User talk:Dhtwiki/Archive 7

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Archive 1

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Archive 5

Lone Ranger

The reason for the removal was that is has been mass added by a series of IPs who make no edits other than adding those links. They even know exactly which articles the links are already in to update them. It is likely a single person spamming links to his/her own site.

I was unable to find a single instance of this link being added by anyone other than these IPs. Not a single registered account has added this link. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 14:47, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@ThaddeusSholto: I looked at the site and didn't see anything promotional or irrelevant. It seems to fall into the WP:ELYES category. Is there any certainty that these links are being placed for other than selfless reasons? It could be that they are a fan of old radio shows and want to spread the good word, without necessarily benefitting economically. Dhtwiki (talk) 11:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

There is no indication that the site doesn't violate WP:COPYVIOEL and the only additions have been from IPs who mass add the link and make no other edits. It is highly unlikely it is a selfless gnome just trying to improve articles. There are many other ways to improve articles and these IPs take none of those avenues. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

We probably should ask someone who can expertly evaluate the possibly of outlawsgameroom.com violating copyright with their hosting of material, but that doesn't mean we need to automatically assume such violation. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Radetzky March

Thanks for substituting the subscription-only FT source at Vienna New Year's Concert, but not that mysterious really: [1]. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:51, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

The title of the Financial Times article, "Vienna New Year’s Day concert severs link to Nazi era" was not specific as to what that link was. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:29, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I guess the Financial Times has their editorial policy, that aims to lure certain readers via a headline, just like any other newspaper. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:55, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area

Total Area is Land Area + Water Area, which was not calculated for Pakistan. I.e. the Total was showing only the Land Area. For all other countries in the list the Land Area and Water Area is added to arrive at Total Area. It's a calculation issue not a source issue. Do the maths please and see the definition of Total Area on the top of the page: "Total area: the sum of land and water areas within international boundaries and coastlines." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Poloplayers (talk • contribs) 08:54, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll have to check what you're doing later, but sources are what the previous figures were checked against. It is a source issue. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:16, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I see now that you've corrected the redundancy of the total area equalling the land area. Good. Perhaps. However, I was under the impression that the smaller figure was the total area, per the discussion I referenced, which was consistent with the article on Pakistan. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:34, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Ninam, Satara

Hello:

I notice in your copy edit of this article you removed ALL of the measurment conversions I added. This was a complete was of my time. It is standard practice in Wikipedia articles to add conversions so that measurements can be understood by the widest number of readers. I notice you added bold text to numbers and some percentages (it was inconsistent) which is unnecessary.

Since I removed the June copy edit tag when I completed my work, if you feel the article needs additional work, and it now most certainly does, the copy edit tag you added should have had a January date. I have corrected this.

Twofingered Typist (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Twofingered Typist: You need to look at *my* last version and look at the article's edit history more closely. User:RAJU1426 seems to think that this is his article and has been reverting my work, leaving it in the sad shape that you found it. He is wasting both our times and being very disruptive. I have left multiple warning notices, along with pleas for him to cease in my edit summaries. It's probably time to try and have him blocked. Would you assist in that? Dhtwiki (talk) 21:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

My sincere apologies, I realized after I received your revert notice that it was User:RAJU1426 causing all the problems! I am glad you were able to revert to an earlier version (I do not know how to do that.) I would be happy to assist in having him blocked. Just let me know what you would like me to do. Twofingered Typist (talk) 22:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

To restore a previous version, I use Twinkle's function for that; but all one has to do is bring up an old version in edit mode and publish it, in order to accomplish the same thing.

I have left another warning message and will consider what admin notice board may be appropriate. I may ping you if I go to ANI. RAJU has several edits this month and may have felt that I was arrogant by starting my copy edit without a by-your-leave. However, the article did need a lot of work, and RAJU's right to feel abused has its limits, especially when their reverts—which often, if not invariably, restore the need-for-copy-edit template—draws in those whose assistance is not really needed. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The article was reverted again, this time by user 86.98.42.4. I think I restored it correctly. I left a warning on 86.98.42.4's talk page. I think it's time to have them both blocked. I have never done this, but I assume you know what process to follow. I am happy to help in any way. Regards, Twofingered Typist (talk) 13:10, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

That may be RAJU socking. I'll have to take a look. I have never had to go to ANI before, but I know that's a complicated process. I'll take a look at whatever the edit-warring notice board is. I think that I've only used the vandalism notice board, which is fairly simple; but this doesn't seem to be straight vandalism. I'm hoping not to chase away someone who otherwise can be a helpful editor. I see that User:Jonesey95 has made some edits to the article. Perhaps because he's watching this, which reminds me that he restored my user page, which RAJU had blanked as part of his display of pique. This has to be more drama than I've ever encountered in my several years of copy editing for the guild. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The editor has only been around for two weeks. They will probably figure it out or go away. Their other contributions looks pretty harmless. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Percent

Your recent reversion of my change of percent to % in the Sugarcane article missed the point of the exercise: the article contained a mix of % and percent. I merely made it consistent throughout, opting for the usage most prevalent. Seligne (talk) 10:12, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Then I should change it back. I didn't notice that and consistency is key. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:15, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Our 2019 Annual Report is now ready for review.

Highlights:

Overview of Backlog-reduction progress (a record low backlog!);
Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page;
Automated archiving of requests;
Membership news and results of elections;
Annual leaderboard;
Plans for 2020.

– Your Guild coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

January 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 12,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE January 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 16:54, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for helping to bring the copy-editing backlog to a record low! – Reidgreg (talk) 16:54, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

San Francisco

Any city is referred to as "the city" by the local region. It's not a specific nickname for San Francisco. One source is local, so of course it'll refer to San Francisco as "the city". The other source says, "You can definitely identify yourself as a local if you refer to your city as The City." Again, referring to any local city. Since the nickname isn't specific to San Francisco, it shouldn't be listed. CTF83! 02:32, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@CTF83!: You're arguing from your own logic, but what we are going by is what can be sourced, however irrational it might seem. You are welcome to start a conversation on the article talk page. However, I remember several discussions on the issue. You should check the talk page archives, to see what others have said about the issue. It's possible you could gain consensus for a change, but what is on the page now can be considered the result of previous discussions and consensus, which have to be respected. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

February 2020 GOCE blitz bling

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE February 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring over lede of University of California, Berkeley

It seems odd to tell another editor to join a discussion that you yourself have not joined especially when that discussion appears to describe a consensus contrary to the edit you made. ElKevbo (talk) 05:03, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: I was trying to give the IP editor a way to make their point, which they might not know about, while keeping information on the page that must have been the result of previous consensus. Since it's not my contention that the information is false, I don't feel compelled to start a discussion (I have participated somewhat, if not often, in previous discussions on this topic, of which there have been several). Even if some of the references now show different rankings, we should be thinking about changing the references and/or the language to fit, not just removing that information and all of its references (which the IP editor has just done again). I don't see where consensus has developed for its removal. You, in an edit summary, seemed to be re-thinking your reasoning, some of which I didn't think warranted when you based it on guidelines that I thought you had misinterpreted. Dhtwiki (talk) 08:50, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with the unregistered editor's rationale for removing the sentence but agree with the removal of the sentence on other grounds. ElKevbo (talk) 12:33, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

GOCE March newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2019. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2020, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.

Election results: There was little changeover in the roster of Guild Coordinators, with Miniapolis stepping down with distinction as a coordinator emeritus while Jonesey95 returned as lead coordinator. The next election is scheduled for June 2020 and all Wikipedians in good standing may participate.

January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work, completing 215 copy edits including 56 articles from the Requests page and 116 backlog articles from the target months of June to August 2019. At the conclusion of the drive there was a record low of 323 articles in the copy editing backlog. Of the 27 editors who signed up for the drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

February Blitz: Of the 15 editors who signed up for this one-week blitz, 13 completed at least one copy edit. A total of 32 articles were copy edited, evenly split between the twin goals of requests and the oldest articles from the copy-editing backlog. Full results are here.

March Drive: Currently underway, this event is targeting requests and backlog articles from September to November 2019. As of 18 March, the backlog stands at a record low of 253 articles and is expected to drop further as the drive progresses. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Help set a new record and sign up now!

Progress report: As of 18 March, GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests in 2020 and there was a net reduction of 385 articles from the copy-editing backlog – a 60% decrease from the beginning of the year. Well done and thank you everyone!

Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

United States article

Hello Dhtwiki, I would suggest that we retain the Golden Gate bridge pic — I know the Transpiration section has those two maps already, but overall the Infrastructure section lacks illustration. I think this image is a good selection because it ties well with with the overall subject matter, but also has a historical connection showing that the US was a pioneer in big scale construction, a trend which continues today. Also, regarding the State Funeral image, I would recommend that it is swapped for something else, it seems more like a current event highlight than a important historical fact. --E-960 (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@E-960: Sorry, but I think it's too crowded in that section, with text being scrunched by photos, and the image isn't really necessary or explanatory of relevant text. Since it was just placed this month, I've removed it and will leave it for consensus to decide, if you wish to start a talk page thread. The state funeral image that I recall shows several (ex-)presidents and their wives, as well as vice presidents, etc. It's not particularly necessary, but the last time it was swapped out, it was replaced by a photo showing only two presidents (Obama and Bush?), IIRC, which was even less illustrative of anything. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:34, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Initially, the image with Obama and Bush[2] was added to highlight the transition of power to the first African-American President, which had an indirect correlation to the text. The funeral image though, just shows the four presidents, and the event itself, a state funeral is rather an unusual subject matter to be highlighted. --E-960 (talk) 10:04, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@E-960: I think focusing on Obama's race trivializes him; but if you want to do that, the funeral photo (a funeral being where you can find all these people together) shows that just as well. Get consensus for its removal. Substituting another photo that focuses on just Obama, and others who have long since left government, isn't a suitable replacement, IMO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhtwiki (talk • contribs) 23:45, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

March 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The (modern) Guild of Copy Editors Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 40,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE March 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Long Articles, 5th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting 3 long articles during the GOCE March 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Longest Article, 5th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting one of the five longest articles – 12,547 words – during the GOCE March 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for helping to reduce the copy-editing backlog by 75% in one month! – Reidgreg (talk) 21:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Relevant discussion on WT:HED

A discussion which may be relevant to you is currently taking place on WT:HED (section) on the wider picture of WP:BOOSTERISM across university articles. Please see the relevant section if you wish to contribute, as any consensus made there may end up impacting articles you have contributed to (UC Berkeley), and it would be sensible to get involved earlier rather than going through any discussion it again if it affects those pages. Your views and input would be most welcome! Shadowssettle_(talk) 16:48, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I have taken an interest and posted a short reply there. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:06, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

April 2020 GOCE blitz bling

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 10,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE April 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 20:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

		The Copy Editor's 10K Star
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy-editing at least one individual article of more than 10,000 words during the most recent Guild of Copy Editors' Drive or Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 20:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:48, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Dhtwiki (talk) 14:40, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Short description punctuation

(Reverted 1 edit by PJsg1011 (talk): "short description" is something else entirely; it has nothing to do with image captions (TW))
—Dhtwiki, Revision as of 23:34, 22 May 2020

That's right, WP:Short descriptions have nothing to do with image captions..... which is why the WP:CAPFRAG punctuation rules you cited in your original undo do not apply to short descriptions. Is there a rule that says short descriptions need terminal punctuation? It seems like the norm is to leave them without punctuation, regardless of whether or not the short description itself is a sentence fragment. If this is incorrect, please let me know and include evidence as to why.—PJsg1011 (talk) 23:27, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@PJsg1011: You seem to want to say that the image caption is a "short description", which it is in general, but not in terms of what "WP:Short description" addresses—a description of the article, usually a mirror of what exists at Wikidata—and is not about "captions" at all, that I could see. The text that is part of an image specification, and serves as the description of the image, is a "caption", whether long or short or whatever you choose to call it, and should adhere to the rules of WP:CAPFRAG, which explicitly addresses the punctuation of such descriptions. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:45, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: There is some kind of misunderstanding here. We both agree that a WP:Caption and a WP:Short description are separate things, with different rules governing the use of punctuation. Short descriptions, as WP:Short description defines them, are brief lines of text (approximately 40 characters) which describe an article in very general terms and which appear beneath the title of the article in a list of search results on mobile devices rendering Wikipedia. They exist mostly to help mobile users easily distinguish between similarly named articles without having to click on the article link in the search results, and yes, they are often mirrors of Wikidata text, though Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions intends to phase that out eventually. An image caption, on the other hand, is just as you've described it above – the text that is part of an image specification, which serves as a description of a specific image.

What you seem to misunderstand is that the template I edited in the Manhattan Project article—in the edits you undid—is not an image caption; it is a WP:Short description, which is obvious because it uses the short description template – the markup for which looks like this:

{{short description}}

Here is what the markup for the first three lines of the Manhattan Project article looks like as of the current revision:

{{short description|Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs.}}

{{About|the atomic bomb project}}

{{pp-vandalism|small=yes}}

The edits I made were to the period at the end of the first template, the entirety of which I have highlighted in bold. Note that this first template begins with the markup

{{short description|

which means that the text within it is a "short description" as it is defined at WP:Short description. It is ***not*** a WP:Caption. Therefore it must follow the rules for formatting short descriptions as defined at WP:Short description. I removed the period after "atomic bombs" because, in the overwhelming majority of articles that include a short description template, the text within the template is not terminated with a period, and I am attempting to make the formatting consistent across all short description templates.

I am aware that the punctuation rules for a WP:Short description are different from the punctuation rules for a WP:Caption. But you do not seem to be aware that the line

{{short description|Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs.}}

at the beginning of the Manhattan Project article is, again, not an image caption. It does not refer to any specific image, which should be obvious from the markup. The nearest image file is the one in the infobox, specified by the markup

| image = Trinity shot color.jpg

and it has its own caption, which is specified by the markup

| caption = The [[Trinity (nuclear test)|Trinity test]] of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a [[nuclear weapon]].

(The punctuation for this image caption is correctly formatted, and I have no issue with it.) My edits were made to the short description template, as I've outlined above. Somehow I think you must have missed the fact that this template is actually a short description template, and does not refer to any image. Did you read the markup correctly before you undid my edits?

Sorry for the long explanation. I just feel the need to clarify my argument as explicitly as possible. Please let me know if any of this is not clear.—PJsg1011 (talk) 01:44, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@PJsg1011: OK, my apologies. I'm thinking "caption" when it's not. That's one of the problems with reading diffs, as I tend to do; the distinction isn't as readily apparent. However, I don't see where periods in short descriptions are forbidden. Wikipedia:Short_description says only that "The short description should not be a full sentence unless absolutely necessary." I read "Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs." as a full sentence (with the finite verb "produced"), as opposed to saying such as "Research and development project producing the first atomic bombs" (sentence fragment with the participial phrase "producing...", but no finite verb). It sounds as though the caption fragment rule could apply here. I don't see its being ruled out. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: Yes, you're correct regarding the punctuation rules for WP:Short description – they're not fully explicated, and so there is some ambiguity about how to treat short descriptions, regardless of whether they are full sentences or fragments. I've only found two places which refer explicitly to the use of punctuation in short descriptions. The example you've pointed out above, from the WP:Short description page, does not directly mention punctuation but does mention full sentences, for which we might be tempted to apply conventional punctuation rules:

The short description should not be a full sentence unless absolutely necessary.

Irrespective of that temptation, this statement implies that short descriptions would ideally be written as sentence fragments, without terminal punctuation, but again, I believe you're correct in saying that nothing in this statement explicitly forbids terminal punctuation. The first place punctuation is directly mentioned is on the WP:WikiProject Short descriptions page, under the heading "How to write a short description", which includes the line:

Use sentence case, start with a capital letter, terminal punctuation is not needed for sentence fragments.

This doesn't really help a whole lot except that it adds an explicit mention of terminal punctuation and seems to recommend that it not be used for sentence fragments. Because the first statement suggests that the ideal short description is not a full sentence, and is therefore a fragment, we might reasonably conclude that short descriptions should ideally never have terminal punctuation – but again, this has not been put explicitly by either of these statements. The only other place punctuation is directly mentioned is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Short descriptions#Shortdesc. punctuation, which discusses our very same conundrum at length. It's worth a read. It points out the same ambiguities and seems to arrive tenuously at the conclusion that:

there seems to be a consensus against terminal punctuation

All of this suggests to me that, in the ideal scenario, terminal punctuation would not be used for short descriptions. As I described in my previous comment, just looking at all the articles with short descriptions on the mobile app, one gets the impression that the overwhelming majority of short descriptions already follows this rule, i.e. they are not terminated with a period. And so my edits were an attempt to make this unwritten "consensus" consistent across all short descriptions.

If you really want to keep the punctuation in the short description for Manhattan Project, so be it – there doesn't seem to be any explicit technicality which I can cite in refuting that. Though I will argue that your reading of "Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs" as a full sentence is demonstrably incorrect.

In my reading, it is not a full sentence at all, but rather a dependent clause containing an embedded relative clause within it. The relative clause "that produced the first atomic bombs" modifies the subject "Research and development project". It is as if the relative clause is an adjective. It is describing, as an adjective would, the "Research and development project", by clarifying that the project "produced the first atomic bombs". The presence of the relative pronoun "that" prior to "produced" makes all the difference, and identifies this as a relative clause. This concept is no different than in the clause "the grass that grew", where the subject ("the grass") is described by the relative clause ("that grew"). We wouldn't say "the grass that grew" is a complete sentence.

Neither "Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs" nor "the grass that grew" is a complete sentence because each merely represents a subject described by a relative clause, and each lacks a predicate to go along with the described subject. There is no external verb and object to detail upon what the "Research and development project" or "the grass" is acting. Yes, "produced" and "grew" are both verbs, but they both act adverbially to describe the subjects in their respective relative clauses; they do not act outside of the relative clause. Both lines, in their entirety, are dependent clauses without independent clauses to make them full sentences, and therefore they are sentence fragments. In the Manhattan Project example, whether or not we use "produced" or "producing" or any other variation of this verb, finite or non-finite, is irrelevant, because the verb is contained within a relative clause and is not being used as part of a predicate. If the line was instead "Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs was a success.", then you would have a full sentence, because the element "was a success" is a predicate modifying the subject "Research and development project". But that's not the case.

Glossaries and dictionaries are great examples of this issue, because they typically define each term with a sentence fragment which amounts to a subject + a relative clause, but which entirely excludes a predicate. For both glossaries and dictionaries, the convention is to omit the implicit predicate "It is..." or "It was..." preceding the subject + relative clause (possibly simply to save space), which is necessary to make the line a complete sentence. We can imagine looking up the definition of Manhattan Project in a dictionary, where we wouldn't normally expect to find:

Manhattan Project

It was [the] research and development project that produced the atomic bombs.

In most dictionaries, we would instead find:

Manhattan Project

[The] research and development project that produced the atomic bombs.

WP:Short descriptions work the same way; they are like definitions in glossaries or dictionaries, giving a bit of information about what the article title "is" or "was", without explicitly stating "It is" or "It was" at the beginning. In cases where they don't explicitly state "It is" or "It was" or some other predicate, they are sentence fragments by definition. As we've already discussed regarding the punctuation rules for short descriptions, the ideal short description is a sentence fragment, for which terminal punctuation is neither necessary nor desirable (by editor "consensus"). Because of this, the short description "Research and development project that produced the atomic bombs." should have the terminal period removed.

I hope that makes sense. While I disagree with your interpretation of this particular short description being a full sentence, I agree that the punctuation rules for short descriptions need more elaboration than unwritten editorial consensus provides us. I am considering making a bold edit to the WP:Short description page for exactly this reason, and seeing what conflict might emerge, if any.—PJsg1011 (talk) 00:06, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I've looked at your links and find consistency to be the strongest argument in favor of not having terminal punctuation. However, the discussion-page section is not particularly well attended, nor are strong injunctions being proposed. Although I want to check on your grammatical analysis, it seems impressively well founded. It is certainly thorough. I was afraid of something like that. Something else to consider is that I undid your undoing of something that already was there. Does the article edit history give any rationale for it? That article seems well curated. There may have been some thought behind putting that period there. Dhtwiki (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I checked the article history and the edit that originally introduced the {{short description}} template appears to be recent, dating to 18 April of this year. The following is the text of the edit summary:

(Importing Wikidata short description: "Research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs." (Shortdesc helper))

This suggests to me that there was not, in fact, much thought in putting that period there, and that the period was merely brought along as part of a transclusion from the original Wikidata description. This is a very common method of quickly generating short descriptions for articles with corresponding Wikidata, and indeed is now frequently performed by bots (though it can still be performed by humans, too, as was apparently the case with Manhattan Project). Wikidata descriptions do not adhere to any consistent or well-defined set of grammar, formatting, or punctuation rules, and whatever grammar, formatting, or punctuation they happen to use is not intended to serve as an example for how short descriptions should appear – there is a reason WP:Short description has attempted to outline its own set of rules (albeit very ambiguously, as we've discovered), and it is precisely because Wikidata descriptions are not accepted as reproducible standards.

Reading WP:Short description, WP:WikiProject Short descriptions, and the related talk pages, it is quite clear that the transclusion of Wikidata into short description templates was intended to quickly add short descriptions to a significant proportion of the articles on Wikipedia ("2 million" was the original goal) in order to increase the visibility of the new template and Wikipedians' familiarity with it. Human users have been tasked with performing the much slower process of refining each short description page-by-page to ensure each is accurate, appropriate, consistently formatted, etc. The administrators of the short description ideology have made it evident that raw, unmodified Wikidata text is often undesirable or downright inaccurate, and that the eventual fate of the short description template, when a critical mass of automatically populated templates is achieved, will be to detach it entirely from Wikidata, so that the templates will no longer be auto-populated and will rely only on human users to manage existing ones and add new ones.

Given these considerations, my opinion is still that the period does not belong, and that it is the responsibility of human users like us to ensure that formatting is consistent across short description templates. But I'll leave Manhattan Project as it is now until a more solid and explicit rule regarding the use of punctuation in short descriptions is provided by WP:Short description or WP:WikiProject Short descriptions. Part of the problem is that the idea of the short description is so new, and remains unfamiliar to much of the population of Wikipedia editors because it is normally visible only on mobile renderings of Wikipedia. I expect that, in time, less ambiguous rules will be introduced, and we'll all be able to breathe easier about the presence or absence of individual punctuation marks. Lol.

I very much appreciate your good-faith efforts to hear and understand my arguments for my position, which despite the triviality of its consequence, I will continue to stand by unless confronted with sufficient evidence to the contrary. But I must thank you for your honest and rational approach. Sorry for blowing up your talk page with all this text..... I tend to get rather prolix when explaining my side. Personally I would be totally cool with it if WP:Short description admins tomorrow published a definitive set of rules stating that terminal punctuation was mandatory for all short descriptions, sentence fragments or otherwise; like you, I really just want a straightforward, unequivocal set of rules and prescriptions for what to do, one way or the other! But it looks like we might have to wait for that.—PJsg1011 (talk) 01:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Your edit

Re this edit, just wanted to let you know that appreciate your designation of lowercase sigmabot's edit as good faith; AGF applies to bots too, it seems haha. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:02, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

May 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 12,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE May 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 05:42, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2020. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. All times and dates stated are in UTC.

Current events

Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 00:01 on 16 June. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, or you know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

June Blitz: This blitz begins at 00:01 on 14 June and ends at 23:59 on 20 June, with themes of articles tagged for copyedit in May 2020 and requests.

Drive and blitz reports

March Drive: Self-isolation from coronavirus may have played a hand in making this one of our most successful backlog elimination drives. The copy-editing backlog was reduced from 477 to a record low of 118 articles, a 75% reduction. The last four months of 2019 were cleared, reducing the backlog to three months. Fifty requests were also completed, and the total word count of copy-edited articles was 759,945. Of the 29 editors who signed up, 22 completed at least one copy edit. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

April Blitz: This blitz ran from 12 to 18 April with a theme of Indian military history. Of the 18 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed a total of 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

May Drive: This event marked the 10th anniversary of the GOCE's copy-editing drives, and set a goal of diminishing the backlog to just one month of articles, as close to zero articles as possible. We achieved the goal of eliminating all articles that had been tagged prior to the start of the drive, for the first time in our history! Of the 51 editors who signed up, 43 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Other news

Progress report: as of 2 June, GOCE participants had processed 328 requests since 1 January, which puts us on pace to exceed any previous year's number of requests. As of the end of the May drive, the backlog stood at just 156 articles, all tagged in May 2020.

Outreach: To mark the 10th anniversary of our first Backlog Elimination Drive, The Signpost contributor and GOCE participant Puddleglum2.0 interviewed project coordinators and copy-editors for the journal's April WikiProject Report. The Drive and the current Election of Coordinators have also been covered in The Signpost's May News and Notes page.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC).

Veeps who've served less then a year, infobox entry on Prez bios

Howdy. Was trying to bring the US prez bio article's infoboxes veep entries to consistency. Some of the veeps who served less then a full year, didn't have 'periods' at the end of both months. Anyways, I've added a 'period' to the inaugural months, to make them consistent with FDR's Truman entry. GoodDay (talk) 13:52, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@GoodDay: I'm not aware of how other presidential articles do it. It just seemed odd to me to not have a period to indicate an abbreviation, especially since it was already there and because "Jan" is a name. I thought of either spelling out the months or leaving them off altogether (just "1945", since the other VP terms are given only in years). Dhtwiki (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

We don't put periods after month abbreviations on en.WP. See MOS:DATESNO. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Either way, as long as all are consistent. GoodDay (talk) 14:07, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

United States question

What POV did you detect in my edit to the American Indian Wars linktext in the lede? I didn't come at it with any POV, I was just trying to make the wording more precise. However, I do now realize that that sentence was referring to a wider time period than I'd realized. The portion of these wars where I have the most detailed knowledge (the northern Plains wars), are much closer to the "war" side of the war–genocide spectrum than many other parts of the Indian Wars (and including the only major Native victory in the history of all these wars), especially thinking about what happened in California in the 1840s and 1850s (California genocide). I'm just not sure of the best way to encompass a century of wars, deportations, massacres, and genocides in ~half a dozen words. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 06:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The description about displacing Native Americans was recently changed to include killing. You seemed to want to include the fact that some tribes were wiped out. That's certainly true, as is likely the fact that some small white settlements were eradicated; but it doesn't have to be stated beyond the fact that killing took place. That's the POV I detected. Furthermore, the wording wasn't more precise, it was just wordier and actually non-sensical, as I made plain in my edit summary. This is the lead, after all. We don't have to have much detail there. There's still the article body and subordinate articles on the treatment of Native Americans for people to consult. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

UCB?

The unregistered editor who removed "UCB" from the lede sentence of University of California, Berkeley‎ has a legitimate point. Can you please provide evidence that the institution is commonly referred to as "UCB?" Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 23:25, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: The second source recommends against using such an abbreviation, which certainly suggests that it's widely used. The first, unarchived source doesn't include such a warning. UCB doesn't have to be there, but the removal of something longstanding needs some agreement or better explanation. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:34, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure it's been used somewhere - it's an obvious abbreviation and parallel with abbreviations used for many other UC campuses - but it's not clear to me that it's ever been commonly used. And I don't think it's longstanding because as far as I can tell it was only added a few hours ago. ElKevbo (talk) 23:55, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's recent, other than recently added during a back-and-forth edit war. I remember having a discussion on its inclusion some time ago. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:21, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

June 2020 GOCE blitz bling

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 6,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE June 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 17:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Noob wants to add pyramid theory

Adding to Wikipedia is confusing... I've had my pyramid theory removed twice, created an account, and finally saw the reasons why it was being removed, which is because the page I link to is the index of the magazine that published my theory, but not the page within the magazine.

Since this is a commercial magazine, I'm pretty sure I can't just provide the article myself, so my problem is how do I provide a citation?

I linked to my YouTube video, but that's not allowed.

Can I make my own webpage that demonstrates my idea and link to that?

Also, I tried uploading a picture (a frame from my movie) that makes the concept clear, but Wikipedia said it couldn't prove that I created it. How do I sign an image for Wikipedia?

Thanks! Greg Moress GMoress (talk) 17:59, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@GMoress: I gave my reason for reverting; there were at least two others who also reverted your adding the same material as an IP. Kudos for getting your own account, but that won't necessarily mean you'll get your theory added. Once reverted, you should start a discussion on the article's talk page, where you can get more feedback than I can give you as how appropriate your material is for the article, this according to the bold, revert, discuss cycle we employ here.

Your citation looks good (e.g. you're using an actual citation template, which is a good start); it just lacked page numbers within the magazine. That doesn't necessarily mean the magazine is a particularly reliable source (the fact that it does have its own Wikipedia article helps somewhat, I think).

I looked at your YouTube video. It is ridiculously good for what it is, but does it really offer a novel insight into how the Egyptians built their pyramids, as opposed to being a rather clever insight into how they might have done it? The method you give is quite detailed, but it doesn't actually prove much. Is it the most energy efficient, given friction, or the possibility that the making and passing of sandbags to the top isn't particularly efficient, as opposed to just having teams stand on the ground and pull ropes? What about safety issues, when a rope or other apparatus breaks? In general, YouTube isn't regarded as a reliable source.

Another problem is that you are self-publishing your theory, which can be considered conflict of interest or excessively promotional. Dhtwiki (talk) 08:34, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

July 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The (old school) League of Copy Editors Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 30,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE July 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Long Articles, 4th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting 2 long articles during the GOCE July 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Daimler DS420

Are you aware that you are busily changing British English to, I presume California English? Eddaido (talk) 23:28, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

@Eddaido: I'm busily trying to make the article clearer and more concise. What changes constitute California English? Some of those terms can be changed back, if necessary. However, there is a lot there that can stand improvement from a grammatical and compositional standpoint. I'm not new to editing British English articles nor am I unacquainted with fine old English car restorations. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:36, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I think you are busily changing things to things you think other Californians will understand. Am I wrong? Please understand that the article which is about a car has been covered over with what I gather North Americans call Cruft. Sometime it is clear you do not understand what you are doing. I will go back over it when you are finished. Eddaido (talk) 23:38, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

August 2020 GOCE blitz bling

		The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 4,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE August 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Reidgreg (talk) 15:00, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Archiving active links

Please stop removing these. The option was put in the tool for a reason. I've had to deal with too many links that became dead - one I had put in, and I didn't archive it because I didn't know how to do it then, and now it's gone forever. Even tbe owner of the small site where it was doesn't have it, I asked. Sure, most of the archiving is never going to be used and it makes the file very slightly bigger. But the payoff sometimes is enormous. So please leave them alone. Thank you, deisenbe (talk) 21:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

@Deisenbe: I've given a detailed response at Talk:John Brown (abolitionist). That post mentioned but didn't emphasize that creating archive links doesn't create the archive, as you may be thinking here. It's not like making backups. As for what you "lost", were those irreplaceable documents relating to Wikipedia? And how can you be sure, with all the backing up by various systems and users making their own private copies, that such material is "gone forever"? Dhtwiki (talk) 19:47, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2020.

Current and upcoming events

September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today!

Election reminder: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 December. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Drive and Blitz reports

June Blitz: An uncorrected typo (even copy editors make copy editing mistakes!) led to an eight-day "leap blitz" from 14 to 21 June, focusing on requests and articles tagged in May. 19 participating editors claimed 54 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

July Drive: Over 750,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event, keeping pace with the previous three self-isolated drives. Of the 38 people who signed up, 30 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here.

August Blitz: From 16 to 22 August, we copy edited articles tagged in June and July 2020 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 37 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Other news

June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Baffle gab1978, Tdslk, Twofingered Typist, and first-time coordinator Puddleglum2.0. Reidgreg took a break after serving for a couple years. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Progress report: As of 01:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 532 requests since 1 January and there were 38 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above).

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

John Brown (abolitionist) hatnotes

Hi,

The reasoning behind the edits you corrected here is that these aren't "hatnotes" in that they're invisible. Stacking visible and invisible templates side-by-side has a nasty habit of introducing excessive whitespace if one is not careful. Furthermore, neither of these templates really impacts article editors; one just adds a non-mandatory lock notice, and the other is primarily for the sake of bots which wouldn't be able to readily divine the correct English variant from a skim of the subject. There's no real strong consensus either way as to where these go, but I do habitually get them out of the way of the lead as the more curly-bracket junk at the top of articles the more difficult it is for inexperienced editors to dive in. I'm not reverting but wanted to give you a heads-up. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Thumperward and Dhtwiki, please see MOS:ORDER, where there is a confusing note saying that "English variety and date style" templates can go at the top or the bottom. I suppose this means that they should not be moved from one place to the other unless there is consensus at an article or project level. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Rather than wasting our time on an entirely civil discussion about actual policy, why not cluebat Attic Salt (talk · contribs) for obvious MOS violations? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:41, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I misspoke when I called them hatnotes in my edit summary; they are maintenance templates. In my experience those that I moved are always found at the top of an article, which allows editors to see that they've been placed (the "Use mdy dates" can be especially helpful in ~~guiding~~ showing new editors the agreed-upon date format, where that is usually otherwise gleaned by laboriously checking dates within the article and its references). The only way that whitespace is introduced to the rendered page, AFAIK, is if the placement of hatnotes comes with excess line breaks or "break" tags included. Hatnotes are always visible; maintenance templates sometimes so (compare a "copy edit" template (always visible), a "Use mdy dates" template (invisible, except to those who view it in raw editing mode), and the "pp-vandalism" (probably its presence revealed only under certain circumstances). Dhtwiki (talk) 22:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Battle of Zama

hey, I got the source from the Battle of Zama in anthor Wikipedia article The year 202BC one Ifk how to link it THEREALhistoryandgames (talk) 18:58, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@THEREALhistoryandgames: Can you give the name of the Wikipedia article? The most specific date from a trusted source (Cary's History of Rome) that I could find is "in the summer of 202 BC", which is at variance with your October date. The source for any date specific to the day of the week would have to show its work, as the Romans of that time used a strictly lunar calendar whose days wouldn't equate easily to ours. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I saw it on the wiki page "202BC" THEREALhistoryandgames (talk) 22:16, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The "October 19" date was added here, but without explanation or source, by User:Llywrch, who still seems active. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:28, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

My first reaction when I read this was surprise; I'm usually very conscientious about providing sources. Nevertheless, I looked thru what sources I have at hand that I thought I might have drawn on to supply that date. I failed to find anything. (If there is a reliable source for the date, it would be found amongst the books cited in Battle of Cannae; I have found the date of that battle, & did provide reliable sources for it.) As a last step I looked at the edit mentioned & discovered I made it back in 2003! Well, to be precise, I copied that edit from another that I had made here in December 2002. After almost 18 years, & countless changes in policy & revisions to the definition of what constitutes a reliable source (in 2003, there really wasn't one, let alone a way to indicate it), about the only thing I can say about it now is that I didn't just invent the date. I must have found it in some book or magazine -- but I won't claim it was a reliable source, let alone anything from that time missing a source.

In brief, I can find no source for that. Feel free to remove that edit. If there is a reliable source that provides a date, someone will add it. But having learned a bit about Classical history since then, I doubt anyone can be more precise than "summer" or "fall" of 202 BC. -- llywrch (talk) 06:01, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I've checked another source, without finding anything specific. I'm surprised that there isn't anything more specific, since it was an important battle and the Romans did have detailed time keeping. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I found the October 19 date in my Britannica's biography of Scipio Africanus, but it wasn't given in the articles on Zama or the Punic Wars. Polybius and Livy, which seem to be the main ancient sources are faulted in notes for flawed chronology and being fragmentary after Cannae (Polybius especially). I'm sure there's a monograph somewhere that can resolve some of this. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I believe I found the ultimate source for the 19 October date. (I'll note again that this was not the source I relied on back in 2002, but where the date came from in the now-forgotten source I relied on.) However, it may not be reliable enough to be used beyond the article on the Battle of Zama, & only if qualified.

First, it needs to be emphasized that our ancient sources rarely provided the dates of events. We know the date of the Battle of Cannae (which was preserved in Macrobius' Saturnalia) only because it was considered an inauspicious day, & therefore the Romans afterwards were careful not to conduct business or legal actions on that day. So when I reviewed the pages of Polybius & Livy, I was not surprised that not only no date was provided for this fateful battle, there really was no helpful indication what part of the year the battle took place. Livy (xxx.36) mentions a skirmish that transpired after Zama which he dates with surprising precision to the first day of Saturnalia (= 17 December, by the pre-Julian calendar), but all that does is narrow the possible date to sometime between the end of April (or whenever Hannibal arrived in Africa) & the end of November.

Nevertheless, a footnote in P.S. Derow, "The Roman Calendar, 218–191 B.C.", Phoenix, 30 (1976), pp. 265-281 pointed me to Zonaras' epitome of Dio Cassius' history, where it is claimed that the sun was eclipsed immediately before the battle. This eclipse can be dated to 19 October, & this is where the date of the battle comes from. But neither Polybius (who was drawing on living memory for his history) or Livy (who drew on Polybius) mention this eclipse. We now face a choice: do we trust a 12th century summary of a work written in the 3rd century, or two authors who wrote much closer to the time, & who could access both living memory & contemporary documents?

To repeat myself, while I would have no problem discussing this in the article (along the lines of "this battle might have been fought 19 October 202 BC"), I wouldn't add it to either October 19 or 202 BC because this source is just not reliable enough. -- llywrch (talk) 05:23, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm in agreement (mostly; and thank you for your detailed exposition). I'll re-add the date at Battle of Zama, with a caveat (especially since Cary thinks it was fought in the summer). I'll let you, or others, decide what to do at the other articles you've linked to; I don't mind leaving the more specific date there, for the sake of consistency. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:33, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

September 2020 GOCE drive bling

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 20,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE September 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 02:41, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Old Articles, 5th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting 5 old articles during the GOCE September 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Tdslk (talk) 02:41, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your consistent participation in the GOCE drives and blitzes! – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:52, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Gladiator

Hi. There is no good source for gladiators endorsing products in billboards. That's why I mentioned that the idea was in the script (a fact), but deleted all references to that occurring in real life. I believe we should recover that. You might re-write it if you want--Jbaranao (talk) 15:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

@Jbaranao: Here is my reversion. As I said, in your edit summary you seemed to be arguing against what you were including in the article: "no reliable source mentioning gladiators endorsing products in billboards" vs. "In an early version of the script, Maximus signs a deal with 'Golden Pompeii Olive Oil Company' for him to appear in billboards in public spaces"). For one thing, Google is not letting me see the relevant page of your source; for another, the source, on another page, makes questionable assertions ("I am Spartacus!" wasn't particularly politically felt; the historical Spartacus was thought to have himself been a soldier, so not he didn't just have "managerial–gladiatorial" skills (whatever that means) as opposed to Maximus's "actual battlefield skills"; etc.).

There are other questions about your edit. You removed material that was there, including a reference, without saying why it should go. However, I have a better understanding of the import of what you were trying to do. If you want to re-add your material and *combine* it in some way with what was there, I wouldn't object. Historically, gladiators were famed, at least the skilled ones. The ancient equivalent of billboards might have been the cards set up to announce coming games and listing the most prominent gladiators. What would historical commercial tie-ins be? Gladiatorial games were usually given by politicians seeking favor, not by companies seeking customers. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:37, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I think there is a misunderstanding. It is true that "In an early version of the script, Maximus signs a deal with 'Golden Pompeii Olive Oil Company' for him to appear in billboards in public spaces". I read that in the book I referenced (Stanford University Press). That's a fact, I reckon. On the other hand, the second half, that such custom was historically accurate but hard to believe, comes from a pretty bad source, which does not really asserts that: "this [endorsements] might not be as far off as you may think. Today, in our sophisticated society that has seemingly evolved so far, we find ourselves surrounded by famous people pushing products, and this is actually how it all began". It doesn't say "that is a historical fact". I would get away with that source altogether--Jbaranao (talk) 23:48, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

October 2020 GOCE blitz award

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE October 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

is potatooooo hacker an automated bot hack?

seems like this potoatooooooo vandal was triggered only by punctuation symbols for insertions. I am beyond my depth on this but vandal did not say Pussy or dick and seemed without humor... Just a robot?Electricmic (talk) 18:30, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I assumed it was somebody (some kid) just playing around. Their IP address shows only one edit. I've left the usual warning notice. Dhtwiki (talk) 18:41, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for monitoring so many pages and edits. Terrific work. I encourage everyone to be like a bold kid striking their first edit. Wonderful start even if it is just a soft vandal grasping for understanding about how wiki works. I hope they come on back with more useful contributions soon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Electricmic (talk • contribs) 19:35, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali!!!

Sky full of fireworks,
Mouth full of sweets,
Home full of lamps,
And festival full of sweet memories...

Wishing You a Very Happy and Prosperous Diwali.
Fylindfotberserk (talk) 11:33, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Send Diwali wishings by adding {{subst:Happy Diwali}} to people's talk pages with a friendly message.

United States Food section- source and content save

Thank you. You beat me to it. Had to go out into the world today and do errands. I was actually going to start over from a perspective of what are considered historic foods and their origins like hotdogs, hamburgers and pizza, then into the more classic foods and history such as steak, Delmonico's and other well known American foods but I can still do so. Hope we can work together to towards consensus on the article and get it back to FA one day.--Mark Miller (talk) 07:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mark Miller: Sounds fine to me, except that I wouldn't make that section too much longer. Preferably, we would have a complete American cuisine article to link to. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:14, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I would like to discuss the issue of length of sections on the article at some point. I am concerned about content forking, deletion of reliably sourced content and how to best proceed in trimming longer sections that might be over bloated and sections being reduced in a manner that does not consider breadth of the coverage of the subject. I am in no hurry. I hope to work together with the many, new editors on the article.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:24, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Restoration of problematic content

Hi there, re: this, while I know it's difficult sometimes to revert without restoring previously-problematic edits, sometimes we have to be a touch more careful. In this case, there was glaringly problematic content that was re-added to the lede when you did that blanket revert. I'd probably recommend selectively restoring individual sections rather than doing blanket reverts in this case. For instance, I copied the lede that existed prior to your edit, and pasted it back in this edit, which removed the offending material without unseating the other content you restored. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I was in a hurry to restore what I had done and didn't look too hard to see what the subsequent edits were solving, although I could tell they (some at least) were well meant. I avoid massive reversions/restorations, when I can. In this case, I don't remember that there were too many edit summaries, which, if present, would have made me better aware. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:29, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

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GOCE November drive barnstars

		The (old school) League of Copy Editors Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 30,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE November 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Total Words, 4th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting 23,635 total words during the GOCE November 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Long Articles, 2nd Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting four long articles during the GOCE November 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Old Articles, 4th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting four old articles during the GOCE November 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Longest Article, 1st Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copyediting one of the five longest articles – 15,892 words – during the GOCE November 2020 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2020.

Current and upcoming events

Election time: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before Auld Lang Syne. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

December Blitz: This will run from 13 to 19 December, and will target all Requests. Sign up now.

Drive and Blitz reports

September Drive: 67 fewer articles had copy-edit templates by this month's close. Of the 27 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and 124 articles were claimed for the drive.

October Blitz: this ran from 18 to 24 October, and focused on articles tagged for copy-edit in July and August 2020, and all Requests. Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors copy-edited at least one article. 21 articles were claimed for the blitz.

November Drive: Of the 18 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and together claimed 134 articles. At the close of the drive, 67 fewer articles were in the backlog and we had dealt with 39 requests.

Other news

Progress report: As of 09:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 663 requests (18 from 2019) since 1 January and there were 52 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 494 (see monthly progress graph above).

Annual Report for 2020: this roundup of the year's activity at the Guild is planned for publication in late January or early February.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Seasonal tidings and cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020

Hello, I'm DrKay. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Aide-de-camp, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. It's clearly tagged at the top of the article with a large banner. DrKay (talk) 07:56, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

@DrKay: It's been a while since I've received a standard warning template. The material you removed was unchallenged and the "large banner" article maintenance template suggests that there should be such a challenge. The material can definitely be sourced, but I wouldn't want to add all the London Gazette citations that would source the material. There should be at least a link to the relevant personal ADC article, where there apparently wasn't one before. I've now made one, but it's in an odd place, and I don't feel like rewriting the article at this time. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:52, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

HP41CL

Thanks for fixing my absent minded errors in your copy-edit of the HP41CL content I added to the "Clones" section of the HP-41C article :) Somehow, portions of text, including the sentence you removed, which I thought I had removed myself from an early draft of the new content, were left in place creating a "There was a man. His name was Bob." type stylistic horror situation :P ( Seems I missed several errors even though I previewed my changes ) Thanks again for the corrections :) Jdbtwo (talk) 18:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jdbtwo: You're welcome; but the copy edit, although it was needed, was secondary to fixing the references, where, as I remember, the dates were formatted as yy-mm-yyyy and were generating errors that were obvious in the references section, as well as there being a more garish error message due to a missing reference tag's closing angled bracket. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:10, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

There's also the fact that there was really more detail than needed: essentially a mere replication of what was at the website, which could be regarded as promotional. I didn't check to see whether it constituted a copyright violeation. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the detail gets trimmed or better summarized. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki:

but the copy edit, although it was needed, was secondary to fixing the references, where, as I remember, the dates were formatted as yy-mm-yyyy and were generating errors that were obvious in the references section
— User:Dhtwiki

Well, thanks for fixing that as well. For some reason I always seem to forget the correct date format, although, when I previewed my edit, there were no errors, so, you can blame it partially on the Wikitext Editor :)

as well as there being a more garish error message due to a missing reference tag's closing angled bracket.
— User:Dhtwiki

Well, I wouldn't really consider it a "garish error" : more like a typo :)

There's also the fact that there was really more detail than needed
— User:Dhtwiki

Well, I actually tried to only summarize the features of the 41CL that were particularly salient without being too vague -- the SwissMicros portion has about the same amount of detail as far as I can tell.

essentially a mere replication of what was at the website
— User:Dhtwiki

I don't know where you're getting this. AFAIK, there are very few reliable sources for the 41CL and the source with the most information is the official 41CL page at the Systemyde web site. Out of the three or four sources I used in the summary, the Systemyde site was used the most for facts because it, well, has more facts available. I did not copy and paste anything from the web sites : The fact that my summary and the summaries and lists of facts and features on the source web sites may seem similar is just due to the fact that they both cover very specific features of very specific subject matter.

which could be regarded as promotional
— User:Dhtwiki

I consider this statement to border on offensive. I *am not* financially, professionally or personally affiliated with Systemyde -- I don't even own an HP-41 .

I didn't check to see whether it constituted a copyright violeation
— User:Dhtwiki

Again, I consider this statement to be a little rude. As I explained above, any similarities between my description and those found on the referenced web sites is either purely coincidental or due to convergent composition due to the fact that the subject matter is very specific.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the detail gets trimmed or better summarized
— User:Dhtwiki

I would welcome any improvements, although, what material to take out isn't clear to me at the moment.

P.S. Your edit of the summary which changed "The upgrade comes with an over 600 register extended memory" to "The upgrade comes with a over 600 registers of extended memory" makes the summary factually and technically inaccurate. In HP-41 parlance, a "memory" usually refers to a discrete memory module or chip, but, your edit makes it sound like like the module or chip in question is composed of registers, which although logically true in some sense, is not true in the hardware sense.

Jdbtwo (talk) 22:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jdbtwo: Apologies for having given offense. I myself am interested in hearing about the device, and you made considerable effort to bring it to wider attention. However, when I looked at the site, it seemed as though what we had at the article was a duplication not a summary; and there remains the fact that, IIRC, all of that information is sourced to the company's website, which doesn't constitute a particularly reliable, neutral source. Also, I didn't mean promotional with regard to your personally profiting; I'm thinking that the company may well benefit by having such an extensive blurb for their product on Wikipedia. As for my apparently erroneous description of extended memory, I'll try to check my sources as to how extended memory—which, IIRC, could refer to the HP manufactured chip, as well as to what was contained in various third-party devices—is described. In the meantime, you're welcome to have your original description restored. Dhtwiki (talk) 18:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki:

Apologies for having given offense
— User:Dhtwiki

It's OK :) I'm an Aspie ( Asperger's / high-functioning autism ) and there's almost no emotional affect to be had with just plain text, not to mention that my ability to read external emotional affect is severely impaired even if we were conversing in person :) If someone has neutral criticisms , then it's *very* hard for me to tell if they're being rude or just neutral and polite, hence, the reason for my profuse use of emoticons :)

I myself am interested in hearing about the device, and you made considerable effort to bring it to wider attention
— User:Dhtwiki

Thank you and you're welcome :)

However, when I looked at the site, it seemed as though what we had at the article was a duplication not a summary;
— User:Dhtwiki

As I said in my above reply, I didn't intend the content to look or read that way.

and there remains the fact that, IIRC, all of that information is sourced to the company's website, which doesn't constitute a particularly reliable, neutral source
— User:Dhtwiki

Well, it's not *all* sourced from the Systemyde web site, but most of it is. The problem is that I did indeed try to find more sources via an extensive google search, but I was unsuccessful.

Also, I didn't mean promotional with regard to your personally profiting; I'm thinking that the company may well benefit by having such an extensive blurb for their product on Wikipedia
— User:Dhtwiki

Thanks for clearing that up -- now I feel a bit embarrassed :$

As for my apparently erroneous description of extended memory, I'll try to check my sources as to how extended memory—which, IIRC, could refer to the HP manufactured chip, as well as to what was contained in various third-party devices—is described. In the meantime, you're welcome to have your original description restored
— User:Dhtwiki

Well, from all that I've read, including the HP-41 internal design specs available from the HP Museum on a USB key, the usage in my original description is correct, but I could be wrong. Jdbtwo (talk) 22:33, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 GOCE Blitz Barnstar

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Dhtwiki for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE December 2020 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello Dhtwiki, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021.
Happy editing,
Fylindfotberserk (talk) 07:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Alexander Bonner Latta

Merry Christmas. Great copy editing job you are doing on the article. One part where I entered it initially incorrect is in Early life section where I wrote how he went to William Bylad's shop. It is very confusing and hard to get correct for me. The source of Jones (1881) page 195 says:

He attended the public schools until thirteen years of age when he engaged with David Bradford for seventy five cents per week in his woolen mills on Congress Street After about three years service he was employed by Mr William Byland a ship joiner for three dollars per week He remained with him about three years his wages being increased to nine dollars per week the last year Mr Latta then went to Samuel Cummings a brass founder whose shop is still on Front Street between Pike and Butler He remained there till 1841 when he visited Washington going by stage over the mountains While there he met Mr Anthony Harkness owner of an extensive machine works in Cincinnati who was so much pleased with Mr Latta's mechanical ability that he offered him the superintendency of his works which he accepted.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide in getting the sequence of events in the right order. Maybe it is correct as you have copy edited it. Appreciate whatever help you can provide here. Stay save - stay home.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:12, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

@Doug Coldwell: Thanks for the quote. That is a confusing sequence of events. As you've seen, I've moved some seemingly redundant information on employment from middle life/career to combine it with that in the early life section. I still have further to go before feeling satisfied that I've straightened it out. For one thing, if we mention wages, they should be listed for all the jobs (and your quote seems to provide information on that score). I'm also thinking that the reason for the move to Cincinnati could be made more clear. Were the financial opportunities those his mother had hopes for or were they his own opportunities that she was trying to further? Another part I need to improve has to do with properly describing his inventions, as well as their adoption. What seems to be a double-expansion steam locomotive engine is an example of that. So, I may be asking you (possibly via clarification templates left in the article) to provide further details on these various scores. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:51, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for reply. Probably a better inline reference for your question on "financial opportunities" would be that of #1 of White p=11 (instead of Malone p=28). White says,

     When his family moved to Cincinnati he apprenticed in the foundry and shipbuilding trade in that city.

Yes, I will pick up on templates you leave in the article and answer those. Great job on the copy edit. It looks like a Good Article to me, if I have ever seen one - and I have seen a few as the green icons on my User Page shows. I plan on having over 200 by the end of 2021 as it will give me something to do during the Stay Home orders of the pandemic that will be going on for awhile.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:07, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Also #4 Tenkotte P=539 says,

     In the early 1840's he moved to Cincinnati and became the superintendent of the Anthony Harkness Shop,
     one of the largest machine shops in the city.

It so happens that I will be doing a major upgrade to Anthony Harkness (over 2000 characters)) later today and making it the next GOCE request when you close out Alexander Bonner Latta. As you can see these two are very much intertwined. Harkness is considered the founder of the Cincinnati locomotive industry.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:45, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I just did a major upgrade to Anthony Harkness of some 4000 characters. I will be adding it to GOCE for a professional copy edit like what you do - after you close out the Latta article. I plan on making it a Good Article also.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:13, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@Doug Coldwell: I think that I've put the article in reasonably good shape. However, further clarifications, that require access to sources, seem in order. For example:

Under "Early life" the vague, incremental dating of his early work career (i.e. not giving specific years, just, for example, "three years later") and bare enumeration of wages paid, without much description of Latta's responsibilities, seem insufficient.
Under "Mid life and career" his job as "superintendent of Harkness's foundry" seems superior to what seems to be a later job as "foreman at the Harkness machine shop". Also, what qualified him to become an "engineer"?

Dhtwiki (talk) 07:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: Great job on the copy editing. Thanks. I can take it from there. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 10:57, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
@Dhtwiki: FYI, I do have Anthony Harkness in as a request at GOCE.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Assange

Hey Dht - just FYI, the "computer hacker" term was added to the lead just a couple of days ago, and I guess none of us noticed that. So it shouldn't be in there. -Darouet (talk) 23:25, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Dhtwiki, On 29 December 2020‎ you supported a single change to the lead of Julian Assange made on 26 December 2020‎, which describes him first and foremost as a computer hacker. This seems like a politically motivated change to influence public opinion days before the ruling on his extradition to the US. However I would like to know your motivation for making this change. Thank you Spreading Justice (talk) 09:06, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@Spreading Justice: I thought that I was restoring an agreed-upon description without realizing that the "computer hacker" part had not been agreed to but had been inserted a few days before, as the first post here makes clear. The term is one that's often worn with pride, and I didn't think that in Assange's case it was especially misplaced or derogatory. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:47, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: Thanks for the explanation. Given that the major charge against him in the extradition request is for hacking, putting "computer hacker" first is not only overshadowing his more important roles it is also damaging. I'm glad it has been fixed. Spreading Justice (talk) 09:02, 3 January 2021 (UTC)