| Revision as of 22:04, 17 July 2016 edit2606:a000:4c0c:e200:9559:2aaf:b103:4945 (talk) →User disguising identity?: sign retroactively -- sorry← Previous edit | Revision as of 02:03, 18 July 2016 edit undoLowercase sigmabot III (talk | contribs)Bots, Template editors2,299,652 editsm Archiving 2 discussion(s) to Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/Archive 124) (botNext edit → | ||
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| ==Seek a doctor== | |||
| Does anyone else think it is inappropriate for us to tell users to seek a doctor, when they come to our reference desk to ask about a '''species ID'''? I understand if someone comes seeking medical advice, we can say "We can't give you medical advice, if you want medical advice, seek a doctor". There's a very important IF statement there too. We are not qualified to say what does and doesn't warrant medical attention, any more than we are qualified to give diagnoses. | |||
| Telling OP to see a doctor out of the blue seems very unprofessional and borderline unethical to me. This is the question that prompted my post here. ] (]) 16:21, 18 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :We've had this debate many times before. Advising someone to see a doctor is not medical advice. Telling them there's nothing to worry about, '''''is''''' medical advice, and is forbidden. I probably should have said, "'''if you're concerned''', see a doctor." ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 17:37, 18 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :: "Telling them there's nothing to worry about" would be highly inappropriate, agreed. I think Semantic Mantis is making a distinction between (A) cases where seeking advice from a health professional ''may'' be appropriate, and (B) cases where such an issue does not arise. In this example, it wasn't just a matter of academic arachnological interest - the OP was '''''bitten''''' by a spider of unknown ID. That clearly falls into class (A), so suggesting they seek medical advice if concerned is OK. I don't see that this was "out of the blue", given the context provided by the OP. If it turns out to have been a highly toxic spider, by the time they identify it, it may well be too late to see a doctor, so it's quite possible that medical attention may be a higher priority than identification of the species. Only the OP would know whether they're experiencing any ill effects, so the level of their concern would be conditioned by that. On the one hand, any sensible person should know, without being told by some anonymous person on the internet, that they may need to see a doctor in such circumstances; on the other hand, spelling it out does no harm and may do some good. | |||
| :: If the question had been "I'm researching Henry VIII and I can't find the date of his marriage to Katharine of Aragon", that would just as clearly be class (B). -- ] </sup></font></span>]] 22:42, 18 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::"On the one hand, any sensible person should know, without being told by some anonymous person on the internet, that they may need to see a doctor in such circumstances; on the other hand, spelling it out does no harm and may do some good. " Yes, indeed. On the other hand, some of our readers don't know the limits of our powers, and may mistake a simple reminder of this general concept as a ''specific assessment of need to see a doctor for a particular condition or symptom''. That's what I want to be careful to avoid, just as much as I'd avoid giving diagnoses or prognoses. ] (]) 15:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::] - I see you understand. If you can use that if "you're concerned" phrasing in the future, I would be much obliged. A small change in wording makes all the difference to me :) ] (]) 15:01, 20 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :Read this - - not impressed. For all I know some poor schmuck in India just sold a less-favorite daughter into debt slavery in order to get immediate medical attention for a doctor to laugh at a spider-bit son. Who knows? All this ethics schmethics is about one thing, getting more money into doctors' pockets, has nothing to do with anything else. It's about as holy a cause as the people trying to keep us from linking to Canadian websites because their copyright might be looser. If somebody asks you to identify a picture of a spider that would be a good deed to do. Preaching bureaucracy at us, not so much. ] (]) 16:17, 25 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::Your hatred of doctors is well-known here. If you get severely ill sometime, you can console yourself with the thought that no doctor is going to get rich from you. (Though your undertaker might.) ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 23:04, 26 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::If I had plumbers telling me I shouldn't write about whether a water heater can explode because the OP should go to one of them if they are worried, they might be saying I have a "hatred" of plumbers. But the lack of a pseudo-religious deference is not actually hatred. ] (]) 10:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::If you're worried that your water heater might be about to explode, you would call your local water heater guy. ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 14:00, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::That may be true if it's red hot, steam is spewing out the sides, it's making a noise like a train whistle, and the electronic control panel is announcing in a loud voice that you now have <code>3</code> minutes <code>20</code> seconds to evacuate the minimum blast radius. But most of the time someone worrying about the water heater blowing up tends to do it every night when they're sleeping above the thing (or rather, not) but have no particular reason to be suspicious. ] (]) 14:27, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::And what has all that got to do with the possibility of being bitten by a venomous spider? ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 18:33, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::Well, by the time they went to Misplaced Pages it was already rather late in the game. Incidentally, there are very few ]s that really ''can'' be treated, not even . ] (]) 23:18, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::Which is why he was told to see a doctor. ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 23:20, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::Doctors don't work, good reason to see a doctor. Yah, this is a bit like the South Park presentation of the ]! And since when were doctors experts on identifying spiders anyway? There's a fair chance that in the improbable instance he actually ''did'' go to a doctor that we have doctor show up here saying "I have a case of a spider bite, and I'm looking for an expert to identify..." ] (]) 23:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::You're making a medical diagnosis, and that's not kosher. ←] <sup>'']''</sup> ]→ 00:20, 29 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| == Problem for mobile users == | |||
| It appears that the "Ask a new question" button doesn't work for mobile users - their questions are being posted to the top of the page without a section header. See, for example, recent diff, and we had a similar problem a few weeks ago. Who needs to be tasked with fixing it? ] (]) 18:04, 19 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :See ] and ] for more info. It really depends what you mean by "fixing it". If you mean a proper fix (i.e. making the ] work on the mobile site), then someone at wikimedia ideally although since mediawiki is open source it could nominally be anyone. I was at one stage planning to file a bug report, but I never got round to it, and also never replied to Wnt, partially because I was waiting for but never got a reply to my question here ]. It's possible to force people on the mobile site to the normal site to ask a question, like's done on the ] and one or two other places I can't recall offhand (ANI? Help Desk?). But personally I still have no idea how to keep it on the mobile site, if it's even currently possible, as I have no idea how to even start a new section on the RD on the mobile site. ] (]) 20:12, 20 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :{{re|Nil Einne|Tevildo}} I'd forgotten about that. I've just tried the edit to ] I suggested - it ''seems'' to work for me. I don't do mobile device editing so someone else will have to see if it functions any better than what we have now, but in theory it should because the link shouldn't get truncated. The only disadvantage I ''see'' from my edit is I've forgotten how the heck to get rid of that box-and-box icon that Misplaced Pages puts at the end of every link. It's some arcane thing coded right into HTML or CSS they use ... I've fixed it before... somewhere... I think it's only a cosmetic problem for now, and hopefully someone knows or I'll remember WTF the "feature" is for this. ] (]) 22:22, 25 June 2016 (UTC) <--- update: the magic sesame is '''class="plainlinks"'''. ] (]) 23:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::On my (Android) mobile phone (which I never use for this sort of thing, I must admit) I'm just getting a blue square on the far right of the screen that I can't seem to zoom out to, and which doesn't do anything when I tap it. But this may very well be my inability to drive the device rather than a problem with the code. ] (]) 20:56, 26 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::{{re|Tevildo}} Could you try this with ?? Thanks! (clicking the button on that page won't take you to a refdesk, so don't save it, but you'll see if the button did something in that version) ] (]) 23:35, 26 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::I've taken the liberty of moving the box from the way right position it used to have (345 px) to 125 px left margin, which to me makes it look pretty much aligned with the top entries. I had set it so far right before to make it look like the inputbox element had for me before, but a caveat is that I don't know how that was really encoded. ] (]) 23:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::The button now (seems to) work, but it takes me to the desktop view (<nowiki>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/</nowiki>). As a non-mobile user (and not likely to become one, if my past 30 minutes are typical of the "mobile experience" - how, for instance, are you supposed to get here other than by typing "WT:RD" into Google? There doesn't seem to be any way of getting to the talk page from the article), I don't really know if things are working properly, as I have no experience of what's supposed to happen. Is there anyone else who can assist? ] (]) 00:27, 27 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Oh. I should have thought of that, but yes, I just used the hard link. There ''should'' be a way to make it go to the mobile site for mobile, I think. ''As long as'' the link is actually working, and posts a new section at the bottom instead of the top, I think it's better than what we had before, even if it takes you out of mobile site (which was suggested above anyway) until I figure a fix. Erm, then again I thought about it and realized I really don't have ideas to work with, so I went with it. If I don't get an answer I can just have ''two'' blue boxes, but that is unwanted. ] (]) 00:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::<p>You're correct it will take you to the desktop view. That's the problem I mentioned above and one of the reasons I haven't really bothered to fix it myself yet. Unfortunately as far as I can see, there's no way to solve this until either 1) mw:Extension:InputBox is fixed or 2) Someone figures out how to start a new section on a non talk page on the mobile site. Actually, I'm not sure if we could fix it with 2), I'm assuming there's probably some code we can use to show a different button if accessing from the mobile site. But perhaps there isn't. In which case I guess all we can do is add 2 buttons as suggested by Wnt. However this seems to be moot until we at least figure out how to start a new section on the mobile site which as far as I can tell, we still don't know. </p><p>BTW, there's no need to use a phone to do basic testing of the mobile site. You don't even need a separate browser. Just visit the mobile site via your current browser and probably resize the window to get a better idea. There should be a mobile view button at the bottom of each page on the desktop site to get there or see . (This testing isn't perfect, but it'll be sufficient for many purposes.) </p><p>As for accessing talk pages, go to the bottom of the page and there should be a link if you're logged in. If you're not logged in, as far as I know you're right, the only way to access it is via manually typing the URL or some link somewhere. (Actually, possibly at least partially due to often not being logged in, I only found out about the button at the bottom of the page a few weeks ago.) </p><p><small>I've never really understood this. It's possibly partly due to the view that talk pages are difficult to use on mobile sites which I agree can sometimes be the case with a lot of indenting. And perhaps also due to the inability to edit from the mobile site until recently. However these don't seem good reasons to me. Maybe this is also partly due to the idea that the mobile site is supposed to be a stop gap measure until the development of single site able to adapt to all devices and that talk pages are going to be replaced by flow, who know. This isn't the right place for a discussion on all that anyway I guess. </small></p><p>] (]) 14:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)</p> | |||
| ::::::Actually seems things are worse than I thought. In the discussion on Mediawiki, I mentioned the possibility of adding new section for talk pages on the mobile site. I just realised this doesn't actually work when you're not logged in. In fact, not only is the talk page button on the bottom missing, but you can't view the talk page via the special mobile view anyway. Perhaps because it's editing focused and editing talk pages from the mobile site when you're not logged in is disabled? (You can still view the normal talk page view on the mobile site.) I seem to have memories of this, and I'm fairly sure I tested without being logged in. So I'm not sure if I forgot about this when asking the question at mediawiki. Or editing the talk page from the mobile site when not logged in was enabled then (but not some stage in the past when I first noticed). Or what. In any case, I'm now even more sure there's probably nothing we can do but force people to use the desktop site to add new sections. This also means they'll be forced onto the desktop site after asking until they work out how to get back. ] (]) 14:16, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Probably should clarify the above. There are two views of a talk page from the mobile site. One is which should work whether logged in or not. Another is which currently only works when logged in. Note that the mobile site should take your login session from the non mobile site, so you should use private browsing, another browser where you're not logged in, or just log out; to see what non-logged in editors see. ] (]) 14:23, 28 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::Yes, this is not working according to theory. I'd originally thought I could take the link that will start a new question on the desktop site and simply replace the first bit with http://en.m.wikipedia.org/ to get a new section, i.e. . The theory from the earlier talk page discussion had been that mobile users were getting a truncated version of the link (which was differently ordered as produced from inputbox) that was lacking the section=new bit. However, the reality is that when I follow that link, damn near anything can happen - this time I keep landing editing the ] article - but whether it opens the Science Refdesk or not the one constant is that it's editing section 0. The link I'm redirected to lands at something like . Now it's tempting to change that "0" at the end but it just makes it go into a constant loading graphic and never open. True, this kind of munged link doesn't come with a guarantee - I can't even report it as a bug - but it means it's going to be tricker to try to hack in some way to open a new section on the mobile site at all, even given a separate button for it. I'm not convinced it's impossible though... I think there might be a way to look up the current section manually and replace "section=new" in the URL directly with that, but I haven't tried yet. ] (]) 08:47, 29 June 2016 (UTC) Erm, actually even changing the "section=" causes the same failure to load (after redirecting to a screen with a different number at the very end). Simply editing the mobile site you follow links like , but if that's the last section (as it currently is) and you try adding one to go to you're looking at that damn overfed asterisk again. Must be fun if you're just doing an ''ordinary'' edit and someone deletes a section while the text is up on your phone before you hit edit. ] (]) 09:05, 29 June 2016 (UTC) Anyway, I should RTFM, but where ''is'' the manual? And for that matter, how *is* a mobile editor supposed to start a new section anyway? ] (]) 09:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| :OK, after asking on ] I found out that the mobile version relies on a #/talk/new extension to create a new section. On TALK pages - that "talk" extension changes the page edited from the page you specified in the URL to the talk page. Take it out, and it does nothing. So it is '''literally impossible''' to ask a question in a new section on the mobile site, as far as I can tell. I see ] added a <nowiki>{{SERVER}}</nowiki> to the template, but that definitely does not come up as the mobile server for a mobile user and if it did the link wouldn't work anyway. I think that the scheme as I left it above, funnelling mobile users into the desktop site, is as good as it's ever going to get. ] (]) 11:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC) | |||
| == Admin attention needed == | == Admin attention needed == | ||
| {{hat|blocked}} | {{hat|blocked}} | ||
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For native English speakers only: Would a native English speaker talk like this?
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A: She only loves you for your money, obviously. If you told her you sold your car and quit your job, she'd be gone in a minute. B (being sarcastic): Sure, I'll take your word for it. You're a self-proclaimed authority on dating, aren't you? You made me realize that every woman I've ever met or fallen in love with was either a sociopath or a gold digger. (I got mixed responses the last time I asked native-English speakers if this conversation sounded natural to them. Some said the wording is so archaic and stilted. Others said it's fine the way it is. What are your thoughts? If you were A, and B told you that, would you say "well, I didn't expect a 21st century native English speaker to say that"?)Jra2019 (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC |
Semi-protected edit request on 2 March 2016
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Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2016
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Admin attention needed
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Can someone please block the Static IP making this edit about presidents needing to be sodomized? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 04:04, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Obvious troll is obvious. HighInBC 01:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
@Wnt: If you watch the reference desk you will recognize that this is a reoccurring character. The person who posting the question was trolling us, and this thread is feeding the troll. The troll says "Nom nom nom, nummy attention". As for my name, you are welcome to come discuss that on my talk page but it is hardly relevant to this discussion. HighInBC 16:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC) |
User disguising identity?
There is a user with posts on the ref desks who signs as: ] (]), which renders as Apostle (talk). I recall a troll from awhile ago with a moniker similar to "Russell", but don't recall specifically. ~Cheers, :2606:A000:4C0C:E200:9559:2AAF:B103:4945 (talk) 22:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)