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RD Guidelines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

This page has archives. Sections older than 10 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present.

ANI discussion which partially concerns the RD

There have been plenty of these recently, but the most recent one Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive825#Community sanctions: The Rambling Man, Baseball Bugs, and Medeis has some concrete proposals currently being discussed. Nil Einne (talk) 06:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I know that anyone is free to comment, but do you know whether all of us, or only administrators, are allowed to formally support/oppose the sanctions being proposed there? —Steve Summit (talk) 14:12, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we all are. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:47, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:AN and WP:ANI, despite their titles, are now considered "community" boards by as indicated by arbcom procedure, the board's headers. (e.g. ANI uses the phrase "require the intervention of administrators and experienced editors." -- and "experienced" in this context is essentially self-identification), and long-standing practice.NE Ent 15:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The discussion welcomes all-comers. And everyone should be encouraged to give their experiences of all three editors named in the "trial". The Rambling Man (talk) 21:24, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

In theory they are open to all, but in my experience many admins will completely ignore any points made by non-admins. StuRat (talk) 14:06, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

FYI, the discussion has been closed, so that link no longer works. Matt Deres (talk) 23:32, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

No, it hasn't been closed. Not yet. The link didn't work because someone changed "Sanctions" to "sanctions" in the header on the ANI page. I've corrected it above. Works fine now. -- Jack of Oz 00:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering why I didn't see it in the archives! Thank you, Jack; I appreciate the correction. I was led astray by another thread on there about TRM, which talked about the "closed discussion above" and I assumed they were referring to this. Matt Deres (talk) 12:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Why is the page locked?

It rather defeats the point.

I wanted to post: Premium pricing. 86.183.79.28 (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I've put in an official unprotection request at WP:RFPP. An IP user is attempting to delete a question and using rude words in the edit summaries. I personally don't believe this warrants protection, but it's up to the powers that be. Tevildo (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The request was rejected, but the lock has now expired. Tevildo (talk) 12:06, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

For clarification for future readers, this appears to have been talking about Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Humanities in particular. I don't want to get in to whether or not protection was justified, but if the problem does arise again, feel free to post your question here and ask someone to copy it over for you. (And I'm not saying this is ideal, simply offering it as a suggestion.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:11, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

A warning from AboutFace 22

AboutFace 22 (talk · contribs) just wrote this. As I result I don't plan to interact with him/her again, but I was wondering if someone (preferably an administrator who hasn't posted in his/her threads) could explain that this isn't appropriate language for Misplaced Pages. -- BenRG (talk) 21:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Apologized in a follow-up. -- BenRG (talk) 21:39, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

transcluded archives can be confusing

...next time, no need to copy-and-paste the thread -- we would have noticed and replied if you'd merely updated the original January 2 entry. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:49, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

When I click Edit for the original January 2 entry, I get redirected to the archived version. I couldn't figure out how to edit the original entry so that's why I created a new one. AnonComputerGuy (talk) 21:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, yes, but it turns out that the recent few days' worth of archives -- including, as of today, January 2's -- are made to appear here on the main page, via a slightly-obscure process Misplaced Pages calls "transclusion". Go ahead and edit the (archived) January 2 entry now, and see what happens! —Steve Summit (talk) 22:54, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I found this procedure confusing too when I first encountered it. Does it serve any useful purpose? It would be much clearer if threads were only moved to archive once they moved off this page. 86.128.3.18 (talk) 00:57, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree it's confusing and a bit of a pain. I assumed it simplified the archiving process, but if it serves no definite purpose, I'd like to see it go. Removing at the time of archiving seems fairly straightforward...? Steve, you're the go-to guy on this topic. What are your thoughts? Matt Deres (talk) 04:04, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

No, it doesn't simplify the process; in fact the extra wrinkles involved in inserting the transclusion links and then deleting them a few days later represent a pretty significant extra dollop of complexity in the archiver. But the code's long since written and debugged, so it's obviously no trouble to keep doing it that way today. But, unless I'm completely incompetent, the code will also work perfectly well if the (eminently configurable) number of transcluded days is set to "zero", so if we want to go that way, we can. (One small part of me would like to say, "but the transclusion code is so cool, we can't turn it off", but that'd be way unprofessional, so I won't. :-) )

Bottom line is, we can do absolutely whatever we want for editor and reader convenience; it makes no difference to your humble archiving botherd. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I just ran into a case where the transclusion is a bit annoying. I added a comment to a transcluded question, then when I went back to the desk noticed that it didn't appear. Luckily I knew that I had to purge the page and looked up how to do it in the help. I can imagine the problem completely throwing off someone who didn't realize what was going on - they would be able to answer the question but not see their response, but if they went to edit it again they would see it was in the source. Katie R (talk) 14:31, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep. I don't know why manual purging has been necessary so often lately -- that's a recent occurrence. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:33, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

If this is becoming official, I would support a motion to remove transclusion from the live desks. I can't honestly see any advantage to it. Those of us who have done any programming will appreciate the fact that the code works, and acknowledge our appreciation, even if it isn't in use. :) Tevildo (talk) 22:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The only advantage I can think of is that it tends to reduce the page load time while editing. But it does not (despite occasional vague claims to the contrary) do anything to reduce the page load time while viewing.

I honestly don't remember why we first started doing it this way; it's basically a case of "we've always done it this way". Speaking as an ordinary editor (that is, taking my botherd's cap off for the moment), I would have no objection to shifting to straight N-day archiving. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

What's a "botherd"? -- Jack of Oz 05:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Shepherds herd sheep, botherds herd...

—Steve Summit (talk) 11:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, duuuuhhhh (to myself). I was reading it as "bother" + "d", and that somehow just didn't mean anything to me ... -- Jack of Oz 04:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Having the archives transcluded used to be a huge benefit since it meant you didn't have to sit around waiting for hundreds of kilobytes of text to load every time you wanted to edit the page, this of course was prior to modern high speed internet being ubiquitous. Also, back then the desks were a lot longer, in some cases megabytes of questions and answers would accumulate prior to archiving. It was the best solution available at the time. It's clearly no longer the most efficient way to do it, and I suppose it's mainly persisted due to the histroical precedent. Keep in mind that it's been this way since before any of the archiving bot(s) existed. (+)H₃N-Protein\Chemist-CO₂(-) 20:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm but why would you edit the entire desk? I've very rarely edited the entire desk usually to fix issues, but 99% of the time, whether I'm editing an archive or a current question I only edit the section for the question. This also likely reduces the risk of edit conflicts. I can't personally see a reason you'd frequently need to edit the whole desk. You may need to do so on odd occasion like fixing an issue someone introduced or archiving the desk manually (or similarly adding date headers) but these are rare enough that they aren't worth worrying about. But there are still enough people with slow internet connections and perhaps more importantly (since you do need to load the page anyway) browsers which likely couldn't handle editing an entire desk. So if there is a common reason why people would need to edit the whole desk, we should consider carefully the way forward. Barring that, the only real advantage I can think of is it makes it easier to reduce the size of the desk if the bot is inactive for a few days. But most of the time even when this does happen people don't bother and it's not that big a deal. So I don't think that's worth it for thast reason. Nil Einne (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The simple answer is that there wasn't always a section edit button, or at least I don't think there was. My memory is a little fuzzy on this, we are talking about a very long time ago. (+)H₃N-Protein\Chemist-CO₂(-) 16:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC) Actually, I take it back. If the transclusions predated the section edit button there'd have been no way to edit them individually, so that's probably not the answer at all.(+)H₃N-Protein\Chemist-CO₂(-) 16:50, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The change that would be most useful (and I'm sure we've discussed this before) would be to archive questions individually some number of days after the last addition to that question. This would keep active topics from scrolling off the page and rid us of easily answered questions after just enough time has elapsed for the OP to read our responses. I understand that this is technically challenging - but I thought I'd mention it here again "just in case". Ordering questions by the day they were asked is a fairly useless convention anyway...sorting them by the date of the most recent answer would be more productive and automatically keep active threads at the bottom of the page where most people will find them most easily. SteveBaker (talk) 13:50, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Another thought occurs to me that might be interesting to discuss - separating out the question from the answers. Suppose that the questioner posted to some "main" page - and our answers went into a transcluded page beneath it. This would have the interesting side-effect of placing answers into different pages...which in turn would allow us to do things like semi-protecting answers without preventing IP users from asking new questions...which in turn would allow us to fix the "WickWack" problem. There is a slightly tricky matter of how an IP OP would be able to ask followup or clarification questions - and I'm not sure how we'd handle that. Anyway - it's just a thought. SteveBaker (talk) 14:11, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we've talked about it before and I do like the idea. Similar processes are in use elsewhere in WP, though I think they're manually archived. I wouldn't object to that, or at least trying it out. Having considered it a while, though, I think I'd rather see the desks operating more or less as they are, but with no transclusion and also with fewer days. It would be interesting to study, but my impression is that most questions get answers (if they're answered at all) within three days and most of what goes on afterwards is just chatting. A smaller number of days would also make it more feasible to reincorporate the Ent desk with Humanities, which is something I've long been in favour of. I don't think I'm in favour of your second proposal, though I'm not sure I properly get how it would work. Matt Deres (talk) 04:05, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know of a technical challenge standing in the way of doing after-N-days-of-inactivity archiving -- that's the way most discussion pages on Misplaced Pages (including this very talk page!) are archived. There's at least one bot -- and maybe several -- ready and able to do the archiving for us that way if we wanted to.

The biggest change would be that the archive pages would end up being a numeric sequence (Archive001, Archive002, ...) not the strictly per-day ones we have now. (Or perhaps one of those other bots can dole the archived threads out into calendar-based archive pages; I don't know.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Transclusion is an unnecessary pain and confusing for newcomers, and should be ended because, with transclusion, contributions to the pages don't show up in their history (and one doesn't even know the posts were transcluded without hovering the cursor over the edit button). Precisely when and how threads are archived though is a separate issue which I've no strong opinion on and can be addressed separately, thus let's reach a consensus to end transclusion first and foremost. -Modocc (talk) 16:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

An appeal for style

Hi all, I'd just like to put out an appeal for all of us to refresh our memory of WP:INDENT. Things can get a little confusing if we don't follow our own style guide. The biggest error I see is people adding indentation levels for no reason, they seem to just think it's appropriate to always add another colon. If you are answering the OP, and not directly addressing a previous respondent, please do not add additional indentation. I've seen several recent cases of confusion arising from incorrect indentation, and even more cases of incorrect indentation that may or may not cause problems (i.e. we only know confusion is present when someone says "I'm confused", or "who are you talking to?" -- confusion is probably more common than reporting of said confusion). In fact, you can look right above for an example of how not to do it (not intending to put any one specific user down, just want to keep our discussions more intelligible :) Thanks, SemanticMantis (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean "no offence indented"?  :)

But seriously, I agree 1,000%. -- Jack of Oz 04:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree (although it's an easy mistake to make). I'd also like to remind people about our convention that off-topic asides and humor should be in <small> tags. SteveBaker (talk) 14:14, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• For what it's worth, I find it useful to add an extra blank line when responding at the same indentation level -- otherwise it can be hard to see the separation of responses. When there are multiple responses at the same level, bullets can help to make them distinguishable. Looie496 (talk) 16:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Alphabetical order

Shouldn't all the icons listed for the Reference Desks (Humanities, Computers, Mathematics, etc.) be in alphabetical order? Is there any reason why they are not? "Miscellaneous" and "Archives" are listed last, and they are not listed in alphabetical order. Is this intentional? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:24, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The main desks are in alphabetical order (Computing to Science), with Misc on the end - this seems fairly logical to me. Moving "Archives" to the beginning in the name of lexicographical perfection would probably introduce unnecessary confusion. Tevildo (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

That being said, I would support a motion to move Misc before Science if it's being formally proposed. Tevildo (talk) 19:41, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think they should all be alphabetical. What confusion would it cause to move "Archives"? In fact, that would make more sense, to have it at the very beginning as opposed to the very end. As such, the chronology of the Ref Desks would actually match the alphabetization of their names. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:42, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The order as it is now, alphabetically except archives last and miscellaneous next-to-last, looks totally logical to mine eyes. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 22:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

"Miscellaneous" is not a category on the same level as the others, which all describe a discipline or field of study or at least a thematic field, while Miscellaneous is the catch-all sink for questions the querent can't (or doesn't wish to) place in any of the five six specific categories we suggest. This is why it seems logical to me to have it follow our selection of desks. The decision whether it belongs in our "other" category or not is best made after having read what the actual thematic classes are. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

(By the way, I spoke of five six specific categories, but I see "Travel", linking to Wikivoyage:Tourist Office is on our main WP:RD link too now. When did that happen? It does make the miscellaneous desk look a bit isolated, being an external and thus different-colored link and all. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:35, 11 January 2014 (UTC))

See Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/Archive 97#Wikivoyage Tourist Office (February and March 2013)

and Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/Archive 98#Travel Desk links (March 2013)

and Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/Archive 98#Wikivoyage Tourist Office Link (March 2013)

and Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/Archive 99#Misplaced question (March 2013)

—Wavelength (talk) 00:01, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks ;-) ---Sluzzelin talk 00:18, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense to me that Misc would be at the end. It is a catch-all after all. Dismas| 23:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

This seems like change for change's sake. Certainly next time we add (or remove) a category we could reorder it. Right now, I don't think it need to happen. Mingmingla (talk) 00:16, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd vote for keeping the order exactly the way it is, rather than mixing Misc and Archives in with the thematic categories. Red Act (talk) 16:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary links

I was bopping around Wiktionary today when I noticed they have a page similar to this one, called The Etymology Scriptorium. Now, our Language desk already links to two pages on Wiktionary; a translation request page and the information desk. From an outside perspective, it seems like there's a bit of redundancy going on there, but the pages appear to be quite long-lived at least - and still active. Do you think it's worth including a link to this third page as well? Matt Deres (talk) 14:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a worthwhile idea. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 15:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

...and get them to provide a link in the reverse direction. SteveBaker (talk) 15:51, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

If that's a wiki, could we add such link ourselves? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 16:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Would probably be more polite to ask...we're not exactly regulars there...unless someone here does contribute there regularly. SteveBaker (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Definitely a good idea to ask first. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 17:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm a Wiktionary regular and can add a link if you like. Wikt also has the Tea room, a place to discuss specific words. However, both the Etymology scriptorium and the Tea room are primarily for discussing aspects of Wiktionary entries, not so much for discussing anything anyone wants to ask about, the way WP's Reference desks are. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:25, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Personal attacks etc removed.

I've hatted a great deal of rather unpleasant personal bickering between two (apparent) old enemies - I would advise them to continue their argument in a more appropriate venue. Tevildo (talk) 19:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Wow. Well said and well hatted.

(Getting into heated arguments over these "rules of grammar" questions, like whether it's okay to begin a sentence with however, is almost always a fool's errand. The style mavens who maraud around dispensing prescriptivist rules are almost always wrong -- and, sadly, this includes Strunk and White. Read what people like Steven Pinker and Geoff Pullum have to say, and be enlightened.)

(And as another aside, evidently the reason these grammar arguments sometimes get so intense is that every native speaker thinks he's an expert, so the bike shed phenomenon reigns supreme, as Pullum argues here.) —Steve Summit (talk) 21:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC), updated 22:34, 14 January 2014 (UTC), 22:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

This shows no likelihood of stopping. I have hatted some more outright argumentation and archived the thread. It could probably do with hatting as a whole, but given some of the replies are encyclopedic, even if the question isn't, I have left it visible. μηδείς (talk) 02:41, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Per Template:Hidden_archive_top/doc the hats should be signed. NE Ent 02:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I apologize to all if I posted anything on RD/L that was inappropriate. I really just wanted to know whether such a grammar rule existed based upon some edits on saw made on a page I am watching. I first asked at the Teahouse and they recommended I try here. It was never my intent to turn the RD/L into battlefield and use it as a forum to secretly criticize (either directly or indirectly) the edits of another editor, or to try and get others to do so on my behalf. Moreover, there is no ongoing war (at least not in my eyes) between myself and this other user. I was just under the assumption that it was OK to ask questions about things you are uncertain about at places like the Teahouse and RD/L, etc. I realize now that I should have been more careful with my choice of words so as not to mislead others and misrepresent this other user. I have apologized to the user offended by my comments (both here and on my talk page) and struck out the parts of my question/comments on RD/L that were deemed offensive. This user has made many substantial improvements to the page in question, and, overall, the page is much better than before. I just thought by asking questions here first, I could hear what others had to say and, therefore, avoid any unnecessary confrontation. However, I know now that was bad faith on my part and I should have gone to the article's talk page instead with my questions.

I hope that is sufficient, and that it is seen as sign of my sincere remorse. I wasn't fake apologizing and wasn't trying to keep this discussion going via proxy after I left. Once again, I'm sorry for the mess I created. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:20, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I don't think you were out of line, you just inadvertently stepped into some people's strong opinions on linguistic prescriptivism. However, you have also done your best to right any inferred wrongs, so my advice is to forget about the whole issue. (p.s. I have published several academic papers that include sentences starting with "however." The professional copy editors balked at all sorts of other minor issues, but never mentioned that as inappropriate!) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:14, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I think almost everyone on the Reference Desk considers Ihardlythinkso to be out of line. He engages in personal attacks, gets enraged over imagined offenses, and is borderline trollish. I don't think you should apologize, since it only encourages this kind of unacceptable behavior. --Bowlhover (talk) 16:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Computing

For some strange reason, Scsbot has archived January 12th's discussions even they were still active. It did not touch January 9th, 10th or the 11th. There's been no activity in the 9th's discussions since the 9th but it left it on the page. Not sure what's going on here, but I reverted the bot. I am cross-posting this on the Reference Desk talk page and the Scsbot talk page. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 11:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I reverted you since that seems to be just the normal current archiving practice which is being discussed above. The 12th was archived but as visible from the diff, was also transcluded so it should have showed up unless you hit the recent problem where purging sometimes seems to be necessary. If you look at the diff you can also the transcluded 9th was in fact removed from them page by the bot at the same time. Nil Einne (talk) 15:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Is there a time delay? It wasn't there when I looked at it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

If it was a red link, try purging the page first. There's been a known problem in updating the database that null edits/purges will fix. - Purplewowies (talk) 16:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

All the above is correct. Thanks for explaining and fixing, NE.

Does anybody know anything more about the database lag and the false redlinks? Is the problem likely to get fixed soon? —Steve Summit (talk) 17:26, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Notice concerning community sanctions

• Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive825#Community_sanctions:_The_Rambling_Man.2C_Baseball_Bugs.2C_and_Medeis

And noting that this discussion had noted concerns about "decorum" and "disruption" here at the reference desk (and its talk pages and subpages) - something other editors may also wish to read and keep in mind while editing here. - jc37 19:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Note that there was no consensus to ban anyone from the ref desk. Option 1, the mutual interaction ban, is the only item that had consensus. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 19:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Um -- does jc37 really believe that "instant block" for questioning such a notice is really, really the best way to handle any of this? My own count did not show any significant net explicit support for either options 2 or 3, and it appears that involved !voters were given the full or greater weight than that given to given to noninvolved !voters on the "sanctions" -- and jumping into "block mode" this quickly does not impress me :(. Sorry. Collect (talk) 20:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)