the {{Reference necessary}} template, hit preview, saw the “citation needed” at the end of the last sentence wrapped, but no subtle dotted line. That’s what took me to the template page and its revision history. But, after I read your response above, I went and tried it again and it worked! So, what was that all about? A one-time only glitch drawing the page?

No matter what, it means I owe you an apology, since now it is appearing fine on the kiddie actor stub I was just editing.

By the way, why does the sample display at the top of the template page no longer show the dotted line example? Could that be something that could be restored so that anyone wanting to see how it will look before applying it can do so? Also, now that it is working on my screen, the documentary re-write was a good one.

Again, sorry that I thought it was screwed up. (Scroll down ↓ for more.) — SpikeToronto 07:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It was probably just database lag. Sometimes you have to force templates and template documentation and anything else transcluded to purge (open it in edit mode, but change &action=edit to &action=purge and reload the page) after it has changed before its transclusions will reflect the change (or wait a while, sometimes several minutes). No apologies! I'm sure it was quite alarming! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 08:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
It was very alarming inasmuch as this is one of my favorite templates. (Scroll down ↓ for more.) — SpikeToronto 08:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. All the parameters you removed were optional. This was stated in the documentation. If it was not stated clearly, why not fix the doc? If they are left out, the thing works. So why would you remove the option? I went to use one of them when applying {{Reference necessary}} and noticed nothing was working any more. So how do I indicate a paragraph that needs sourcing in an otherwise sourced section? I cannot use {{Citation needed}}, it is insufficient. I cannot use {{Refimprove section}}, it overstates the situation. {{Reference necessary}} filled the gap perfectly. — SpikeToronto 06:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Already explained in edit summaries. 1) Having options to make the text say anything and refer to anything makes it a meaningless rehash of {{fix}}, and 2) actively encouraging *a template that exists for a specific purpose* to be completely randomly re-tasked to do and say anything is literally begging for abuse by vandals and clueless people. If this is the code you're upset about the removal of, then I don't know what to tell you, other than that I will have little choice but to return this template to WP:TFD with many more reasons for deletion than were brought last time. The only *useful* functionality of this template is the "surrounding" function - which is very, very, useful - and which should be merged into {{fact}}, and should have been there years ago. An argument can be made that the underlining highlighting is useful to, but I have already made a case elsewhere that it's a blatant transgression against en.wiki guidelines, specifically at WP:NODISCLAIMERS, and is also a subtle ignoring of important rationales as WP:SELFREF, among other problems. That I can actually live with. Having a template say it is for purpose "X" when in reality it can be repurposed to mean and say anything is completely pointless. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
To be honest, I only recently discovered that there were optional parameters to it. I had always used it thusly:{{Reference necessary|Passage to be sourced}}. The only thing I had been doing recently was to change where it referred to WP:V. However, your arguments against having such an ability are put well. Also, having read your comments above, I agree completely. I think that so long as the bots will come by later and add the date, there is no reason to have any parameters. My only confusion with the above is that I do not see how the subtle underlining violates either of WP:NODISCLAIMERS or WP:SELFREF. Why would it not fit under the last exception to WP:NODISCLAIMERS, “pointing to deficiencies in the article that should be corrected promptly?” And, as for WP:SELFREF, I could not find the violation; but then, I am not as familiar with it as are you. Again, now that the template is working on my screen, and not looking identical to {{Fact}} (i.e., wrapping sentences with subtle underlining), I am happy. And, I am secretly glad to see the end of those options. I think I was trying to force myself to make use of them since I had recently discovered that they existed.

Again, I apologize for the confusion. I just cannot figure out why it did not show up on my screen correctly …

This template is one of my favorites and I would hate to see it go to TfD again. Thanks Stanton! — SpikeToronto 07:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries. The highlighting/underlining: See the TfD for some of it. Doing stuff that gets the reader's attention specifically, not the editors', really torques off a lot of people on en.wiki (I have noticed that some other-language Wikipedias don't feel that strongly about it). And having the template visible at all is more than enough "pointing to deficiencies in the article". Make a redundant selfref isn't "avoiding selfrefs", basically. Some might ask "What selfref?", the answer to which is that anything that takes the reader out of reading mode and into thinking "I wonder what this means, in Wikipedianese?" mode is in fact a selfref, per "if it walks like a duck..." logic. This is one reason our inline templates are so succinct and plain-English (with a few exceptions that need fixing). I.e. they say things like "citation needed" or "dubious" instead of "fix per V & RS" or "NPOV/NOR issue", because the cognitive disturbance to the reader is lower-impact and more quickly dispelled. An argument can be made that the underlining helps to distinguish between the two templates, but the NODISCLAIMERS/SELFREF response is that we don't want to do that for readers, only for editors, and the source code being different in obvious ways is enough to accomplish this for editors. Then again I may be full of it. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 08:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
PS: What I hope is that it will simply be merged into {{Citation needed}}. Some of the edits I've made to {{cfact}} are to make this as easy as possible. There's no reason at all that
Sourced material. {{fact|1=Several sentences with a total of 4 unsourced claims}}. Lots more sourced material. Unsourced claim.{{fact}} More sourced material.
shouldn't work. Cf. {{sic}} for very similar multi-functionality. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 08:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
But, merging it with {{cn}} and eliminating the subtle underlining is effectively deleting {{cfact}} without the bother of a TfD. I mean what will be left of it? If I have — again — misunderstood, please clarify it for me. Afterall it is that wrapping that makes this template singularly different from {{cn}}. I mean, I see your formatting above

{{fact|1=Several sentences with a total of 4 unsourced claims}}

but do not see, with the subtle underlining removed, how the necessity for a citation for the multiple sentences/phrases will be made clear and not just thought to apply only to the last one that has the words “citation needed” attached. If you can make it clearer for me me how the editor will know what is in need of referencing, that it is not just the last sentence/phrase, I would glady change to support the merger.

Finally, isn’t there just a touch of the bureaucratic doublespeak to the justification that it should be eliminated because of WP:NODISCLAIMERS and WP:SELFREF? I love the idea of merger, but would hope that when it is used as a wrapper, the the subtle underlining would appear.<sigh> Thanks Stanton! — SpikeToronto 08:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What I'm saying is: Port the wrapping function to {{cn}} (and every other inline template of this sort for that matter!). It shouldn't be singularly different. The functionality is so useful and so simple it should be ubiquitous. It actually amazes me that, even something like a year after {{sic}} went this direction, virtually no one thought about doing this any further and applying it to everything based on {{fix}}. Like, why on earth is {{clarify}} only something one applies after a problematic passage, and without any way to be really clear about precisely what needs clarifying (the last two words? the last three sentences?) As for the underlining, maybe it stays, maybe it goes. My money is on "goes" just because of my memory of innumerable reader-bugging templates that have been nuked. Editors will still use the wrapping functionality because it's useful to editors. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to flag this topic as "resolved" here (unless a user-specific issue needs to be raised) and redirect discussion to Template talk:Citation needed#Merge from Template:Reference necessary; it's too hard to have this discussion in three different places. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Agreed! Going here and going there was keeping me up way, Way, WAY past my bedtime. — SpikeToronto 20:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Reference necessary

What Tfd for this template? And where did you see a conclusion to merge? Debresser (talk) 16:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean; I never said anything had any conclusion to merge. I have proposed one. See the talk page of any previously TfD'd template for a link to its TfD. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
I must have misunderstood you. Debresser (talk) 18:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkbacks

Two: You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:Citation needed's talk page. You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:Reference necessary's talk page. – SpikeToronto (talk · contribs), 20:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Mentorship

Resolved – Decline.

I write because you participated in editing Teachable moment. In the months since I created this article, the topic has taken on an unanticipated personal relevance. I wonder if you might consider joining other co-mentors in a mentorship committee for me?

Perhaps you might consider taking a look at an old edit at Misplaced Pages:Mentorship#Unintended consequences? In the search for a mentor deemed acceptable by ArbCom, I cite this as a plausible context for discussing what I have in mind.

Please contact me by e-mail or on my talk page. --Tenmei (talk) 02:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I had only very tangential contact with that article or anything else you've been involved with, and your case looks like a tar baby to me. You are spending way too much time coming up with allegedly clever little diagrams about mentorship and thinking outside boxes, and creating user sub pages about mentorship, and editing essays about mentorship, and so on, when the purpose of the ArbCom requiring you to have a mentor or be indefinitely blocked is for you to listen and follow some guidance on how to be a constructive editor here. Becoming absorbed with the process of finding and having mentor is inimical to that. Looks like several have accepted already anyway, so best of luck. Try to remember that this is encyclopedia-bulding project, not an experiment in virtual governance (not intentionally, anyway). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 19:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you is my knee-jerk response, but the unexpected reaction needs a little explanation. These comments are frustrating, on-point, ironic -- and also welcome.
You identify the very things which I complained about in e-mails last week. I don't know about the tar baby, but the rest of his critical commentary resonated as comforting, reassuring and supportive.
A little background may help. In the the past year or so, ArbCom and others have vastly altered the fundamentals of mentorship without adequately anticipating the unintended consequences. The remedies ArbCom crafted for Mattisse illustrate a case-in-point, serving to explain why I'm investigating outside the box alternatives.
Your examples of misplaced activity include creating subpages -- see here; but this is not a novelty. Rather, it mirrors an approach which seems to be proving useful in other cases -- see here.
You question the efficacy of time invested in essay writing, but these exercises were proposed by tentative co-mentors whose ideas I am encouraged to make my own. Also, this was informed by a similar strategy which seems to have worked well enough for another mentorship group -- see here. This writing has helped re-focus and refine my thinking about what I need, and yet, I felt impatient for the very same reasons you articulate crisply.
In this instance, you misconstrues something like blame for what was in fact cooperation. The irony is bitter, but not wrong. I reject the tone, but I accept the accuracy and timeliness of words I could have written myself. What I need now is a kind of alchemy which converts it all into something better?
Your reasoning and your writing were very welcome. Like other diffs you have written, the nature of your "decline" encourages me to hope you might reconsider -- if not now, then perhaps at some other point in the future?--Tenmei (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I may have misinterpreted some of what I was seeing. If the essay stuff has been helpful for you, then that is a good thing. I have a great many "fish to fry" as the saying goes, and you already have a number of mentoring volunteers so I think you'll be fine. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 03:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Continue

Resolved – Just an FYI.

You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Template_talk:Userspace_draft#Merge_two_tags's talk page.

BTW, are you aware that there exists a {{Tfm}} template? I notice you used {{Merge}} templates both here and on {{Citation needed}}. Debresser (talk) 11:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Hadn't noticed. Thanks. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Oh, actually, that one's for merges being discussed at WP:TFD, which I don't think these are. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
That's right. I wanted to make sure you were aware that WP:TFD discusses template merges as well. Debresser (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Right. Didn't seem to me to be contentious enough for that, but I'm happy either way, as long as we end up with one unified template. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 20:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

DELSORT queue names

Do not make changes to WP:DELSORT queue names without prior discussion. You messed up the delsort tool. In particular, you must update WP:DS/C after any change. Thank you. Pcap ping 16:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I assume it's all fine now? NB: You don't own the queue names. I'm sorry that the incomplete renaming process caused you some consternation, but neither I nor anyone else need permission to fix or improve things, like bad page names and vague page rationales, two problems that page suffered. Just so you know and are not alarmed by it, the video game DELSORT page has been proposed for a rename, because it is over in the VG project instead of under DELSORT. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
PS: I have also informed the move discussion over there that WP:DS/C needs to be updated. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 20:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey

Unresolved – Need to scan page.

Hope you're recovering from the pummeling. Just so you know I massively expanded Yank Adams this morning. It should be on the main page in a few hours. The organization sucks quite completely but there's now quite a lot of information at least.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just looking at it, coincidentally. Wowzer, great job! And thanks for the well-wishing. Actually, I've been exceedingly frustrated this week, with people process-wonking me to death (yeah, me, the so-called process wonk). I've been working off-site on ver. 1.4 of WP:Cite4Wiki quite a bit and may stick with that for a while, just to get away from people hounding me. At least they can't revert everything I do to my own addons.mozilla.org uploads. Ver. 1.4 is going to be pretty interesting, by the way. Need to add more major newspapers to its auto-formatting features before I go live with it, though. If you use Firefox on Windows I can send you a beta of it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 22:30, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Glad you like it. As I intimated higher on this page, and have now confirmed, Yank was a household name at one time, very famous. There's a gorgeous exhibition poster of his on page 167 of the Billiard Encyclopedia. If I remember, you have the book. You wouldn't perchance have a good resolution scanner would you? I don't (I do at work but lugging that book in, well you know how heavy it is). It would make a nice addition. Cite4wiki looks very cool. Can you attach the beta in an email? (yes I'm windows based, and use Firefox pretty much exclusively). I use User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar (turned on in preferences → gadgets) for some citation preformatting, though once I'm involved in an article, I find it easiest to just grab past citations and change the parameters, especially when I have used the same source and accessdate earlier in the article. I have never liked the look of vertical spaced citation formatting when I'm in edit mode. I much prefer as compact a reference as possible i.e., {{cite news|url=|title=|work=|etc.}} with no spacing at all.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:45, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
... I prefer citations in the vertical format; you might try boosting the number of rows in your editbox (prefs, under editing; check 'Widen the edit box to fill the entire screen', too;). Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Will e-mail it to you. I haven't figured out yet how to create preferences options in FFox add-ons, but if you have even really meager JavaScript sense you can easily modify the source to not use vertical citations. I'll see about scanning the page. My scanner's not supergreat, but it doesn't suck too bad. I hope. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 04:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Very fucking cool! A few bugs: this is what I got from a NYT article I used it on:

<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9F02E7DF143EE73BBC4151DFB7668383669FDE|title=THE NEW BILLIARD EXPERT.; MR. 'YANK' ADAMS' FIRST ... - View Article - The New York Times|first=|last={{Err|{{authr?}}}}|work=query.nytimes.com|year=2010 |accessdate=February 1, 2010}}</ref>

Some suggestions: Make it cite news, not cite web; make work=The New York Times, and can it scrape the date? The date for any newspaper citation is never "2010" of course. All New York Times PDFs have "Published: January 29, 1878" at the bottom, and that part of the PDF page (unlike the body text of the article) is OCRed, so I would think you could get it recognized.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

fyi, on Cite4Wiki, I get a few garbled characters after the closing ref-tag. I just tried to paste them here in nowiki-tags and MediaWiki got rather confused by them. Fine work, otherwise. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

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