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Meaningless edits

Not sure if this is the right place – anyway: I've noticed that the new editor User:Pillzyx has edited various articles with what appears to be elaborate nonsense. After several reverts of unsourced edits, he/she has begun sourcing the edits with references to papers that vaguely fit the subject. However, as far as I was able to verify the sources don't support the edits but are used as alibi. Could someone please take a look at this or point me in the right direction? --Zac67 (talk) 09:59, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

This is difficult to handle but the edits I looked at certainly appeared to be waffle. Thanks for reverting and I guess we'll have to monitor the situation. Johnuniq (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. He's back – if he doesn't stop we should consider blocking him. --Zac67 (talk) 09:04, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

If this persists please report at WP:ANI instead. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 15:26, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Image donation from Data USA

Data USA has contributed several hundred SVG data visualizations for use on Misplaced Pages. Please help by categorizing these images, adding them to relevant Misplaced Pages articles, and reporting any errors or issues at Commons talk:Data USA. More info can be found at Commmons:Data USA. Here are a few examples:

The full set of images can be seen at commons:Category:Media contributed by Data USA. If you have specific requests for more data visualizations from Data USA, please contact me on my talk page. Kaldari (talk) 21:43, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Question about referencing

I don't like to "make" other editors follow up my edits to make corrections to references simply because I think every editor's time is a valuable resource that shouldn't be taken for granted. I'm pretty sure that I am okay with actual reversions of content that I create, but that is not why I am leaving this comment and question here. I've contacted various editors who have edited some articles that I have created to apologize for creating extra work for them when they reformat the references that I have added to an article. I've not gotten even one response from an editor to explain what either my problem could be nor have I received any comments regarding why they feel a need to correct the references. I suppose it isn't a huge deal, but I keep coming back to the idea that each edit takes up someone's time and I would like to avoid creating work for others. I use WikiEd's Visual editor to create and edit content. I love the whole process of adding a reference by simply adding a web url or journal numbers to create a reference in WikiEd since it takes about 15 seconds. I have a good understanding of the policy of what constitutes an acceptable referencing style (which is pretty flexible). But not only do my references get reformatted, other editors sail on by to change one format to another. I'm guessing a citation can contain more information than what others believe is unnessary, but it leaves me a little confused. Even bots come by and change the references, adding parameters, taking others away and other random things. I guess I just would like something like an explanation or theory of how and why this happening. It starting occurring in the past 10 months or so. So for almost nine years I didn't notice this being a 'thing'. Please ping. Comments? Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ 17:17, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Barbara (WVS). The Visual Editor does strange things when it creates references, including putting in fields that haven't been filled in, and formats them in ways that drive some of us nuts. Editors who clean up references use semi-automated tools, so it doesn't take much time. Bots come by to add additional identifiers, which I like because then I don't have to track down all of them myself. When I use the convenience of VE to add a reference, I go back with the source editor and clean the reference up, putting in spaces between the fields, removing unnecessary fields, etc. So don't worry about it. The most important thing is to get the references in there in the easiest possible way and you are wonderful for providing references carefully. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:29, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Can I ask maybe another, sorta weird I suppose. Do some editors enjoy correcting the references and look forward to making 'fixes'? If this is the case, perhaps I'm helping them?! I'm thinking that I might be the weird one. I am also a grandma and look at editing as something I can leave for my grandkids. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ 21:38, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Who's to say what some editors enjoy? You'd have to ask each one individually.
I have my opinions about ref formatting, although I've mellowed a bit about implementing them in my old wiki-age. Many other editors have opinions as well, and they are different opinions. Given Misplaced Pages's aversion to prescriptivism and WP:CREEP, there will forever be a lot of what I call "churning" in this area and many others. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:48, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikimania 2018 call for submissions now open

On behalf of the program commmittee of Wikimania 2018 - Cape Town, we are pleased to announce that we are now accepting proposals for workshops, discussions, presentations, or research posters to give during the conference. To read the full instructions visit the event wiki and click on the link provided there to make your proposal:

The deadline is 18 March. This is approximately 6 weeks away.
This year, the conference will have an explicit theme based in African philosophy:

Read more about this theme, why it was chosen, and what it means for determining the conference program at the Wikimedia blog. Sincerely, Wittylama 08:22, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Titles of Belarusian cities and other geographical objects

There is an official document saying about transliteration of Belarusian names into latin script. Notwithstanding that Republic of Belarus has two official languages, Belarusian names have precedence. So according to these rules the main titles of the articles got to be Viciebsk (not Vitebsk or Vitsebsk), Mahilioŭ (not Mogilev or Mahilyow), etc. --Einimi (talk) 11:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

We follow Misplaced Pages’s rules, not those of the Belarusian government. Our rules can be found at the WP:Article titles policy. Also see WP:Official names, a supplementary page that directly applies to your comment. Blueboar (talk) 11:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

That's ridiculous! Okay, why the Russian names stay firstly in the most of articles? --Einimi (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok... first, let me make it clear that I take no position on what the title of these articles should be... I am merely pointing you to our policies. Before we discuss this further, please read them. We do not favor Russian names over Belarusian names... nor do we favor Belarusian names over Russian names. What we favor is the name that is most RECOGNIZABLE to our English speaking readers. Now, if you want to argue that the Belarusian name is more recognizable than the Russian one, that’s fine... but we don’t really care which name is “official”. Blueboar (talk) 12:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The policy you're looking for is WP:COMMONNAME. --Regards, Donald Trung (Talk) 16:20, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

L. David Mech

Hola, perdón por escribir en español.

Estoy tratando de arreglar las referencias en el artículo L. David Mech para que no se vean las URLs, es decir que el link sea el texto y no la url. Ejemplo , pero por algún motivo no está funcionando como era previsto. ¿Puede alguien mirar que está pasando y arreglarlo?

Gracias Jcfidy (talk) 08:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jcfidy: Fixed. Good: → text. Bad: → . —Cryptic 08:59, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Cryptic: gracias por arreglarlo, en es.wiki funciona al revés (no sé por qué). Jcfidy (talk) 09:56, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Inherently non-neutral forum used to canvas keep !votes in AFDs?

Misplaced Pages:Article Rescue Squadron – Rescue list strikes me as a really questionable concept. I get the idea in theory, but it doesn't even tell its users to make sure their message is neutrally worded in accordance with WP:CANVAS, or to disclose in the AFD discussion that there was a post made there. Apparently this is a matter that has been discussed, but it really seems like it should be again.

Disclosure: I only just noticed the page now because I looked back at an AFD I opened a long time ago that was 3-1 in favour of deletion for almost a week, then it was listed there and within 24 hours it shifted to 6-3 and was immediately closed (as 6-1, for some reason), and when trying to figure out how it happened I noticed that. That particular incident was a bureaucratic mess that I don't really care about (I can always renominate as it's been five years), but I still really don't get how Article Rescue Squadron is supposed to work, and I don't think I'd get a response if I posted on the talk page given the current direct level of activity there.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

You know, I saw this some time ago and thought something similar (too lazy to bring it up though). Ignoring the non-neutralness of the people watching, at the very least the notifications should be neutral.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:23, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I went ahead and BOLDly told posters at least to be neutral and to be aware that canvassing is bad. User:TonyBallioni thanked me for it, just in case anyone thinks my edit wasn't immediately endorsed by anyone. Pinging you, Tony, primarily to ask how you were aware of the edit. Given our history, I really don't mind you monitoring my contribs if that's what you were doing, but I also have seen no reason to believe that is the case; and if someone had the page watchlisted and didn't oppose my edit then that kinda restores a bit of my faith in the Encyclopedia that has been oh so shaken by the discoveries of the last hour or two. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:56, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

ARS used to be a canvass-keep squad ca 2007. Eventually they were forced to reform by the community toward a "you must have evidence that the topic at AFD meets WP:42" and since it has been quite quiet. I vaguely recall an RFC around the same time as those MFDs. If the page is still problematic, I doubt anyone would have issue with it being MFDd yet again. Generally, let the sleeping dog lie. --Izno (talk) 12:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, the MFDs were in 2012 and the AFD I linked to (where they definitely messed up an AFD that had been filed in good faith and may be again) was in the summer of 2013, so it definitely wasn't fixed by that point. This message from a coupla weeks back definitely was not neutral, but was not apparently enough to stop the AFD from ending in deletion so no harm no foul I guess; some of the other messages like this one from two months ago are not great, although it's difficult to determine if they had a canvassing effect that tipped the scales against deletion. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:08, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

So basically what you are saying is that the page is problematic now because five years ago an AFD might have been incorrectly closed by a non-admin? From what I can see, there seems to be no problem with the list itself, only with editors. Even before your recent edit, the page required posters to Include specific rationale why the article/content should be retained on Misplaced Pages, and any ideas to improve the content. That some people did not follow this, does not mean the list is a problem. In fact, the list is a useful way to alert interested editors to articles worth saving, which is a good thing considering how often WP:BEFORE is violated at AFD. So with all due respect, if you cannot present evidence of current problems with list itself, I fail to see what's there to discuss. Regards SoWhy 13:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @SoWhy: Your indentation implies you are responding to my most recent comment, but the content of your reply looks more like you read my initial comment and had not read the one immediately above your own, in which I linked the diffs for two comments that virtually any reasonable observer would see as at best a weak form of canvassing. Two weeks a blatantly non-neutral comment was posted there; if the AFD had closed as "no consensus" that would definitely be a problem, but even if it never succeeded in preventing article deletions, that would just mean it doesn't serve a meaningful purpose. And telling people to include a rationale for keeping, but not to neutrally summarize the arguments of the other side, is a direct invitation to canvass. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

No, I meant to reply to that comment. The post you mentioned was made by a non-EC new user in violation of the guidelines on this page. It's not an example of systematic abuse that is promoted by this page. The other post you mention is actually perfectly fine imho. It points out various reason why the subject should be considered notable and thus possible ways to rescue the article. And the article was kept, so purpose served. Since the purpose of this list is to inform others of possible reasons why an article might be served, it makes no sense to include the deletion arguments. They are already in the AFD and can be seen by anyone interested anyway. I think the misconception here is that the list is, as ARS might have been in the past, a tool to canvass people to !vote keep without reasoning. That's evidently not the case, it's merely a tool to improve collaboration. The rules are clearly laid out on the page, including The project is not about casting !votes, nor about vote-stacking. and Base comments upon Misplaced Pages's deletion policy.. Failure to follow the rules does not mean there are no rules. On a side note, since when is AFD about judging which side had the most !votes? The point of AFD is to improve the project and even most deletionists will not !vote delete for an article if its problems were fixed, so having another venue to help with that is a net positive for the project. Regards SoWhy 16:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@SoWhy: But you didn't say any of that in your initial comment.

Anyway: made by a non-EC new user in violation of the guidelines on this page What guidelines on this page? (This page?) The guidelines at WP:CANVAS explicitly ban non-neutral notifications in non-neutral fora, but until I edited the page last night that one's only guidelines appeared to directly encourage non-neutral notifications. Do you mean that it's a violation of the guidelines for non-EC users to post there? That would be a good guideline to prevent disruption by editors unfamiliar with the relevant policies, but I can't find it mentioned anywhere on the page. Telling posters that the project is not about vote-stacking doesn't mean that that is not an effect: it's roughly equivalent to me posting notifications, "neutrally worded" or not, about the mottainai AFD on both WP:RSN and WP:FTN; you and other uninvolved parties might wonder what the relevance of those fora is, but the regular contributors there generally treat "ancient Chinese secret" claims with less credulity than the community as a whole and would be significantly more likely to !vote one way than the other based on this bias. Clearly at least one watcher of the page in question is not an avowed "inclusionist" (in the sense that he doesn't appear to support preservation of articles that cannot be written in a style that doesn't push fringe theories), but I can't imagine this is true of the majority of project members.

And no one blanked, amended or criticized the non-neutral notification from two weeks ago. If someone posted a non-neutral canvassing notification like that on a WikiProject I frequent, I would probably either blank as inappropriate canvassing or post a rebuttal immediately below, but why was that not done here?

The Korean War vet article: yeah, you may be right that the page should not have been and so was not deleted, but the message was still non-neutral, and the near-unanimous consensus at AFD means it probably was never in any danger of being deleted to begin with.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not a fan or ARS. It is still essentially a canvass keep list. Going over the list and archives, the topics that are kept would have been kept anyway, and it's main function these days is to turn AfDs that would likely close delete to no consensus. I always personally find the keep arguments garnered from listings there to be very weak (i.e. loosest reading of the GNG only without assessing any of our other policies and guidelines.) I do think Hijiri's changes were good, but I would !vote to delete if there were to be a new MfD (which I do not recommend, as I am sure that would be the XfD from hell and would likely end with no consensus and a bunch of hurt feelings.) TonyBallioni (talk) 13:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

• The topic in question – the Buddhist concept of mottainai – is clearly notable. For example, the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology states that "Adopted by Kenyan Nobel peace prize winner and environmental leader Wangari Maathai, mottainai has attained international significance..." Naturally, deletionists don't care for this idea but it is enshrined here as our policy WP:PRESERVE. The fact that we have had this article for the last five years is a good thing as it has averaged over 100 readers per day during this time – a healthy and respectable readership. The ARS should therefore be congratulated for their efforts in saving it. Note also that I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Katherine Maher recently. She said quite plainly that "I am an inclusionist" and so such action is supported at the highest level. Andrew D. (talk) 17:19, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

While I'm an open supporter of inclusionism, arguments from authority rarely convince people on this project. It's nice that WMF's ED is pro-inclusionism but unless the WMF officially intervenes in such matters, it is merely one person's opinion. Regards SoWhy 19:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: "Buddhist concept"? Are you sure?

• Routledge's own Encyclopedia of Buddhism not only does not have a standalone entry on "mottainai", but a keyword search on my Kindle copy indicates that the word doesn't appear anywhere in the book.
• The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism does not include it either as a standalone entry under that title in its 2,500-page main body or in its 140-page Japanese cross-reference index.
• I checked a Japanese dictionary aggregator as well, and the only (debatable) reference to either buddhas (仏) or gods (神) was to the latter, where it (Daijirin) said that the word could mean ② （神聖なものが）おかされて恐れ多い。忌むべきだ。 「神前をけがすとは－・い」 ("(concerning a sacred object) awful; to be avoided: pollution of a sacred altar is mottainai").

Our article describes it as both an ancient Buddhist and ancient Shinto concept, but this claim is attributed to a children's picture book. It sounds like an "ancient Chinese secret" situation to me: a fringe theory tied to a social movement that, perhaps if enough reliable sources by Japanologists existed to counter the bogus claims, then maybe we could build an article about the Kenyan social movement, without doing so at the expense of accurate and reliably-sourced coverage of Japanese language, literature and religion.

"mottainai" is just a common Japanese word meaning "wasteful", and according to User:Curly Turkey (who's been in Japan longer than me) the whole "Mottainai is a Japanese concept with no translation into English" is a dated Japanese meme; obviously the statement of a Wikipedian is not a reliable source, but it's at least as good as most of the ones currently cited in our article.

But that completely misses the point: there is no particular "topic in question", but a WikiProject that has as its stated raison d'etre to violate canvassing guidelines by providing a non-neutral inclusionist forum. Note also that I consider myself to be a mild inclusionist: a true deletionist would want to AFD the majority of the new articles I started last November, since most of them are "very obscure" (from the standpoint of the typical editor of English Misplaced Pages) and have probably never been covered in English-language RSes.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Just to be clear: I haven't researched the topic—there might be more to mottainai than I'm aware—but in my experience: there may be a Buddhist origin to the word, and Buddhism may use it in a Buddhism-specific way, but in everyday parlance there's nothing special about the word mottainai that would merit more than a note in the etymological section of a Wiktionary entry, or maybe a subsection in a Buddhism article or something. The idea that it's "a cultural practice" (or ever has been) is hard for me to stomach, and I think we need much, much, much better sources for such a statement than some offhand newspaper article. Japanese people asserting such a thing sound to me either like (a) politicians pushing an agenda; or (b) Nihonjinron advocates. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:37, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

XTools Edit Counter now available as wikitext

Hopefully this is a kosher place to advertise this... Over the years I've noticed especially on RfA talk pages that folks will manually copy/paste the results of XTools. This is probably because historically XTools goes down a lot, which is more or less not a problem today. Nonetheless, we thought the community might benefit from an easier way to present this data on-wiki, so we now have an option to view the full results as wikitext. At xtools.wmflabs.org/ec just select "View as wikitext", or you can use the "Download" dropdowns to export individual sections of the Edit Counter (some are also available in CSV format). From there you can copy/paste the formatted data to the wiki. Example output for Jimbo Wales can be found at Special:PermaLink/824376290. Eventually you'll be able to get wikitext for any tool in the XTools suite, but we started with the Edit Counter since it is the most popular. Hope others find this useful, and any feedback is appreciated. Regards — MusikAnimal 18:05, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Gun Trace Task Force scandal

I want to start the article about the Gun Trace Task Force. The trial is ongoing, so it is appropriate to write about it now? (I started the Larry Nassar article during his trial and learned quickly that it was not a good idea. That is why I am asking here first.) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:52, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: I would say that it's probably a good idea, but you will need sources better than the one you linked. The Baltimore Sun has had coverage almost since day one, besides the inclusion in TNYT in the past week. --Izno (talk) 23:16, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages village pump