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August

August

Sunflowers in Walsdorf

A first for me today: a featured list (= a featured topic in this case) on the Main page, see Misplaced Pages:Main Page history/2020 August 21, an initiative by Aza24 in memory of Brian. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:13, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you fixing where I was blind! - MP 24 August has one of "my places" (click on August) pictured. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:08, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Rhythm Is It! - I expanded that stub on my dad's birthday because we saw the film together back then, and were impressed. As a ref said: every educator should see it. Don't miss the trailer, for a starter. - A welcome chance to present yet another article by Brian on the Main page, Le Sacre du printemps. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:52, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

LUA stuff

You know more about "Lua module coding" than I ever will. Would you have any comment or advice at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Historic sites#Recent template changes broke a few list-type articles, recommend splitting them to fix the problem relating to list articles which now exceed Misplaced Pages:Template limits#Post-expand include size, which is all getting a bit technical for me?— Rod 18:48, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Rod I've looked at the discussion and the solutions offered seem to be taking care of part of the problem for the moment. The bit about Lua is a red-herring, because nobody is going to spend the time transforming {{Vcite}} into a Lua module. It's just not used enough to be worth it. It looks like all of its uses have been converted to {{Cite web}} and its siblings anyway.

Looking at the Scheduled monuments in West Somerset article, I can see that it exceeds the "Post-expand include size" so you won't see the references beyond about #209. I've made an example of what you get if you substitute the "EH listed" templates. That reduces the templates enough to see all of the references and brings the Post-expand include size down to about 1.8 MB (the limit is about 2 MB). Unfortunately, it increases the text size from about 250 kB to 440 kB and it's messy to work with, because the main templates have gone. It also takes 6 seconds to render a preview, so I think the only real solution is to reduce the size of the list by splitting the article into two. I suggest something like Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (A–G) and Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (H–Z) would be a nearly equal divide. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for trying (several others have also been attempting fixes). Doing an alphabetical split may be possible but a complication since I wrote this (and similar lists) is that the West Somerset council has since combined with Taunton Deane to create Somerset West and Taunton so the scheduled monuments list should really be combined with List of scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane. Having moved from Somerset I really don't feel up to this fairly massive bit of work (along with the lists of listed buildings etc) at the moment.— Rod 13:47, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Rod: that's an easy one. You split Scheduled monuments in West Somerset as I suggested. Then move most of the intro to a new article Scheduled monuments in Somerset West and Taunton, explaining that up till <insert date> these were divided into West Somerset and Taunton Deane. Then provide the links to the three lists in Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (A–G), Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (H–Z) and List of scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane. Make sure each article has links to the others and to the short parent article.

How does that sound? --RexxS (talk) 16:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

If you want to go for it that sounds fine to me (I'm now working on Gloucestershire). The <date> ws 1 April 2019.— Rod 16:11, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

A similar process without the splits could also be done for :

• Grade I listed buildings in Taunton Deane & Grade I listed buildings in West Somerset & Grade I listed buildings in Somerset updated
• Grade II* listed buildings in Taunton Deane & Grade II* listed buildings in West Somerset & Grade II* listed buildings in Somerset updated— Rod 16:19, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Rod: it was a bit more work than I predicted. We now have:

• Scheduled monuments in Somerset West and Taunton – brief introductory article
• Scheduled monuments in West Somerset – overview of scheduled monuments in West Somerset
• Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (A–G) – list of scheduled monuments in West Somerset (A–G)
• Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (H–Z) – list of scheduled monuments in West Somerset (H–Z)
• Scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane – overview and list of scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane

Maybe they could be consolidated, but that will need somebody more familiar with the area than I. At least they all preview in no more than 3 seconds and none of them come past around half of the Post-expand include size limit. All the references are now visible. Somebody probably needs to drop a line at WT:FL, I guess. --RexxS (talk) 17:58, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh, has this come up again? q.v. User talk:Redrose64/unclassified 19#Template transclusion limit exceeded on Grade II* listed buildings in South Somerset and User talk:RexxS/Archive 38#Template transclusion limit exceeded on Grade II* listed buildings in South Somerset. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:30, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Ah yes, thanks for the reminder of that. Last time I "applied some sticking-plaster"; this time I took an axe to it. It might prove a longer-lasting fix. By the way, when are we going to have the next Oxford meetup (virtual or in meatspace)? --RexxS (talk) 22:08, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I can't do virtual, lack of suitable hardware. Wetherspoons are discouraging gatherings but even so, after the debacle in March I want to get firm assurances from at least three people before I call another. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:36, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: What hardware do you need? I can give you a pc (windows/linux, but slightly older spec), a screen and a webcam if that would help? Maybe we can arrange a 'select' meetup in Oxford for that. I might be able to get my bridge camera back from Marielle at the same time :) --RexxS (talk) 23:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

This edit

Actually, I disagree with you on experienced user being poorly defined. It's actually defined right here. If you'd like I can change my wording from "Experienced Editor " to "Senior Editor". Making this a sysop only edit violates assume good faith, so this would need to be changed to comply. W.K.W.W.K... 11:56, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Wekeepwhatwekill: Nonsense. The "service awards" are a joke. It's ludicrous to claim that someone who reaches their 6,000th edit and 18 months of editing is then transformed into someone with the judgement needed to close a discussion where "the outcome is a close call (especially where there are several valid outcomes) or likely to be controversial." It's complete bollocks to try to claim it violates good faith, and assuming good faith is not a suicide pact. We have sysops for a reason – and that reason includes the community's confirmation that the sysop's judgement is trusted sufficiently to do those tough closes. There is a process to go through to meet that bar, and "experienced editors" (whatever they may be) haven't been through it.

Now understand that arguments about what you may or may not disagree with are off-topic for my talk page, so I'll thank you to take them somewhere else where they will be appreciated. --RexxS (talk) 12:37, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Wekeepwhatwekill: I saw this a little while ago, wrote a comment, then forgot to publish it and just left it here. Anway, RexxS has answered now, but why let my words go to waste? The Service Awards things are just a social/amusing aside, with names and statuses that are totally made up just for fun - notice at the top it says "displaying the right does not indicate authority or competence". There is nothing "official" or consensus-based behind them, and Misplaced Pages simply does not define those levels of users. So those made-up titles like "Experienced Editor", "Senior Editor", "Grandmaster Editor" etc have no meaning whatsoever in the wider Misplaced Pages community. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Well....yes and no. Yes, they might be made up, but, no the edits aren't nor are the years. For a person to remain active on Misplaced Pages for that number of years with that many edits indicates this person has some kind of competence with Misplaced Pages, otherwise they'd be blocked, banned or indeffed. So I see them as a guideline, so to speak. Also, it's pretty well documented that being a sysop is WP:NOBIGDEAL so I tend to disagree with you. I guess the best way to state my position is this, if a user closes , say , an AFD with "Delete", that would need to be reversed because the closer wasn't a sysop, because a user can't delete anything. However, a user closing a discussion in good faith shouldn't have his close reversed unless there's something wrong with the close other than "the user isn't a sysop". That's absurd and is an automatic assumption of bad faith to the user, even if it is a close call. So I agree to disagree with you on that. W.K.W.W.K... 14:34, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

You can disagree all you like, but you're wrong. The Service Awards titles define *only the names of the awards* and not anything meaningful about the editor. It says it plain and clearly: "Please remember that neither the number of edits nor the length of time from when an account was created is a good indicator of the quality of an editor's contributions or diplomatic ability. Hence, service awards do not indicate any level of authority whatsoever; "master" editors are not bestowed with more authority through this award than "novice" editors". We do not, and are not going to, base any recognition of editor ability on those awards. I strongly suggest you honour RexxS's request and drop this, at least from here. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:39, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Query request

Hello, can you write a query on quarry.wmflabs.org for "all (file) uploads by User:Titodutta before 6 August 2020 and after 1 February 2019 on Wikimedia Commons? It'll help me to identify a series of files which require re-upload for quality issue. The upload log is not helpful, because I need only the file names (see help request at c:Commons:Help_desk#List_of_files_by_a_user). Regards. --Titodutta (talk) 05:05, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

@Titodutta: I'm not terribly familiar with the database layout on Commons and the documentation is a little concise, to say the least. I've found the complete table of edits and the user tables (pretty much the same as enwiki), but I'm struggling to find a table of uploads. In the meantime, I've created a quarry query that shows page names for the 5336 edits you made to Commons between 2019-02-01 and 2020-08-06, but that would need manipulation to filter the uploads you're interested in. You can check it at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/47652 and download the data if it's any use to you. I'll try and work my way through https://www.mediawiki.org/Manual:Database_layout to see if I can work out how they store file uploads and get back to you when I figure that out. --RexxS (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I think the image table has the data we need. I've created a new query at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/47655 which is showing 4268 filenames. Would you check to see if it is what you want, please? If not, I'll have to search further for the correct table. --RexxS (talk) 12:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• Amazing. That's the thing I wanted. Just the names of the files. It will be very helpful to list and re-upload from this list. --Titodutta (talk) 00:41, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		For your help to run query that'll help me to easily identify and re upload content for quality-improvement. Thanks for your kindness Titodutta (talk) 00:41, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Your open clarification request

Hello. Could you drop by your clarification request at WP:ARCA to advise if you need further clarification. Thanks and for the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz 17:27, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Dreamy Jazz: sorry I've been too busy playing Whack-a-mole with a disruptive bunch of newly-minted SPAs at Talk:Ayurveda to catch up with the request. Fortuitously, I've just left my replies, expressing my continuing concerns. Thanks for the reminder, though. --RexxS (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Another Ayurveda SPI

• Best rabbit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

--Guy Macon (talk) 20:25, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I took the liberty of "whacking" --Deepfriedokra (talk) 20:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, both. Sorry I still haven't created enough waking time to get round to the IMA and AYUSH pages. I'm seriously going to need a wiki-break soon. --RexxS (talk) 23:27, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I am thinking that we need a central place to report and discuss the ongoing disruption. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:22, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

range block request

Could you take a look at 2605:A000:8043:3400:0:0:0:0/64 (talk • contribs • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • robtex.com • Google)? This IP range was previously blocked for 3 months basically for spamming an article with a bunch of infoboxes. The IP has now done it again a few days ago. I belive this would be a preventative measure to do so.  Bait30   21:02, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

@Bait30: Same modus operandi, adding a completely inappropriate infobox to an article. That's obviously the same oddball, so I've re-blocked. They've already had 1 month and 3 month blocks so far, so I've set 12 months this time. It's not usually a big deal for an IPv6 as the range is very unlikely to be allocated to anybody else, but the very slim chance means that it's best not to indef. --RexxS (talk) 21:52, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Nuance

I've been looking over the RfC at Talk:Ayurveda, trying to parse some of the votes there, and I saw your statement that: "The fact that Ayurveda is a pseudoscience is beyond doubt...The real question that needs to be examined is whether "Ayurveda is a pseudoscience" should be part of: (1) the first sentence; or (2) the opening paragraph; or (3) a later paragraph in the lead." I wonder if such a sweeping generalization is completely accurate. Looking at the article it looks like Ayurveda has been around for much longer than science...like thousands of years before Aristotle was even born. To be unambiguously pseudoscientific, Ayurveda would have had to claim to be both factual and scientific, but such a thing would have been impossible for most of Ayurveda's history. Do you think it be more accurate to say something like "Modern practice of Ayurveda is pseudoscience"? ~Awilley (talk) 18:38, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Awilley: Quite possibly. But Astrology has been around for thousands of years as well and look how that article starts off. Practitioners of Ayurveda unambiguously claim that methods which have no evidential or scientific basis actually heal people. That is as a clear an example of pseudoscience as I can imagine (as long as we're using the assumption that medicine works by scientific means, not by magic). We have two RfCs that concluded that Ayurveda is pseudoscientific and that represents long-standing consensus, so I don't think there's any point in trying to sugar-coat that fact, just to please an off-wiki-coodinated campaign of disruption by disgruntled fans of Ayurveda.

If you're interested in how I parsed the !votes, it goes like this:

• Nobody in the "First sentence group" specifically opposed the first paragraph.
• Some in the "First paragraph group" opposed the first sentence, others would accept the first sentence as second choice.
• The "Oppose anywhere" group are arguing to overturn a prior consensus and I don't believe they were participating in the actual RfC in good faith.
• Many in the two oppose groups have no or very few edits outside of the topic; several were new accounts.
• There has been a clear campaign coordinated on Twitter to distort consensus away from anything critical of Ayurveda.

My reading of the strengths of the arguments, the head-count and the attempts at distortion suggest to me that there exists a genuine consensus for including the phrase in the first paragraph, but only a weak consensus for the first sentence. Naturally, that depends on my giving much weight to the arguments that WP:PSCI should be followed; and very little to arguments that Ayurveda is not a pseudoscience. Others may weight those differently. --RexxS (talk) 19:34, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, that seems a reasonable reading of the consensus there. I had meant to make a more thorough reading of the RfC and close it likely with something along those lines, but it looks like Sandstein beat me to it.

Responding to your Astrology point, I think that Lead sentence evidences a couple of problems we face on Misplaced Pages:

1. I think that we editors have the unfortunate tendency to think, perhaps unconsciously, that the issues we spend the most time arguing about are the most important aspects of a topic. If, over many years, we spend 60% of our time on the talk page arguing about whether a topic is pseudoscience, then the importance of that question starts to overshadow everything else in our minds. We tend to seek out and study sources that specifically answer that question, and even as we read general sources about the topic we tend to do it with an eye for pseudoscience. We might even begin to believe that discussion of pseudoscience is the most important/prominent aspect in reliable sources about the topic. One way I've found to counter this "focus bias" is to take a step back and explore some high-level tertiary sources that give a birds eye overview of the subject in a small number of paragraphs. If you have a quality book source about the subject, sometimes the author will give you a quick overview of the subject in a few paragraphs in the preface. Or sometimes I'll look up the subject in an encyclopedia like Britannica. That gives me an idea of what is critically important to the subject, which is helpful in determining what is "due weight" for a Lead section here. I encourage you to try this experiment with an open mind, paying attention to your own reactions.
2. I think that sometimes we editors get into a "righting great wrongs" mentality. We see ourselves as combating rampant falsehoods and we want to use articles as weapons of truth in that battle. There's a tendency to use words to reach out and slap readers in the face with cold hard truth. As satisfying as that might be for us writers, I think it's actually counterproductive for our readers, especially in a crowd-sourced medium like Misplaced Pages. People nowadays are primed to distrust online sources that strongly disagree with their preexisting views. The more overt the disagreement, the faster the people will stop reading and say, "This is biased". We obviously want to steer people away from unsafe medical practices and quackery, but the people who we most want to convince (those predisposed to mistrust of mainstream medicine) will be the first to assume that Misplaced Pages is controlled by big pharma, and turn to less reliable sources of information. If you look at sources like WebMD you'll see that they are written very cautiously with this in mind. They're writing to try to convince the most skeptical. Take their articles on Homeopathy for instance. There's no in-your-face declarations like "Homeopathy is pseudoscience". They make cautious, simply-worded explanatory statements like the following: "Some studies show that homeopathic remedies are helpful, while others don’t. Critics chalk up the benefits to the placebo effect. That’s when symptoms improve because you believe the treatment is working -- not because it really is. This can trigger the brain to release chemicals that briefly relieve the pain or other symptoms." or more directly, "There isn’t proof that homeopathic treatments work for any health condition."

Finally, I believe your appeal to the astrology article is weak because it is essentially an "other stuff exists" argument. The fact that a Misplaced Pages article uses the "_________ is a pseudoscience" construction in its first sentence doesn't mean that's a good way to write an encyclopedia. It would be a much stronger argument if you could provide examples of an external professionally-written encyclopedia that prominently uses that construction. In writing this post I did some research of my own and I didn't find anything at all like that, but I'm interested to see if you come up with something. ~Awilley (talk) 18:54, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Awilley: You may be confusing me with someone else. In 2014 I made 3 edits to Ayurveda and 4 edits to Talk:Ayurveda. In July and August I made 3 edits to Ayurveda and 40 to the talk page, all of which were in response to the massive recent effort, coordinated off-wiki, to whitewash the article of any critical commentary. In that period of time I made about 25,000 edits to around 6,000 pages. So I really don't think I qualify as someone who "over many years, spend 60% of our time on the talk page arguing about whether a topic is pseudoscience", but you're entitled to your opinion.

I'm pleased you've developed a strategy to counter "focus bias". Personally, I just go and do more work on improving accessibility, or FA reviews, or improving the code used to import Wikidata information. I've never found the need to spend more than a few weeks concentrating on countering efforts to distort our content, albeit this hasn't been the first time. Nevertheless, I do sometimes look at other tertiary sources as you suggest. In fact in 1989, when my children were young, I invested in a complete 15th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. So I just took your advice and consulted it to see what it said about Ayurveda. Sadly, it has no article of its own in either the Macropedia or the Micropedia. It has to make do with a passing mention in "Delhi", one sentence in "Alcohol consumption" and few mentions in the dozen paragraphs that Britannica devotes to India in "History of medicine and science". You see, no other encyclopedia has ever had anywhere near the resources to research, write and refine content on so many topics as Misplaced Pages. It's a fundamental mistake of nostalgia to overestimate the ability of older tertiary sources to cover topics in any detail. It's simply a fact that the absence of the word "pseudoscience" in my edition of Britannica does not in any way indicate that Ayurveda is not a pseudoscience; it merely indicates that Britannica didn't have the resources to cover the topic in anything other than a cursory manner. We are able to take advantage of the many good sources that make the point, along with two RfCs that came to the same conclusion.

I all too often see evidence of editors attempting to "right great wrongs". It might be my bias toward rational, scientific thought (I studied Natural Sciences at university), but I'm afraid I've witnessed a far greater number of SPAs attempting to remove the great wrong of Misplaced Pages's criticism of fringe beliefs than I have of established editors attempting to right a great wrong in the opposite direction.

I have to disagree with your suggestion that we treat obvious fringe beliefs such as homeopathy with kid gloves to avoid scaring off readers. That's not part of our mission, and anybody writing "Some studies show that homeopathic remedies are helpful, while others don’t. Critics chalk up the benefits to the placebo effect." on Misplaced Pages would rightly be castigated for giving false balance to critics and supporters of homeopathy. Those "critics" comprise the mainstream scientific view and shouldn't be marginalised in the way that WebMD does. You might want to have a look at the Reliable sources noticeboard for a few examples of how our editors consider it.

I'll see your argument that my appeal to the Astrology article is "weak" and raise you WP:PG: "Misplaced Pages's policy and guideline pages describe its principles and agreed-upon best practices." We develop our articles by analogy with other similar articles; our policies are descriptive, not prescriptive for that very reason. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is an essay about deletion discussions and really is a poor rejoinder to the argument that fringe and pseudoscientific topics should be prominently described as such per WP:PSCI, which is policy. I don't think I need to find other tertiary sources that mimic Misplaced Pages to justify our policies like PSCI. The number of secondary sources are all that concerns me, and the absence of critical commentary from Britannica and the likes is more a reflection of their inability to compete with our project. --RexxS (talk) 20:28, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think I'm confusing you with anybody else. I'm not talking about the Ayurveda article specifically, but more the alt-med topic area. There's a lot of editorial overlap on those pages, and a quick check shows that Talk:Chiropractic, Talk:Acupuncture, and Talk:Ayurveda are all in your top 10 talk pages edited. Though I'll admit I do sometimes mentally conflate editors who consistently take the same positions. So I do see you as kind of in the same "category" as people like JzG (not a criticism of you or JzG!). And to clarify, I'm not saying you or anybody spends 60% of their total Misplaced Pages time on the Ayurveda talk page; I'm suggesting that for some people, 60% of their time on the Ayurveda talk page is spent discussing pseudoscience. (Probably an exaggeration, but you get the point.)

It very well may be that Britannica isn't quite up to date on Ayurveda. Though they do have an article online here. Perhaps it is more up-to-date on similar topics. You could try chiropractic, acupuncture, astrology, or homeopathy. Perhaps one of these articles will explicitly label its subject as pseudoscience?

I get uncomfortable when people start criticizing reliable sources as inferior to Misplaced Pages. Rejecting sources because they aren't as militant about something as we think they should be is dangerous. Misplaced Pages is supposed to follow and reflect reliable sources. And the tone we use should reflect the very best sources. The tail should not wag the dog.

You mentioned that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is only about deletion discussions. That's not exactly true. (You may have been thinking about WP:OTHERSTUFF.) Regardless, the logical fallacy is still relevant. (Example: Astrology is labeled "pseudoscience" in the first sentence, and Astrology is a Misplaced Pages article about a pseudoscience-related topic. Ayurveda is a Misplaced Pages article about a pseudoscience-related topic, therefore Ayurveda should be labeled "pseusoscience" in the first sentence.)

I see your quote from WP:PG, and I realize that Misplaced Pages has its own set of best practices, policies, and guidelines. But that alone doesn't mean much until you can cite which policies and guidelines encourage first-sentence labeling like the "_______ is pseudoscience" construction in question. I don't know of any, but I can think of a few that discourage that kind of writing. While WP:NPOV and MOS:WORDS include some oddly specific exceptions for the word "pseudoscience", the bulk of policy makes it clear that it is better to describe how something is pseudoscience rather than to bluntly state that something is pseudoscience. To be clear, my concern isn't whether the topic is pseudoscience (the answer is yes). Nor is it whether we should make it clear in the article that it's pseudoscience (again, obviously yes). My concern is how we should do that. And based on what I've read so far I think a better way to do that is to avoid the value-laden label and use phrases like "_________ has not been proven to be any more effective than the placebo effect in scientific studies" or "Claims that _______ can actually cure disease go against current scientific knowledge and have not been substantiated by medical research." ~Awilley (talk) 00:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

@Awilley: You are absolutely right that I've found myself editing for brief periods in controversial medical topics, where I've consistently taken the line that supports the modern, mainstream perspective and opposes efforts to legitimise practices that have no basis in scientific fact. Beside chiropractic, acupuncture and now Ayurveda, I've also been involved in Talk:Abotion and the articles concerning medical marijuana. Those are not alt-med, but are articles where a push has been made at some point by SPAs to swing Misplaced Pages's article away from critical coverage to something anodyne or even positively supportive of superstitious nonsense. You are therefore right that almost 100% of my time on those talk pages will have been spent in arguing the mainstream view and rebuffing the arguments of the SPAs. On the other hand, that makes up a relatively tiny proportion of my contributions to Misplaced Pages as a whole.

I don't think that it's a question of whether Britannica is up to date on Ayurveda. After all, it's difficult to make advances in a fringe theory that's been consistently wrong in its basic tenets for 5,000 years. The problem with all of the Britannica articles is that they are all too often written by a single author. There are some exceptions whose byline given as "The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica" (which links to a page that is "unavailable"). Consequently, its Ayurveda article devotes a meagre 5 paragraphs to the subject, and a reader could easily come away with the impression that it is a functional medical system, equipped to deal with medical conditions in just the same way as our modern medical system does. It lacks any criticism of the practices, so many of which are well documented as dangerous. The one paragraph on chiropractic neglects to mention that the system is founded on the principle of treating "vertebral subluxation" (a non-existent condition), nor that there is no evidence for any effect beyond placebo, with the exception of chronic lower back pain, where it is as good as any of several other interventions. The Britannica article on acupuncture is considerably larger and does at least mention that it defies clinical practice, but still credulously repeats the nonsense about Qi flowing through 12 meridians, and fails to report any of the trials showing that sham acupuncture is just as effective. And so on. Britannica quite clearly has cursory content on those topics and fails to place them in the modern perspective, or to give anything other than an "in-universe" narration for much of the time. You may well feel that treating a topic from within its own perspective is the right thing to do, but that fails to adequately cover what we know about so many fringe topics.

If you take the time to examine these RfCs, guidelines and policies, I believe there is an inescapable imperative to describe Ayurveda as pseudoscience, at least within the first paragraph:

• Talk:Ayurveda/Archive 12 #Category:Pseudoscience – "There is clear support here for adding Category:Pseudoscience to this article as a result of the reliable source coverage of it as a pseudoscience. The primary opposing argument is that Ayurveda is old and therefore shouldn't be labelled pseudoscience for its entire history - there have been strong arguments against this on the basis that it makes testable claims today which have been regarded as pseudoscientific in reliable sources."
• Talk:Ayurveda/Archive 13 #Pseudoscience – "Consensus is that Ayurveda's status as pseudoscientific is well documented enough that it does not need to be ascribed to a particular source or sources."
• WP:FRINGE/PS – "Proposals which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, such as astrology, may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience."
• WP:PSCI – "While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community. Any inclusion of pseudoscientific views should not give them undue weight. The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such."
• MOS:LEAD – " serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents."
• MOS:BEGIN – " should establish the context in which the topic is being considered by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it."
• MOS:FIRST – "he first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist. Similarly, if the title is a specialized term, provide the context as early as possible" and "Try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead use the first sentence to introduce the topic, and then spread the relevant information out over the entire lead."

Nobody in all of the discussions has produced a single policy-based reason why we should not follow Misplaced Pages's established practices, as documented in our policies and guidelines, and implement the consensus that we should describe Ayurveda as a pseudoscience, and do that prominently. Misplaced Pages has greater depth of coverage than Britannica and chooses to examine topics with a critical eye, rather than pander to the topic's own view of itself. The body of the article is the place to explain how Ayurveda falls well short of any acceptable standards of verifiability, as it does. The lead is not intended to go into the detail of its subject, but to present to the reader the important facts about it. In my opinion (and that of many other editors), one of the key facts about Ayurveda is that it claims to make use of an internally-consistent theory having the veneer of being scientific (vata, pitta, and kapha) to produce results, while being completely unable to demonstrate the truth of that theory. That is a classic definition of pseudoscience and we should not shirk from saying so. --RexxS (talk) 13:39, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I said above, Nor is whether we should make it clear in the article that it's pseudoscience (again, obviously yes). Let me clarify that I too think that should be in the Lead as well as the body. First paragraph is reasonable. I think we're in complete agreement through the first 6 of the 7 bullet points above. But I read your 7th point (MOS:FIRST) as saying we should not be cramming the word "pseudoscience" into the first sentence. "Pseudoscience" is a specialized term that requires some unpacking. It's useful for categorization, but we tend to overuse it in our prose on Misplaced Pages. Here's a completely unrelated example of a poor lead sentence that uses too much jargon: "'Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity." We're using specialized words like "nontrinitarian", essentially giving the genus and species, but without actually giving the reader much useful information. It would be more clear to say later in the paragraph something like, "Jehovah's Witnesses use the Bible and identify as Christians, but reject some mainstream Christian doctrines like the idea that Jesus is one of three divine persons that constitute God." ("Nontrinitarian" is another word like "Pseudoscience" that Wikipedians like to use.)

To answer another implied question above, no, I don't think that treating a topic from within its own perspective is the right thing to do. I've spent a good deal of time editing articles about religion, and I'm constantly using phrases like "Adherents believe that ____________." I would never support making unverifiable statements in Misplaced Pages's voice. Although with religious belief it's a bit different than pseudoscience in that we would never go over to the Catholic church article and write "Catholics believe that God created the universe from nothing, which is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge." The reader already knows that religious belief isn't verifiable by science and doesn't need to be reminded in every other sentence. And most religions don't claim that their beliefs are scientific. But I'm way off topic.

Anyway, I have probably bothered you enough. Thank you for discussing. I hope I've swayed you a bit on the question of directly labeling topics as "pseudoscience" in the first sentence vs. explaining how it's pseudoscience later on in the paragraph. And I hope you don't walk away from this thinking I'm just another "pro-fringe" editor. My interest is in having an encyclopedia that's accessible, professional, and, well, encyclopedic. And speaking to your concern about having SPAs constantly coming out of the woodwork to criticize the article, in my experience that problem subsides dramatically when you are able to write an article not just accurately, but with the neutral tone that people expect from an encyclopedia. ~Awilley (talk) 17:49, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

September

September

Dahlias in Walsdorf

I like today's Main page, with the TFA (thank you for help with the image questions!) on the anniversary day (of both dedication and our concert), a DYK, and a great photographer who didn't make it soon enough, Jürgen Schadeberg, - more on my talk, mostly about the tribute to Brian who shared his sources. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

In contrast: matching colours music to the Dahlias, "brute loud and secretly quiet". - The music (specifically "Meermenschen") was given to me for my birthday. A funeral in 2 days. Brute. - Good points about the alt-texts for DYK images, btw, thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter – September 2020

Issue 4—September 2020

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Greetings! A relatively quiet month yields a shorter newsletter. The featured section is taking the month off, but please continue to drop comments and ideas at the newsletter talk page. Here is what's happening this month:

News from around the site

• A few restrictions on signatures are being gently phased in to make signatures consistently machine-identifiable. This will enable the development of new talk page tools (and fix some holes in our current tools). Affected editors (~ 900 at English Misplaced Pages) will be contacted. You can see if you're on the naughty list here.

Discussions of interest

• There are numerous ongoing discussions regarding notability/deletion. Open disucssions focus on draftification, restricting comments on AfDs, and the occasional conflict between SNGs and the GNG.
• An ongoing enormous discussion considers deprecating in-line parenthetical citations.
• At WikiProject COVID-19 editors are catching their breath and taking stock of our Covid-19 coverage thus far.

For a list of ongoing discussions in WP:MED-tagged articles, see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Medicine/Discussions
Also, a reminder to see Article Alerts for a list of medicine-related AfDs, CfDs, merge discussions, and more!

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Ajpolino (talk) 02:32, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

IP 162.238.56.66 following user edits

Hi RexxS, I appreciate the warning you offered in response to my complaint .

However, you didn't address the other issue in my complaint, which is that fully half of this IP's edits since late July () were made to support a dispute that User:Jaydoggmarco was involved in, as my post showed here . This is strong evidence of IP socking or meatpuppetry, which has also been a big problem at Kiki Camarena, as Hipal mentioned on that Talk Page . ToBeFree blocked the IP in that case, but it's a huge pain to contend with IPs being used to remove content from multiple academic sources across different pages on this encylopedia . -Darouet (talk) 16:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Darouet, but I'm up to my armpits in alligators at Ayurveda and COVID-19, so I'm trying not to take on any more investigations where other admins like ToBeFree are already familiar with the issues. Hipal is a very experienced editor and looks to be working to finding solutions to those issues as well. If the problems don't abate, then please ask me again and I'll look for ways of helping, even if I'm short of time. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

OK, I remember and very much appreciate your COVID-19 work. Do you happen to follow the "This Week in Virology" podcast? I have really liked those, and they provide a nice overview of much of the scientific and clinical work being done in the area of COVID. This week they brought back Christian Drosten of Germany.

@ToBeFree: if you had time to look into this, I'd appreciate it. -Darouet (talk) 16:48, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I currently can't thoroughly investigate the situation, and I prefer the central noticeboards WP:ANI (or WP:AE, if there is no ANI thread already, and if applicable) for this kind of requests. You have correctly created an ANI thread; I can't close it earlier than others. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

This isn't even my IP address, There are a lot more people who disagree with you than you think. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

WLM Wikidata to Commons ? technical solution

I am currently looking at walking to add some photos to commons as part of Wiki Loves Monuments & looking at the interactive map. Many of those showing in red (ie we do not yet have a photo) already have pics in commons but the WLM map does not know this as, although wikidata has the "National Heritage List for England number" (Property:P1216), the entry on commons does not include Template:Listed building England (and presumably other UK countries).

In the light of this I have been doing this manually, but will only be able to do a few hundred and there must be thousands (or tens of thousands) of cases where this applies, therefore I wondered if a bot or similar technology would be able to add the template and relevant NHLE number to the commons entry which would then, 24 hrs later, turn the WLM map from red to blue. This is beyond my technical capabilities but I thought you, or your talk page stalkers, with knowledge of wikidata might be able to assess whether this would be possible and how difficult it would be.

A worked example that I have done manually:

• The WLM map showed red for "Arlington Mill (Including Cottages Previously Listed As Abutting Arlington Mill) Arlington Mill Cottages (Including Cottages Previously Listed As Abutting Arlington Mill)" in the village of Bibury
• Commons has a picture for this
• Wikidata has an entry (Q26590605) for this building. It includes the NHLE identifier 1303546 - if you click on this it takes you to the NHLE record for the building
• I edited the commons page and added {{Listed building England |1=1303546 }} ( using the template and adding the NHLE number)

Would it be possible to get a bot (or other technical solution) to replicate the process I did manually for several thousand entries in this situation?— Rod 07:38, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Rodw: I think the maps work on whether image (P18) is set in the Wikidata entry, not whether the image is tagged on Commons. A while ago I put together a list of NHLE items with Commons categories but no image, see User:Mike Peel/NHLE no image with commonscat, currently around 3500 entries. I was trying to figure out a way to bot-add the images, but the problem is that it often needs human choice to decide which image is the most relevant one to add. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:30, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Roger Moore

Hello. You recently added comments when you restored an Edit of mine, on Roger Moore's Page. Since then, that Contribution about Moore's record releases has again be removed. I made a comment upon this at the bottom of Moore's Page, where it says, from memory, something like, "Discus this page", etc., (Sic); it's the one just under 'Edit History'. Could I ask you, please, to add to your interest in this subject by considering making an observation upon the act of reomoving the Entry, again, whether you hold the same opinion as before, when you restored it ? The Discussion can be found under: 'Interesting Inconsistent Editorializing'. Thanks very much. Heath St John. Heath St John (talk) 20:02, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Heath St John. I saw the discussion, but I don't have much to add beyond the comment I already made. I restored your original edit because it was removed as a result of being unsourced, and I thought it would be easy to source (and it was). The second removal was on account of "This stuff is unimportant, exciting no comment in WP:SECONDARY sources". In other words, the other editor found it WP:UNDUE for the article. I'm afraid that I don't have enough familiarity with the topic to be be able to dispute that judgement. It's probably no more trivial than his books, but unfortunately – unlike his books – the record was released over 50 years ago, so contemporary secondary sources are going to be difficult to find. I apologise for not being of more help. --RexxS (talk) 12:29, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks. To me, we create so many complications for ourselves. The Site is supposed to be a source of factual proof, however boring another might find it. If they find it so, the, they move on, and the truth remains true. Many truths are not found interesting by many people; they remain truel especially unacknowledged truth, which doesn't seek or require approval. This is a good example. It's true; someone finds it tedious: fine; it's removed, yet remains true, but being so still doesn't allow it to be included on a Site that's supposed to be dedicated to it. People reading this in the future shall then know that a Site to which they've turned for information has some Editors who've 'Edited' the complete truth from the Record because they've not found it personally entertaining. A great shame. Thanks for your time.

Heath St John (talk) 13:49, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Image issue

Hi, RexxS - there's an image issue Bengali language that is leaving a lot of white space after the lead. I can't figure out and would appreciate some guidance here. I'm thinking it's either in the template defaults or an image size I'm not finding, or did the center command do it? _Talk 📧 18:36, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

@Atsme: it's the use of {{clear}} that causes most of the whitespace on wide screens – I've just removed two of them. The real problem is that the infobox is too big and there are far too many images, tables, etc. for the amount of text, so there will be screen widths where it doesn't look right, no matter what you do. --RexxS (talk) 01:53, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata link goes to wrong place

Hi RexxS. Go to WP:Requests for undeletion, click on the 'Francais' language link, it takes you to fr:Wikipédia:Demande de restauration de page which seems correct. Once there, click on 'English' in the left column and it takes you to D. Todd Christofferson, a biographical page. Expected behavior would be to take you back to Misplaced Pages:Requests for undeletion. This problem doesn't occur if you go to and from the Spanish Misplaced Pages; it appears specific to French. But how could it be? The Wikidata item at www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13429672 seems to have all its entries correct. EdJohnston (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

A section had the code ] - which I presume is coded on frwp to override a Wikidata link - but I'm not sure. Regardless, removing it and purging the page seems to have re-linked it appropriately User:EdJohnston - regards, -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:27, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

The fix was your edit on frwp to change fr:Wikipédia:Demande de restauration de page/Refusées#D. Todd Christofferson, David Todd Christofferson. The next mystery is *why* that worked but I'll go quietly away now! Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 03:44, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Same here - my understanding is that interlanguage links on enwp only override the wikidata links if they're unpiped - but apparently that piped link was overriding it on frwp. I posted on their non-french community portal regarding the issue, so maybe someone there can investigate it - it was honestly just a hunch I wasn't 100% sure would work to begin with haha. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:48, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Module:Wikidata Infobox

Module:Wikidata Infobox has been nominated for merging with Module:WikidataIB. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Gonnym (talk) 12:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Another LUA question: pulling out qualifiers

I've done quite a bit of work on v:Module:WikiJournal and it's almost fully up and running (see example at doi:10.15347/wjm/2020.002). There's one feature I need a quick assist on: once I've pulled out a value, how do I also pull out a qualifier for it? Within the getEditors function, I've managed to pull the editor's roles (e.g. for Q96317242, the role of the editor 'Eric Youngstrom' is as the 'statistician'). Thanks in advance! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo) 02:04, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@Evolution and evolvability: the structure of value and qualifiers in the Wikidata database simply stores qualifiers along with each value, so you need to read and store the qualifiers at the time you read and store each value. In Module:WikidataIB. I handle that by passing a qual parameter that can be "ALL" or a list of property-IDs. Most of the handling is around lines 1250 onwards in the module.

I've added a rough version of the qualifier functionality to v:Module:WikiJournal/sandbox and demonstrated it at v:Module talk:WikiJournal/sandbox. You can check my additions by examining this diff and then it should be fairly straightforward to amend the output to whatever you want. Give me another shout if you need any help with that. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 12:51, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Perfect - thank you. Even more flexible that I'd initially thought of but definitely a good implementation. I find learning first principles of a language much easier after doing a bit of copy-paste-edit coding to get a feel for it. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo) 04:43, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

A follwup question on it: it seems to require the |qid= to be explicitly set. When the qid is pulled for the current page by mw.wikibase.getEntityIdForCurrentPage(), then the quals aren't pulled by mw.wikibase.renderSnak(val). Any fix ideas? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo) 05:18, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

@Evolution and evolvability: I think the problem is this: when the call is used without a qid parameter passed, line 19 becomes true and so it fetches args from a parent call. That is there to allow the module function to be called by a template (which becomes the parent) - so you could make a template to get authors called WJA that contains {{#invoke:Module:WikiJournal|getAuthors}} and just use it like this: {{WJA|Q123456|qual=ALL}}.

Anyway, when the qid parameter is omitted, the code thinks it's being called from a parent so makes args an empty table, and therefore it never finds the qid parameter you passed directly. The code you copied for lines 18-21 worked in the original setting because it had to have a qid parameter there. I've modified the test in line 19 to simply check whether args is an empty table instead. See if that works for you now. --RexxS (talk) 13:11, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

somewhat complicated paragraph breaks and accessibility

From observing previous discussions, it seems to me that either you will know this, or will know who knows.

I understand the philosophy and general idea behind being careful about list elements (I may be using wrong terminology, but I think I understand the idea).

I understand about using {{paragraph break}} instead of "*Lorem ipsum" on one line and ":Lorem ipsum" on the next. I mean, I understand that:

• Line one (*Line one)

Line two (:Line two)

is wrong, but

• Line one Line two (*Line one {{pb}}Line two)

is OK.

What I can't figure out how to achieve - and am concerned is impossible - is a legitimate syntax for:

• Line one
  1. numbered item under one
  2. numbered item under one

Line two (a paragraph break from line one, but no bullet, and NOT on the level of the numbered items.

Is there a way to achieve that without causing screen reader headaches? --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Possible, with actual HTML for the numbered lists.

*Line one<ol><li>Item 1</li><li>Item 2</li></ol> Line two

Yields:

• Line one
  1. Item 1
  2. Item 2
  Line two

--Izno (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Basic wikitext syntax doesn't support this; there's no way to continue a list item from an earlier level. Help:List § Continuing a list item after a sub-item shows how you could use the {{ordered list}} or {{bulleted list}} templates to achieve this, if you'd rather not use the raw HTML (which has its own challenges when combined with how line breaks and white space get handled by the parser). isaacl (talk) 21:54, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I forgot Possibility #3 - a talk page watcher would know. Thank you, User:Isaacl, I'll play around with {{ordered list}} and the like, and see if I can reach a point where it's marginally intuitive. But I have a bad feeling that if I'm already replying with an indent to someone else's comment, that maybe I won't be able to mix and match their wiki-markup and my html or template magic. Sandbox, here I come! --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:19, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry User:Izno, I missed that there were two signatures. Thank you, as well. I'll do some playing. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:21, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, in threaded discussions, sometimes I'll just resort to outdenting my reply so I can better manage the internal formatting. Like the help section says, it's a design tradeoff to make wikitext format simpler. isaacl (talk) 05:13, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Double archives

I just noticed at Talk:Ruth Bader Ginsburg that there are two archive areas, one within all the talkpage templates (which apparently is the “real” one) and another (which says there are no archives) underneath all the project template boxes. I don’t know how to fix that without screwing it up, plus I’m kind of invested in the topic, so could you do a little gnoming over there?Montanabw 02:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

The lower box says "No archives yet." because User:ClueBot III/Indices/Talk:Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't exist. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:17, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

@Montanabw: I never use ClueBot to do archiving, so I'm unfamiliar with its requirements. @Redrose64: can you fix it and save me from having to research all the issues, please? --RexxS (talk) 13:18, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

These edits sorted it all out. Put simply: before that lot, ClueBot III had never archived the page, so didn't know that Talk:Ruth Bader Ginsburg/Archive 1 already existed. Whilst that was created more than ten years ago, the threads archived there were due to: MiszaBot I (talk · contribs); lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs); and User:Technical 13/1CA. In addition, an IP had decided to add two threads somewhere in the middle. Quite a wide variety. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:00, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose64. I assume that the problem arises when the archiving bot is switched from one to another without giving the latest bot a chance to initialise itself. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 01:54, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

URLs

Please answer question on my talk page about if URL is the same as DOI, and doi-access=free is set. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Ayurveda and blocks

Hi RexxS, when I was looking into the history of Talk:Ayurveda as part of this ARCA, I came across a number of users that I wanted to ask you about. These editors were each blocked per WP:NOTHERE, a determination which you appear to have made based on a single talk page post with which you have expressed disagreement.

• Risham Muhammad
• Raghuram Chakravarthy
• Bullz123
• Abhipkulk
• Shanthan J
• VigneshApthi
• Divyash Balpande
• Mokshda thanvi
• Atriayurvedam
• Maniam Babu
• Polospirit
• Rishiherb
• Ashish15796
• Pratibha198i
• Dksethi123
• Akhil.rmx
• Mr.Dinkan CBI

I was wondering if you would be able to comment on these blocks. I'm particularly looking for your perspective on how you were able to make this determination, your perspective on whether you were the right person to make these blocks, and whether there were any mitigating factors or other explanations that I am missing when looking at these. I have some deep concerns about a single administrator possibly being able to affect a consensus decision about controversial topics, and I thought I would start by asking you for comment. Thank you for your time. – bradv🍁 16:36, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Why would you want to help an off-wiki campaign push anti-science in Misplaced Pages? Since you had the time to investigate the above, perhaps you noticed that the list shows 17 users created within a few days at the end of August, all of whom were obviously recruited to vote on whether Misplaced Pages should promote Ayurveda. Are you suggesting that RexxS should have spent two hours negotiating with each of them in an attempt to inform them of Misplaced Pages's values so they could blossom as useful editors? Or that obvious meatpuppets should be free to derail discussions because RexxS might favor the scientific method? Campaigners are the definition of NOTHERE. Johnuniq (talk) 23:34, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

::This was vandalism of the article talk page. These were, except for two, single edit accounts with a singe purpose that appeared after a Twitter account and subsequent recruitment. Brad. Note that multiple "legitimate" editors on both sides of a debate voted and commented with out a problem. Littleolive oil (talk) 03:15, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Add: When multiple, single-edit accounts bombard a talk page in a relatively short period of time, probably faster than any single editor can deal with them, and with a single position, sometimes demanding change, while editors are laboriously slugging through an RfC and discussion, then the talk page has been damaged, and damage equals vandalism. No, not in the traditional sense we use in many places on Misplaced Pages, but then again I've never seen this kind of concerted effort from this many single edit editors over a short period of time who clearly are not interested in ongoing talk page collaboration. I'm not sure what to call it. Disruption is not descriptive of the situation, I as an editor, saw on that talk page. Nor did I see a traditional way of dealing with it, but then I'm not an admin. Littleolive oil (talk) 10:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Bradv, our processes, including talkpages, are always vulnerable to off-wiki canvassing as well as plain old sockpuppetry. The users you list are obvious meatpuppets, or as John says "obviously recruited to vote on whether Misplaced Pages should promote Ayurveda". I didn't know there was a Twitter post; are we disallowed from linking to Twitter? If not, perhaps Olive could provide the link. Only one of the listed voters has actually voted (or !voted, whatever) in the RfC "Should there be mention of the word pseudoscience (or pseudoscientific) in the opening sentence?", namely Atriayurvedam. I'm not sure if the RfC is the "consensus decision" you're talking about, that RexxS might have affected with his blocks? All the rest on your list have posted to the talkpage generally, several of them in the form of edit requests, with varying competence and civility. A few of them politely, but many on the lines of "Foreigners nothing know about Ayurveda so don't talk about Ayurveda like fool". Perhaps an immediate block of these more reasonable people wasn't strictly necessary. It's a fine point, though, since I don't doubt they came because of the canvassing. Anyway, I agree with you that RexxS was not the ideal admin to take care of this influx, and if I'd been following the Ayurveda issues, I would probably have suggested that to him. Mostly because of the optics, though, and I don't see it as a big deal. Per WP:INVOLVED, "In straightforward cases (e.g., blatant vandalism), the community has historically endorsed the obvious action of any administrator – even if involved – on the basis that any reasonable administrator would have probably come to the same conclusion". This is not a matter of vandalism, except in the odd case, but it's nevertheless straightforward: those users are not here to build an encyclopedia. I would have thought any reasonable administrator would have come to the same conclusion. Bishonen | tålk 09:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC).

The link was posted by another editor on the Ayurveda talk page. I don't like to look off-Misplaced Pages for discussions but eventually did. I don't see that link now. I'll look again later. Littleolive oil (talk) 10:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

It may be gone because it was considered inappropriate to link to Twitter, Olive, so please don't bother, I'm good. Bishonen | tålk 11:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC).

• Yes, there was an off-wiki organised campaign by some Indian nationalists to edit the Ayurveda article to make it sound like proper medicine (I don't have any links now). And these accounts were clearly all part of it. While policy says might perhaps (it's debatable) suggest best practice would be for a different admin to make the blocks, I think this reasonably falls under the "any reasonable administrator" clause - especially as we had ongoing disruption. I would certainly have made the same blocks myself, and I consequently endorse them. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC) (Updated. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:13, 21 September 2020 (UTC))

  I'll also add that Misplaced Pages has been under an especially heavy onslaught from pushers of quackery and pseudoscience since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and getting rid of such nonsense (and the people who push it) can be literally life-saving. RexxS is one of the few at the forefront of fighting off these dangerous idiots, and he has my personal thanks and appreciation for his invaluable work. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:46, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: I blocked each of those meatpuppets as "not here to build an encyclopedia". If you feel that any of them actually were here to build an encyclopedia, please feel free to unblock them. As for the INVOLVED accusation, you're again failing to distinguish between "dispute" and "disruption". My involvement in Ayurveda is simply in upholding Misplaced Pages policies and consensus decisions. The community has consistently agreed that Ayurveda is pseudoscience. I uphold that. WP:PSCI states that

by its very nature, scientific consensus is the majority viewpoint of scientists towards a topic. Thus, when talking about pseudoscientific topics, we should not describe these two opposing viewpoints as being equal to each other. While pseudoscience may in some cases be significant to an article, it should not obfuscate the description of the mainstream views of the scientific community. Any inclusion of pseudoscientific views should not give them undue weight. The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such.

I have upheld that policy. There is no content dispute about pseudoscience, nor is there any content dispute about the prominence we should give to the scientific viewpoint. If you feel otherwise, you are entitled to start an RfC to change our policy and current consensus. Until you do that, I'll continue to uphold our status quo. It is unfortunate that only a couple of admins have found the time to try to stem the attack on Misplaced Pages from Opindia's twitter campaign, but now that you're aware of it, perhaps you'd like to join in our efforts to keep Misplaced Pages free of deliberate attempts at distorting our normal mechanisms for decision-making?

For what its worth, I just checked the 17 editors whom I blocked and 15 have not made any comment. One has replied "Thank you for blocking me .....I am not interested to be with fools". I hope you won't take that as an indication that they are here to build an encyclopedia. The other, VigneshApthi, has made two attempts at an unblock request. The latter one seems reasonable and I've accepted the request and unblocked them. --RexxS (talk) 11:49, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for reviewing these blocks, and for your explanation. However, WP:PSCI is a content policy, and no part of that policy justifies immediate blocks of those who do not comply with it. Blocks are governed by the blocking policy, and in this case, in my opinion, they did not comply with WP:BEFOREBLOCK or WP:BLOCKNO. While it's certainly possible that these editors were not here in good faith, they should still have been given a chance, or at least a warning, before receiving an indefinite block. Furthermore, as an editor on that article and a prolific contributor to the talk page, you were not in a position to make that determination or to take administrative action. – bradv🍁 16:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)