User talk:ToBeFree

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Grammar

^{Note: This is not a recent discussion; when you're reading this, it might be months or years old. However, I will keep it at the top of the talk page because I hope that 75.110.241.177 might come back and see it one day. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:56, 16 July 2018 (UTC)}

Previous discussion; already read by 75.110.241.177

Main discussion This section has been moved to the bottom of the talk page and merged with an update created under a new heading. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:30, 1 May 2018 (UTC) ...Yes, the reason I edited the page was to "change the meaning of the words." I effectively did just that. Grammarians do not talk about modifying sentences, which you said I should have been doing. It is always words which are modified. Despite this, you found my edit wanting in some mysterious fashion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.110.241.177 (talk) 14:33, 27 April 2018 (UTC) (This specific message is probably about the following edit: [1] ) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC) Before continuing to answer this question, it might be helpful to copy link to a possibly relevant discussion between you and another editor about a similar issue: Talk:Gloria_Union#Japan_only Note by ToBeFree, 02:00, 11 May 2018 (UTC): I have removed the original quotes from this section, because I had a look at this conversation a week later, and directly quoting this discussion was not a nice thing to do. Both editors have been attacking each other, and it would be bad taste of me to actively mirror that in my talk page archive forever. I had originally quoted the messages from 16:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC) and 16:38, 27 April 2018 (UTC). Even when quoting the discussion here, taking that aggressive section out of its context is not a good idea. This seems to be especially relevant because you declared yourself, literally, to be "Grammar police" "knocking" on other editors' "doors" to correct them. You do even "insist" native English speakers to "stop editing articles for grammar" because you say that they have a "very poor grasp of the English language". The reason why I made this edit is that you have not simply fixed grammar errors. Instead, you have changed the meaning of the words without modifying the overall sentence, resulting in a logical error. This specific edit is not related to grammar, it is related to logic. If you believe this to be a grammatical correction, I am afraid that other editors' reactions to your other edits might not have been entirely made up out of thin air. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC) Once again, you can't "modify a sentence" because no such thing is possible. You may as well speak of "modifying DNA to transform a human into an ape". That is the state of it. You must not edit Wikipedia for grammar if you are unaware of how grammar is to be constructed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.110.241.177 (talk) 14:00, 1 May 2018‎ (UTC) Bad taste Note by ToBeFree, 14:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC): This seems to be about User talk:ToBeFree#Grammar and User talk:75.110.241.177 I find it in bad taste for you to dredge up discussion that I've had with other people, and then make remarks about them on my talk page. Clearly this is something you're set on doing. When you remark that I said a user should stop editing, you are wrong. I said this user should stop editing for grammar. You PROBABLY should know better than this, but English may be a barrier here, because you admit on your page that you speak only "advanced" English, and not near-perfect or professional (the other categories). In any case, if you think that you have the right to correct me in the fashion that you have, then you are mistaken. You are not a moderator here.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.110.241.177 (talk) 14:55, 1 May 2018‎ (UTC) Please sign your posts: "~~~~" ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC) I hope I was able to address the quote problems pointed out by you. See diff. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:25, 1 May 2018 (UTC) Main discussion, continued This does not seem to actually answer the problem; I'll try to explain it differently. before your edit after your edit considered to be "German" considered at the time to be not fully German You say that this is a grammatical correction. This might be the case if the quotation marks around the word "German" are actually meant to say "not fully German". I do not believe this to be the intention behind these quotation marks. The quotation marks, in this sentence, are not implying incompleteness; they are used to quote a word. If you do not like this usage of the quotation marks, a grammatical fix would look like this: before your edit after your edit considered to be "German" considered to be German Any other change can not be justified by grammar. It adds your personal interpretation to the article; it changes the meaning of the sentence, and you did so without providing a source. This, and only this, is why I have undone the edit. I have received a "Thank You" from another experienced editor* for this edit some hours later. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC) *Clarification for later readers: I am not talking about Khajidha here, who has joined the discussion afterwards. The "Thank You" has been sent by an uninvolved editor who likely had the article on their watchlist. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:18, 1 May 2018 (UTC) Hello, here is the quoted sentence from the article. It hints and suggests that some of the people weren't German enough, due to them not using the full black-red-gold colors. The Frankfurt Parliament had declared the black-red-gold as the official colours of the German Confederation, with the red in the tricolour most likely referencing the Hanseatic League, and the gold and black symbolizing Austria as its empire, considered to be "German", had an influence over (what would become) southern Germany. The person who wrote it (not sure who it was) probably thought "gosh, Austria isn't Germany, I should point out this fact" but he or she was not able to do it appropriately. As far as his or her view goes, I cannot defend a prejudiced view. I only know to correct the grammar where I see it lacking. It may require a citation needed tag. --75.110.241.177 (talk) 18:42, 1 May 2018 (UTC) For someone who claims to be a part of the "grammar police" and to have studied grammar, you have the most abysmal understanding of it. User:ToBeFree has explained it perfectly to you in the above post. The sentence you quoted means that the reason Austria used the gold and black was that they were German. German in the cultural and linguistic sense and not in the sense of a German nationality or citizenship. The quotation marks around German are to indicate that it is to be understood in that sense of "German, but not of Germany". It's another way of saying "ethnic German". And yes, you can modify a sentence. I have NO idea where you got that particular dictum of yours from. --Khajidha (talk) 19:22, 1 May 2018 (UTC) Wait, let's not resort to attacks again. Since the last few hours, I'm researching about this, reading a lot about the historical circumstances and refreshing what we learned in our history school classes. From what I have read so far, simply removing the quotation marks is indeed a valid correction, and - whether the author has meant that or not - it is relatively likely that Austria has actually been considered to be German in this regard. Your point about it having been viewed as "ethnic German" is especially nice, because this might really be what it means, and I lacked the words to describe this. Please, at the very least on my own talk page, edit the source of this page and add <s> at the beginning of your previous message. Then add </s> after the first period, before "User:ToBeFree". Alternatively, you can re-word the sentence to be less aggressive. The rest of your statement seems to be very valid, and I thank you for taking the time to explain what I would have required more research for. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:32, 1 May 2018 (UTC) Oh, and yes, a Citation Needed tag might be good to have there! The whole discussion might not have been needed if there had been a valid reference clarifying the meaning. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC) I am a part of the grammar police. There's no need to put it in quotes, dubiously, and darkly, as the person who wrote German on the page did. You can see, from this, that indeed the purpose is to make the word German seem reprehensible, disreputable, and questionable. For all that he proved my point indirectly, you can safely ignore Khajidha. He is a resident troll on this website. --75.110.241.177 (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2018 (UTC) All of this is your personal interpretation, which I do not share. I have added a "citation needed" tag, as you had nicely suggested, and will completely remove the relevant sentence if no reliable citation is added in the next few weeks. Please do not personally attack other editors, and remove the last two sentences from your latest message on my talk page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:08, 1 May 2018 (UTC) You're free to be wrong about grammar, but you should not edit any pages for grammar. Thanks for nothing. --75.110.241.177 (talk) 10:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Looking at this one month later

I'm sorry for my initial hostile reaction. I have been clearly uncivil here, and I should not have let this incident stress me out. I had originally quoted a personal attack towards you, which is definitely not okay, and I had even originally marked it in bold to emphasize which part of the quoted discussion I considered to be "relevant". Before you had read the text (I hope), I quickly removed the bold text from the quote and reworded it to be less aggressive. I have also added an explanation of my edit on this occassion -- something I should have done as the very first thing, and in a much more polite way.

About two weeks later, I decided to remove the insulting quote from my talk page. Especially as I had complained about personal attacks between you and Khajidha in the discussion, my quote casted an embarrassingly bad light on the otherwise very friendly atmosphere I'm trying to establish here. That was a good first step, I think, but I feel that it has not been enough.

I have noticed that you have not edited since this discussion, and that your last edit has been made one month ago to my talk page. This is worrying me, because I might have discouraged a well-intending user from editing, something which I had ironically been complaining about to you above. I hope that the sudden stop of editing from your IP address, 75.110.241.177, has only been caused by a change of IP address, or by registration of a username.

Today, I would like to invite you to give Wikipedia, a huge project that can only continue to exist because of contributions like yours, a second chance. Specifically, I sincerly hope that you would like to give me, personally, a second chance as well. I'm sorry for having been rude in our discussion, and I will honestly do my best to prevent something like this from happening ever again.

If you would like to come back, please take one of these cookies:

They're still warm while you're reading this. No matter when you're reading this. They'll be waiting here, they will not be archived, and it would make me happy to hear from you again whenever you see this message. I sadly can't reach you via e-mail by leaving a message on your talk page, but maybe you're still reading Wikipedia as 75.110.241.177, and maybe you'll be looking at my talk page one day again. When you do, please let me know, even if you choose to refuse my apology. I know that I have messed up. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Liferay Article

Hello, I noticed that you dramatically cut down the size of the Wikipedia article on Liferay in August 2018. I understand the need to maintain a neutral perspective, but it would be great if the Liferay entry at least included mention of our product offerings. This is particularly important since we just launched several new ones: Liferay Commerce and Liferay Analytics Cloud. See: https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/liferay-leaps-into-digital-customer-experience-market-seeks-growth-in-canada/406952. Full disclosure: I currently serve as the PR Manager for Liferay. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yotaml2 (talk • contribs) 21:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Hey Yotaml2, thanks for getting in touch, and thanks for creating an account.

The best way to get these changes implemented by experienced Wikipedia editors is probably requesting them on the article's talk page, Talk:Liferay, and suggesting a new version of the article as a "userspace draft". This is very easy to do, because the following page will automatically create it for you: Help:Userspace draft -- just enter "Liferay" in that box and click on the button next to it, which will become blue and clickable as soon as you have entered something in the box.

Thank you, also, for disclosing your affiliation. This is especially important when actually submitting that draft for review, so that others can understand why you would like these edits to be made. I would also suggest adding a short notice on your user page, by creating ---> this page <--- with the following content: {{paid|user=Yotaml2|employer=Liferay}} -- the result will look like this:

A very useful page that I would highly recommend reading is: Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide

In a nutshell, your suggestions are very welcome; while the policy guideline discourages you from directly editing the article, it does invite you to use the process I have described above. I think that this way, we can find a solution that is satisfactory for all the parties involved.
^{Corection 02:31, 19 July 2018 (UTC): "policy" --> "guideline" ~ ToBeFree}

I am copying this to the article's talk page, Talk:Liferay, to help other readers to understand the situation. If there are any questions left, feel free to message me directly here, or to ask for help at the Teahouse, at any time. I hope this helps! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:27, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

ToBeFree, - Thank for your kind response and apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I will act on your recommendations as soon as I am able. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yotaml2 (talk • contribs) 01:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

ToBeFree, I have made the requested changes to Talk:Liferay and updated my user page. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you recommend that I do anything else. Yotaml2 (talk) 21:47, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yotaml2, nice to meet you again. Thank you very much - that looks good. I'm currently trying to figure out how to find a Wikipedia editor experienced with business portal software to ask them to have a closer look at your requested change. I tried to research a bit into the Liferay Digital Experience Platform to create a more encyclopedic, less promotional description of DXP, but I have noticed that this task would exceed my knowledge about this kind of software by far. I have, after some searching, noticed that the article already links to the Enterprise portal article. This is very good; more links like that one could be helpful especially for non-tech-savvy readers, and for tech-savvy readers who never have heard the term "Enterprise portal" before. I think it might be a nice idea to add similar links (so-called "wikilinks" or "internal links") to your suggested edit.

Ideally, some currently unnecessarily promotional portions of the article should be rewritten in a more encyclopedic writing style. Company and product names are less important; describing what these things do is probably more useful. The following sentence from the current version of the article might show what I mean:

In April 2013, Liferay partnered with TIBCO Software to offer a series of Liferay enterprise Connectivity Adapters (eC Adapters) that use TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks with the intention of easing integration of Liferay Portal with multiple systems.

Hm. What is a "Liferay enterprise Connectivity Adapter", what is "TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks"; could this be rewritten using general technical terms instead of brand names? I lack the knowledge to explain that sentence to the reader -- and that might be exactly the problem.

Here's an example I just made up in my head, taken partly from this Samsung store listing and modified by me to look even more promotional:

In 2018, Samsung released a top-quality, best-selling enterprise 970 series NVMeᵀᴹ SSD powered by the latest V-NAND technology, and equipped to deliver exceptional performance.

This should be rewritten to something like:

In 2018, the company released a new type of Solid State Drive, using vertical NAND technology. The internal flash memory cells of the drive are stacked vertically to achieve higher storage capacity.

My example is probably not perfect, but I hope that it explains the general direction of moving from "promotional" to "encyclopedic".

~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:00, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

ToBeFree Thank you. Would it be OK for me to add my suggested edit to the Liferay article until a more technical editor has a chance to review? Yotaml2 (talk) 18:03, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yotaml2, I personally would suggest avoiding it because of Wikipedia's "conflict of interest" (COI) guideline:

COI editors should not edit affected articles directly, but propose changes on article talk pages instead.

This especially, most strongly, applies to paid editors. The guideline already, generally, says the following about conflicts of interest:

you are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly

It has an even stronger wording about paid editing:

you are very strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly

Also, three things that come to my mind:

• There is no hurry.
• You said in your initial message that it would be great if the Liferay entry at least included mention of our product offerings, and that [t]his is particularly important since we just launched several new ones. What is the real reason to mention specific brand names in the article, you might need to ask yourself - and if the honest answer is "promotion", please see Wikipedia:PROMO, a part of the "What Wikipedia is not" policy.
• An edit that only extends the article by one additional product information might be ignoring larger, more fundamental problems, like the usage of brand names instead of general terms, and the lack of explanation of these terms. There is a difference between company websites, which can contain any advertisement text the company likes, and a free encyclopedia that should only contain neutral content of encyclopedic value. If there was an article about Liferay in the Encyclopedia Americana, would it contain these sentences? And if not, why not?*
  ^{*(this is not a general rule, as also described on the long policy page above, but it might help to understand a potential problem in the Liferay article)}

The article can definitely be improved; in my opinion, it should be. As described in my previous message, I lack the deep know-how to do this for the Liferay article. Other editors' approaches to promotional sentences might be even more rigorous: If I added the suggested change 1:1 to the article, there is no guarantee that it wouldn't cause the whole list to be removed for lack of encyclopedic value, until a suitable replacement is found. Because, and that's again important to keep in mind, there is no hurry. There is no deadline. If the article is completely rewritten and the process takes five years, that's perfectly okay. Pushing paid, promotional, unencyclopedic changes is unlikely to succeed.

Possible next steps, if you have the time to do this (hey, if you get money for doing it, take the chance! Win-win!)

• Copying the complete article text into the sandbox, which currently only contains a single paragraph. I hoped that the "userspace draft" creation tool would have automatically done that; if there are problems doing it manually, feel free to ask me for assistance with this step. I'll happily help!
• Adding the suggested new sentence to the sandbox
• Modifying the preceding sentence, which I had been taking as a "bad example" in my previous message, to be more encyclopedic: Explaining what is happening instead of mentioning as many brands as possible for SEO.
  ^{(that's an essay linked behind the word SEO, not an established policy or guideline. I've linked it because it has some good points, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.)}
• Improving the whole article in the same fashion, after having noticed the huge difference in the example sentence
• Letting someone without experience in your business, but with basic IT knowledge, read the article, after having explained the potential issue and the reason for the changes to them. Ask them for an honest opinion if they actually think that it is an improvement to the encyclopedia, and if it improves understandability of the article to them personally. Comprehension questions by the reader could be very useful new input for more detailled explanations.
• Finally, submitting the draft for approval. This is a bit tricky because the article "already exists". When you're at this point, please send me a message on my talk page again. Alternatively, feel free to add {{subst:AFC submission/submit}} to your draft, to ask an experienced Wikipedia user to have a closer look and possibly implement the changes. If you do this manually, please explicitly state "This is meant to be an improvement to the existing [[Liferay]] article, after a discussion I had at the following page: [[User_talk:ToBeFree#Liferay_Article]], on 2018-07-19. If this link does not work anymore, please search for 'Liferay' in ToBeFree's talk page archive, around 2018-07-19. This should explain the reason for the changes." on the draft page.

I hope this helps! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:31, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi ToBeFree, OK, I have not made any edits to the Liferay article itself. However, I revised the article in sandbox so that the full article is present. I also slightly modified the previous sentence "In May 2016..." to be more encyclopedic. I am new to Wikipedia so I don't know if I did this correctly, but I'm trying my best to follow guidelines. The revised version is here: User:Yotaml2/sandbox/Liferay. As for your point regarding urgency, I do feel that there's an argument to be made that the article should be as up-to-date as possible. For example, it would probably be an issue if the Wikipedia article for Donald Trump only mentioned his real estate career in the 1980s and didn't make note of the fact that he is now the President of the United States. Yotaml2 (talk) 18:38, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yotaml2, thank you for taking the time to do this. I have now actually made changes to the article based on your sandbox draft. See here for more information: Talk:Liferay#Request_for_edits_to_Liferay_Wikipedia_page

Popular articles, like Donald Trump, attract an enormous amount of readers all over the world. It is almost guaranteed that they'll update the article within a few minutes whenever something interesting is in the news about him. For this reason, you are definitely correct, it would be very strange if that article wasn't up to date. There is no rule that would force anyone to update it, though. That's the voluntary nature of Wikipedia, and -- to be honest -- one of the main reasons why articles about very specialized topics that only few people understand rarely get updated and often lack information. Sometimes, this causes companies to attempt fixing the issue themselves, but many of them don't do it as professional and patient as you fortunately do. This causes some Wikipedia volunteers to be a bit allergic against any "conflict of interest editing" or "paid editing", whenever they see it. I would like to thank you again for the exemplary manner of dealing with this possible conflict of interest. If everyone did it like that, Wikipedia would not have many of its current problems. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:06, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi ToBeFree, thank you again for all of your help. If I may ask you for one more favor, would it be possible to edit the following sentence in the Liferay article: "In May 2016, Liferay introduced an expansion of the original Liferay Portal to offer additional functionality such as engagement metrics." to read as follows: "In May 2016, Liferay introduced Liferay Digital Experience Platform, an expansion of the original Liferay Portal to offer additional functionality such as engagement metrics." I feel that the sentence as-is may be a little unclear to readers.Yotaml2 (talk) 23:27, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yotaml2, no problem

About the edit, I am unsure: I had copied your suggested sentence from the sandbox and reworded it to the current article version in the process. To make this clearer for all other editors, I should have done this in two steps instead of one. It doesn't clearly appear to be, maybe, but this is not really requesting a new change, but instead requesting undoing one. This might not appear to be a large difference, and it often actually isn't, but when it comes to undoing other users' edits, there are a few additional things to be considered:

• There was a user who made the edit, manually, in a good faith attempt to improve the encyclopedia. This is always our first assumption on Wikipedia, even if the edit is not conforming to policies or even adding blatant nonsense.
• Undoing an edit is potentially more problematic than making other types of edits. If the edit is not violating policies or guidelines, but rather just "not an improvement" or "not the way one would like the article to be", undoing requires careful consideration to avoid starting a so-called edit war.
• If you have created the previous version of the article, undoing changes someone else made to it has even more potential to be a bad idea. Some of the potential problems with doing this are described in Wikipedia's Ownership of content policy.

Again, I am unsure in this case here. If, after considering these three points, you honestly, and not just because it would be better promotion, believe that your suggested edit improves the article, you can consider one of these options:

• Making the edit directly. Again, this has all the potential problems described above; the edit-warring policy always needs to be kept in mind. In this specifc case, the "conflict of interest" / "paid editing" guideline (WP:PAID) very strongly recommends against taking this option, and it's not actually really being considered here -- I just chose to add this point for the sake of completeness.
• Suggesting the edit on the article's talk page -- just as you have already successfully done before. In this specific case, the small change doesn't require a sandbox for demonstration, but can be requested exactly as you have already done on my talk page. The wording of the request already appears to be perfect to me, but it might be too short yet. I personally would wish to see a specific explanation why the edit is encyclopedic and not promotional, as it only consists of adding a brand name to the article. If improving clarity is the reason, it could be very useful to explain why this would make the sentence clearer (easier to understand?) to readers.

If you choose to suggest the edit on the article's talk page, I personally won't answer to the request on the article's talk page for at least one week, and potentially longer, maybe even a month or more. This is not because I'd choose to ignore you; this is absolutely not because of disagreement itself, and this is definitely not because I'd believe that I'd be the only person who can make the change and could avoid the change that way. I'm not doing this to avoid a discussion; I have contributed to the discussion by writing this answer, and the preceding paragraph contains an indirect explanation of my edit. I will also always respond as soon as I can on my talk page. Not answering on the article's talk page is rather for two other reasons: I want to avoid that anyone thinks "oh, this is already being taken care of, I'll move on", and I still believe that there is no urgency for adding a brand name to the article, so it can't hurt if it takes a month to be eventually added to the article. Any urgency in this specific matter might just be of promotional nature.

If nobody responds before I choose to respond, I will still not deny the request either. I will, instead, respond with a short summary of the edits and the situation so far, and then request a third opinion on the matter here: Wikipedia:Third opinion I would do this to avoid answering with "Okay, I disagree, for the same reasons as I have already said", because that would not be useful for the discussion. When a discussion reaches that point, a third opinion can be enormously helpful to both participants of the discussion. That's what the "third opinion" page is for.

I hope this helps, and I wish you a nice day.

PS: If you like to, you can easily refer to this discussion anywhere you like, using the following link: [[User_talk:ToBeFree#Liferay_Article]] -- doing it exactly like this will ensure that the link still works even if this discussion is moved to my talk page archive one day. The bot that archives discussions on my talk page will find that link and update it to point to the new location. I also prevent this specific discussion from being archived until the edit request is implemented or denied by another editor.

~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:24, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi ToBeFree, thank you for the advice. I have suggested an edit on Talk:Liferay. Is this what you had in mind? Yotaml2 (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Yotaml2! That looks very good. I also wasn't aware that this replaces Liferay Portal; I thought that it is one of the (potentially many) extensions you'd be offering additionally to the base package. If it actually replaces the original software, mentioning the new name might be a very reasonable request. Have a nice day and feel free to ask again if any questions come up before I have a closer look at this again ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:59, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi ToBeFree, Thank you. Yes, Liferay Digital Experience Platform replaced Liferay Portal. If you look under the "product" section here: https://www.liferay.com/, you will see that Liferay Portal is not listed (it was replaced in 2016). Yotaml2 (talk) 21:41, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you for the clarification! That might change the importance of the extension name drastically. I'll check again in about 1 month I think. Maybe I'll even make the requested edit myself. Should my implementation not be what you had in mind, we can then of course still have a look at the third opinion page. I'll happily request a third opinion whenever you like to, if you should ever feel that this discussion is going in circles. Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:52, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey

Time to archive your talk page. 330,000+ bytes wtf. ~ Abelmoschus Esculentus (talk to me) 11:31, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Hey, thanks Abelmoschus Esculentus - as you probably know, ClueBot III already does that here: Messages older than 3 months get automatically archived to the already-existing archive. I'm just very active. I am considering to decrease the archival time. The page has already reached its "maximum" duration, and old posts are currently getting archived while new ones come. If the rate stays constant, the page length would stay constant -- which might indeed not be desirable with a page length of 300k bytes. At least I know now that I get about 100kB of talk page messages every month. That's cool. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:45, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

I just set that as 30d. Abelmoschus Esculentus (alt) (talk to me) 01:01, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh! Follow-up @Abelmoschus Esculentus: ClueBot III is down since July 01, 10:31. (contributions / talk page discussion) That explains why the page has grown even more than expected, but 30d is definitely a good idea. I will migrate to Lowercase sigmabot III if the problem persists. I have been using ClueBot instead because its concept seemed to be more sympathic and well-conceived than the others to me, but that's just my subjective impression. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Abelmoschus Esculentus:  Done ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:46, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Hi ToBeFree, thank you very much for your kind comments and your patience in working with me on the Liferay article. Yotaml2 (talk) 22:42, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Yotaml2, this made my day! Feel free to ask at any time if new questions arise. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:18, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [1]
• Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [2]
• Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [3]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [4]

Problems

• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [5][6]
• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [7][8]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2018

• From the editor: If only if

• Op-ed: The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

• Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality

• News and notes: Another newspaper for Wikipedia; Wikimania 2018 ends; changes at NPR

• In the media: Blackouts in Europe; Wikipedia and capitalists; WMF Jet Set

• Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals

• Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose

• Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes

• Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else

• Technology report: New bots, new prefs

• Gallery: Independence days, national holidays, and football – all in July

• Blog: Motivation of two editors

• Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons

• Humour: It's all the same

• Essay: Wikipedia does not need you

• From the archives: The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Message by 167.98.65.66

Hey, I'm good friends with the son and it is painful having to go all the way to Iraq to see him. In fact, he is visiting London right now and is next to me, and confirms the information. change it back (infinity war was a prank lmao) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.98.65.66 (talk) 13:37, 1 August 2018‎ (UTC)

Hey 167.98.65.66

Is this about your edit to the Frances O'Connor article? (Diff)

This is a biography about a living person. Imagine such an article existed about you, and it contained wrong statements. You have added:

"had a son [...] who was unfortunately deported to Iraq"

If you can actually provide a reliable source for this, it could be added back to the article... without the "prank" part.

PS: There are quite a few warnings on your talk page. If you are using a shared IP address and these warnings have not been intended for you, please point that out -- otherwise, the IP might be blocked for disruption thought to be from one person. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:51, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I personally know Luka Lepkowski and am very good friends with him. It is very annoying to have to go to Iraq every time. I — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.98.65.66 (talk) 13:55, 1 August 2018‎ (UTC)

Hello again,

Yes my changes were made to the Frances O'Connor article. Also this is in fact a shared IP address, and that is the only change I personally have made.

I do not know how I can provide a reliable source for this as there is no article or anything about it. I am with Luka Lepkowski right now but I am not sure how I could prove my statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.98.65.66 (talk) 13:58, 1 August 2018‎ (UTC)

Hi, you're with the son right now? Please have a look at Wikipedia:FAQ/Article_subjects then. Unfortunately, we need a reliable, preferably secondary, source for the edit; it can not "simply be added" by anyone. There is also detailled information about this issue available here: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Reliable sources

If, after reading at least the Article Subject FAQ, there are any questions left for you or him, feel free to ask again at any time. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:13, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Blocking My Update to Company Information (Factual)

Thanks, ToBeFree. I will check out that policy and make sure that I comply. However, the edits posted were meant to provide completely up-to-date, factual information on a change in Dominion's ownership and management. The company a U.S. company and the page no longer reflects whatever officer claims were on the existing page, which were not timely or accurate and were anonymously posted. A link was provided as further evidence of the factual nature of these changes, and several false claims were also removed. Therefore, you have actually blocked the correction and may be responsible for known harm to our company as long as this misinformation is allowed to be published on this site. As you must surely know, elections are being targeted by foreign adversaries looking to spread misinformation, and we really do need the help of the world to promote accurate information on U.S. elections and the businesses that support the voting process. In the meantime, I am going to check and see if we need to report this experience to our federal authorities who share our concerns. Thank you. HelloKay (talk) 18:00, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello HelloKay, nice to meet you. The last sentence of your message is worrying me. Please read Wikipedia:No_legal_threats and reconsider if this is really the kind of message you wanted to leave on my talk page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:28, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Re:Kirinia epaminondas

I agree with your removal of the "reference" for the promotional reasons. However, the information it cites is in the given source: the heading of that ref's species-page reads "Kirinia epaminondas (Staudinger, 1887)", which is standard zoological notation for the taxon authority. Doesn't matter a lot for this specific case because those links *should* be removed, but figured I'd let you know in case you ever run into similar issues with references that don't have such a clear-cut reason for removal also applying. AddWittyNameHere 00:57, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh hey AddWittyNameHere

That's a very good point. My edit summary for this type of edits contained the statement "Removing unsourced exact number." -- I am changing this to "Removing unreliably sourced exact number." because this is what I meant instead. Would that be an appropriate statement? About the specific edit, if there's more than that, I'd need a diff link to see which one exactly this is about. Thanks :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:04, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Edit: Sorry, of course it's in the heading of your message already. :) That one was using my old message, while I was still improving it: Diff -- newer edits should already have a more precise summary, and your message made me improve it further. If you'd like to suggest any other changes, I'm very open for that and now would be the time to do it^^ Thanks ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:12, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Ah, good to know it's an old one. Happened to catch it on my watchlist is all. Ah yes, I know about tweaking summaries repeatedly for highly repetitive mass-undertakings.

Your current summary appears to be mostly ok, but I'd consider adding a permalink of the WP:ELN discussion so that, once it gets archived, people can still easily find the exact discussion. (Using ([[Special:PermanentLink/853176615#Mass addition of lepidoptera.eu links by website owner|permalink]]), rendering as (permalink), should work and from a quick look *should* fit within the edit summary character limits even added to your current summary)

Lepidoptera articles tend to be edited at a glacial pace (which makes sense when you've got over 100,000 articles and not even a dozen active editors in a subject area, but is no less frustrating for it) and most of us fairly quickly get rid of the habit of watchlisting everything we've edited lest we end up watching a five-digit number of pages. As such, many if not most of the eyeballs your edit summaries will get (once they drop off recent changes, anyway) are likely to be months if not years in the future. AddWittyNameHere 02:39, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh yes! How could I not think about archival issues. I didn't know Special:PermanentLink yet; I would probably have tried to achieve this with Special:Diff somehow. Thanks, especially for already creating the link syntax! I'll copy that to my (currently three) temporary summary text files. That definitely fits inside the character limit. Good thing you noticed early! :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:48, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

No worries, it's an easy thing to forget and if people really want to figure it out they can always hunt the relevant thread down in the archives (I know I've done so frequently enough when I really want to know what was in them) but it's a lot easier and less confusing when a permalink is already in place.

Yeah, diff/permalink rendering in edit summaries is a little bit tricky sometimes because neither full url-type links nor templates work in edit summaries and those two def. are the major two ways of handling diffs that people are likely to be used to. Thankfully, Wikipedia has lots of nifty tricks like that. Problem is, Wikipedia has looooots of nifty tricks like that, meaning it's practically impossible to remember most of them, just the ones you've worked with a lot or recently looked up. XD

You're already dealing with the large task of removing all those links (and thank you for that! :D) the least I could do was save you the additional work puzzling out "how exactly am I gonna do this?" by preformatting it for ya.

Glad to hear it indeed fits into the edit summary well. A nice trick to keep in mind for when things *don't* fit (like when you need a lot of piped wikilinks in there to link to everything relevant, or similar situations) is that it's always an option to just create a page in your userspace with all the relevant info and links and merely link to that one in your summaries. Helps cut down on the number of links needed (and thus character count). Same if you're doing a large run of same type of edits that are uncontroversial but still require an explanation that wouldn't fit into an edit summary without abbreviating so much that it becomes basically unreadable. AddWittyNameHere 05:15, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Cleanup re lepidoptera.eu links

Thanks for doing the research, discussion and work to identify and cleanup the lepidoptera.eu links. I'd seen them added and was suspicious but hadn't taken the effort to address it. Thanks again and keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:00, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi SchreiberBike, oh, good to hear that more people have been watching this potential issue.

Thank you very much for your message, this means a lot to me :) I think I'll be able to finish the whole list this week. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:09, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

 The amazing and gratifying thing about Wikipedia is that there are people willing to do the work that needs to be done. When I see someone doing something I knew should be done, but didn't have the time and energy to do, it makes me optimistic about the project.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:15, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Haha, thank you! About Wikipedia: I completely agree! I love it! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:19, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Mistaken Identity

Hey there. Sorry for this, but it seems that I have a shared IP address. Someone else made the edit to the Connect Four page, for I haven't seen the Connect Four page at all. I hope that you understand that this is just a misunderstanding and I hope you have a wonderful day! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.204.42.181 (talk) 21:24, 4 August 2018‎ (UTC)

Hi 174.204.42.181, thank you very much for the clarification! This happens often, especially with mobile connections. I have now added a "mobile IP" information box at the top of your talk page, so that other visitors can easily understand the situation.

You might be interested what has been done using this IP address.

• The list of contributions: Special:Contributions/174.204.42.181
• The specific edit made to the Connect Four article: Diff link

Thank you, have a wonderful day too! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:44, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-32

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [9]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [10][11]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-33

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [12]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [13]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Message by Blatay

(this is probably about these two edits to Bowser (character): 1, 2) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:28, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello there! Thank you for helping me undo a mistake, I couldn't quite figure out how to undo it myself until just now. I need help though, im trying to replace an image on the page because the one that the page currently features is quite out of date. Where in the code is the image file where I can swamp it for another? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blatay (talk • contribs) 19:16, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Blatay, thank you for your contributions and the message.

I hope that I was able to interpret the edit correctly -- did you mean to do the following?

Special:Diff/854929363

Please note that image changes are often controversial, and there should always be a good reason when doing so. "Out of date" does seem to be a good reason to me. If someone disagrees with the image change, please take a moment to explain it on the article's talk page, Talk:Bowser (character). Let's see what happens in the next days... ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:36, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the image used was outdated and used the character's old design, so I updated it for the character's current design. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blatay (talk • contribs) 19:40, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@Blatay: Sounds good -- I have copied your explanation to the article's talk page, so that others can see the reason too:

Talk:Bowser_(character)#Image_updated

Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:50, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@Blatay: ...aaaand the image is gone. But not because it wasn't suitable for the article, but rather because it was a "copyright violation". The image has been uploaded with a wrong license; it needs to be uploaded on the English Wikipedia via Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard, as a "fair use" work. Do not mark it as "own work"; do not use a Creative Commons license. Please see Wikipedia:Uploading images about the difference, and why this is important. I should have noticed this before, but I wrongly assumed that it had been correctly uploaded as "fair use" work. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:37, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Original title: "This is insane."

This had originally deleted by a friendly talk-page watcher. I am thankful for every second that other people help me to save for answering serious requests, and removing personal attacks is very welcome. Especially requesting revision-deletion of severe attacks is definitely very helpful. However, I do respond even to requests that other people might consider to be silly or lacking even the most basic competence that is required for editing Wikipedia. Unless someone personally attacks specific editors or sends a message that can not be normally replied to, I often prefer to keep these messages.
In this specific case, the user who sent the message has later been blocked for allegedly being either "competence challenged" or "intentionally trolling us all". See the block log for reference.
Blocking someone for an alleged lack of competence is perhaps the most problematic and controversial type of blocking to do. I personally would avoid ever doing this. There are experienced administrators who are willing to do this, and they do a good job, but this specific type of block is extremely problematic in my eyes. Blocking someone based solely on the "Competence is required" essay (!) will always be controversial, and enforcing such a block retroactively is definitely not something I will do on my talk page.
In a nutshell, thank you very much, and do feel free to continue helping, but this specific message really has a right to stay. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:09, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

You were very helpful, but some people are not. I'm about to be blocked for that nomination after users that have JUST WP:BULLY'd me complained and lied about arbitrary things. See my thread and my rebuttals on ANI titled: "I'm being accused of being a vandal". Three admins are now in the process of blocking me and refusing to give reasons. After posting this post, look what this user did on ANI after that. (Sorry, the ANI link is not working). I even have a new WP:MENTOR that recently said I'm WP:HERE. Oh well. Like I said, this started spiraling downhill after I said I watch Fox News. After just saying that too on that admin's page, they've now changed their mind and is now also blocking me instead of defending me. I am upset and think I will soon just get rid of my account and leave. I would like to report this incident to the bureaucrats that run WP, but I'm not sure where to go. I'll be looking around for that. -GDP⇧ 09:22, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

@GDP Growth: Oh my.

Thank you very much for your message. At the moment, I see that you have been blocked and can not reply here. For a moment, I have considered offering to copy messages from your talk page to mine, but that could be interpreted as "proxying" per WP:PROXYING or block evasion per WP:BLOCKEVASION. I might consider to merge and move the whole conversation to my talk page archive in the future. That would probably be okay. So, at the moment, if you would like to reply to this message, simply do so on your talk page. I will add a new section to your talk page, labelled "Talkback" or something like that. You can simply respond below the notification on your talk page. I will respond there as well, so we have the discussion in one place.

About the block

Just to make this clear, although it hopefully is already: I am not an administrator, and even if I was, I could not remove this block. There are very strict policies about unblocking users, especially about undoing other administrators' actions. If you would like to read more about the "rules" administrators need to adhere to, feel free to have a look at Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Unblocking.

To be unblocked, in your specific case, I would personally suggest:

• Taking a break for at least two weeks, if not a month or two. I am being serious: You will likely need some distance, and many nights to sleep over this. One thing that I can guarantee is: It will not hurt, it can only get better, the longer you wait. If you instinctively disagree with my previous sentence, you likely need to wait at least half a year.
• I personally would use the time to read a book, whatever is interesting. Any book will do. Absolutely no idea? I have two suggestions from my personal bookshelf:

• Tao Te Ching, a small, cheap, short book that will however take months to understand, and that is very likely available in any language you like, and
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, a big, long book full of wonderful stories, also available in multiple languages.

Both are not completely unrelated to the whole case, I would personally say. Please do not mistake the title of the second book. It refers to "Friends" and "People", but that is not my point! I mean the Wikipedia community. It works!

All the time that you normally spent on Wikipedia, could instead be spent reading. Of course, you could also do anything else, but reading a printed book and not using the computer in the same time has proven to do wonders for me. After that, I would recommend

• Reading the established guideline at Wikipedia:Appealing a block, and
• Reading the following useful essay, which is much more detailled: Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks
• Why stop there? It can be very useful to know the policy the administrators are using as well: Wikipedia:Blocking policy
• Agreeing to a topic ban, per WP:TBAN, with whatever scope the community recommends. If they ask you to stop editing a specific area, the best idea is probably actually taking this advice. This can be a very useful way of regaining the ability to participate everywhere else. Wikipedia is sooooo large!

About "bullying"

Please always be careful about the difference between policies, guidelines and essays. WP:BULLY is an essay, although it is not marked as such as clearly as some other essays. The important part is the following message at the top: "This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community."

That said, of course, WP:BULLY is a useful essay. It would just be wrong to quote it like a policy, especially when asking for administrative action against someone who has not adhered to it. The policy you might be looking for is Wikipedia:Civility.

One problem, apparently, with the ANI request was exactly the topic: "I'm being accused of being a vandal" (archive link, permanent link). This apparently has not actually happened.

About taking advice

From what I have seen so far, I would sincerly recommend taking any advice that User:Softlavender has given to you so far, and taking any further advice they give. Together with my above message, I would be surprised if you really need to "leave" forever.

About "leaving"?

One note about leaving should be made here: If you actually decide to do (I do not hope so! Please stay), there is one thing that you may never do: Coming back with a different account while being blocked. If you decide to leave, and after a few years decide to come back, you must do so using your old account. If you lost access, you must try regaining it; if this fails, you must immediately explain the situation, and create a link to your old account, as soon as you register a new account. You must make very clear that you have read and understand the WP:SOCK policy, if you ever use a new account while being blocked with an old account.

You may take all time you wish. You may appeal the block in a few days, but I do not recommend this. You may come back in many years, but that would be overkill. I have suggested a more reasonable timespan above ("taking a break"). The only thing that would permanently ruin all hope is evading the block. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:25, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-34

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
• Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [14]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello

Hi, I want to notice that I don’t receive any contributions with my account. Thank You!--Ronco Liquidation (talk) 17:33, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ronco Liquidation, Nice to meet you! You mean "compensation"? Please note that "compensation" is broadly construed, and that doing these edits as your job would be considered to be paid editing. If this is the case, you must disclose this, per Wikipedia's Terms of Service. Could you clarify your connection to Ronco, please? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:37, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Response

Hi, like a dais I’m not paid for my edits, I choose my account name just because I did want this name to edit. Thank You again!--Ronco Liquidation (talk) 17:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

For context: ToBeFrees response

(Copied back from User talk:Ronco Liquidation for context ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:12, 21 August 2018 (UTC))

I had copied the above message back to User talk:Ronco Liquidation, which had been cleared at that time, for context. When doing so, I added the following section as an explanation. ~ToBeFree

Notice about deletion of messages from your talk page

Don't worry: This is okay. You may remove any of these messages, whenever you like to, and you do not need to specify a reason. I also do not want to annoy you by adding stuff to a page you appear to prefer empty. I am only adding the above message because it was missing for context of the other messages. Feel free to delete that all as well. I personally prefer archiving instead of deleting messages, and I can set up an archive for you, if you like to. If this sounds interesting, just add a message on my talk page, I'll handle the rest. On my talk page, at the top, you can see how this would look like.

With your current username, but also in general, I personally would recommend adding a notice like "I am not affiliated with Ronco in any way, and I do not receive money or any kind of other compensation for my edits, broadly construed. I have chosen my username because I registered only to edit the Ronco article. My account is not shared with other people, and will never be." to your user page. Of course only if this is really true! :)

Have a nice day. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:57, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Response 2

(added "2" to the section heading; converted both to level 3 headings ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:10, 21 August 2018 (UTC))

👍--Ronco Liquidation (talk) 18:00, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

@Ronco Liquidation: I assume this means "all right, but no archive please" -- else, please clarify. :) Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Re: Sydney Grammar School

May I ask what your issue with the edits (like alumni, co-curricular are etc.); these are not opinion as much as facts, since they relate to numbers? I.e. the number of Rhodes Scholars, Australian Prime Ministers, High Court of Australia judges is an actual number and is actually higher than any other school in Australia. Many school pages like Scotch College, Eton College etc. discuss their alumni in the introduction, so doing it here is not really advertising.

i.e.

• High Court Judges: Sydney Grammar has 7. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Old_Sydneians#High_Court_of_Australia . You can make a list and see all judges and their schools here (7 is more than any other school): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Justices_of_the_High_Court_of_Australia .
• Australian Prime Ministers: Sydney Grammar has 3. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Old_Sydneians . The only School to match this is Melbourne Grammar School which also has 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Grammar_School#Prime_Ministers . You can ssee all Australian PMs and their schools from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Australia , SGS is the hhighest.
• Rhode Scholars: Sydney Grammar has 28. See here: https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/_literature_161184/05-1_new , where in May 2005, it notes that David Winterton is the 26th Rhode Scholar (page 3). Since then, Eric Knight (2006) http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1490 , and Patrick Bateman and Patrick Bateman (2013) https://crawford.anu.edu.au/study/intern-fellow-programs/us-congressional-research-fellowship-program/our-fellows-2011-12 have won it making 28. Here is an article referring to 'Sydney Grammar dominance' for Rhodes Scholarships: https://www.afr.com/leadership/management/business-education/the-new-rhodes-scholarship-doesnt-require-sport-or-a-private-school-20180515-h103ur . The next highest is Hutchins School at 23 Rhode Scholars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchins_School , which unfairly notes it here without verification so your standards I think should also apply to these pages.

Is the issue that you want these claims to have references/be verified with sources? I provided sources above, see what you think. Also not sure how comments on Staff like 'Gary Audas' can be allowed when that is more opinionated and not verified either. Are you ok if I just delete this 'Staff' section and just add the reference to SGS having the highest number of High Court judges, Aus PM and Rhode Scholars? Thanks. ~gogomannn1 —Preceding undated comment added 01:45 (updated 02:26), 22 August 2018‎

The following reply has been written before the links and additional questions have been added above. It is still valid, but I'll reply a second time to address the new text above.

Hi Gogomannn1! Thank you for asking, and -- yes -- thank you for your contributions.

I think that there are two possible problems with these edits.

• There might be a conflict of interest. If you are affiliated with this school in any way, please take the time to read the following page: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
• There seems to be a lack of neutrality. For example, the following text had been added to the article: "numerous knowledgeable staff", which is rather promotional than neutral. About this specific issue, please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.
• There seems to be a lack of verifiability. Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability.
• There seems to be a violation of the policy about information about living persons. While it might, perhaps, under some circumstances be acceptable to keep unsourced statements within an article until someone takes the time to add a reference, there can never be such an exception regarding statements about living persons. For example, the following statement had been made: "However, there are a few teachers well reputable for their strictness, one of which is [name]." This might, perhaps, be the most important page to read among all linked here: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons
• There seems to be a need for a short FAQ page that answers open questions. This one here is wonderful: Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations

If, after having taken the time to read all of this (yes, sadly, this appears to be absolutely necessary), you would still like to edit the article, you may carefully continue. I have no authority to forbid this, I can only warn about possible problems and explain the policies if there are any questions left. Feel free to ask again, whenever you like to. Have a nice day.

~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:27, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

About the references, some of them appear to be Wikipedia articles. Please note that Wikipedia articles are never a valid source for other Wikipedia articles. About the rest, consider carefully if these are reliable (they might well be!), using the following guideline: Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources.

Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the guidance mate! I have read the policies. For the staff, I agree with you on the neutrality and living persons element and more, I think that section should be best deleted. For the alumni, I can assure you I have fastidiously checked this too! The other school pages I think are more riddled with the basic problems as you suggested. Great to hear there are such thorough editors like yourself on Wikipedia! Have a nice day! ~gogomannn1 —Preceding undated comment added 02:45, 22 August 2018‎

Sources needed for Days of the Year pages

I see you recently accepted a pending change to July 4.

You're probably not aware of this change, but Days of the Year pages are no longer exempt from WP:V and direct sources are required for additions. For details see the WikiProject Days of the Year style guide. I looked for a source for this date of birth in the article Dorothy Head Knode ‎ that I could add to the DOY page and was able to add it to the DOY page.

Please do not accept additions to day of year pages where no direct source has been provided on that day of year page. The burden to provide sources for additions to these pages is on the editor who adds or restores material to these pages. Thank you. Toddst1 (talk) 18:12, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Toddst1!

This is interesting, thank you for the information. I was actually not aware of this. I did have a look at the linked articles, though, and have added a source for the death date to the linked article before accepting the "(d. 2018)" addition. I have even linked to WP:BLP in my edit summary. I must have overlooked that Dorothy Head Knode's birth date was not yet referenced as well.

I personally would prefer to have inline citations on all main namespace pages including disambiguation pages, but this is explicitly unwanted per Wikipedia:Disambiguation#References. Because references are an extremely rare occurence on "Days of the Year" pages, I assumed this to be a similar case. The specific edit you're referring to is a good example: Someone has just added a list entry exactly like the other list entries, and suddenly the new edit is exclusively treated as an unsourced change that should not be reviewed without modification. This feels counter-intuitive.

I guess it would even be justifiable to add {{More citations needed}} to all these pages, but I won't do it per WP:POINT.

Something is very strange about the current situation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:58, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Additional note: I just saw a series of edits in the log that confirms the counter-intuitivity of the situation, and a possible effect on surprised editors: Diff 1, Diff 2, Diff 3. This is really not good, especially when the answer is "read the rules". ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:15, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, change is tough. Especially after operating in such a screwed up state for so long - those DOY pages are loaded with errors. And what's worse is there are news agencies that have used them for "on this day" features which are now being used to support the errors. Toddst1 (talk) 23:24, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Toddst1: Oh my god -- I agree that this change was long overdue. I'll do my best to improve the situation. Maybe I'll even take the time to add references to a whole day or two. Doing it for all of them might be a bot task... but a bot can't verify the reliability of the sources. Sigh...

Would it maybe actually be an idea to create a template dedicated to explaining this problem, based loosely on {{More citations needed}}, but modified to explain the new guideline? I won't boldly do it alone because it might appear to be disruptive, but it might be a general suggestion for the WikiProject. If the project reaches consensus that such a notice is useful, I will happily help creating and/or adding it where needed. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:48, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

PS: How about an "add all missing references to your birthday" event, or a similar call for action? If enough people join, the amount work of each editor is relatively low. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:50, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

I have now created two new sections on the project's talk page:

• "More citations needed" template?
• "Add references to your birthday" event

~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:08, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

NOT A PAID EDITOR IN ANY WAY

Thank you for your comments. I am strictly a volunteer member of non-profit organizations (university, government, etc.) with an interest in various artists.Attawaysmith (talk) 18:05, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Attawaysmith, thank you for the clarification. May I ask two more questions?

• Are you perhaps affiliated with Cecilrrose, or coordinating your Wikipedia edits with them by discussing outside Wikipedia? Please see WP:Meatpuppetry for details about possible issues with this. In a nutshell, if this is actually the case, please clarify this on both userpages, and make clear that you are aware of that page and are adhering to the WP:SOCK policy.
• Is there any affiliation between the article subject(s) and you / your organization? Please note that even non-profit organizations and volunteers can have a conflict of interest.

Thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:07, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for helpful comments

User Cecilrrose is an art historian and subject matter expert on article(s) which I have written. Cecilrrose had never previously contributed to Wikipedia, but joined because of their in depth knowledge. Our collegial exchanges are in no way intended to violate WP:Meatpuppetry or WP:SOCK, but rather an effort to clean-up the writing. Our user pages will reflect that.

Article subject(s) have no affiliation other than that their art works are included in the collections of public institutions where cecilrrose and I have served as volunteer board members. As a new Wikipedian, I hope to be able to contribute to articles about other artists with whose work I am familiar.

Again, thank you for helping me to navigate Wikipedia.Attawaysmith (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Attawaysmith, thank you very much! This sounds good! I have now added a message to each talk page, explaining the situation, and providing three example clarifications that I personally would recommend adding to your user page. For the record, I will copy the two messages here as well:

Sent to Cecilrrose, who has sadly not responded during editing -- it might be helpful to inform them about their talk page. Normally, they should have received automatic notifications about the messages, just like you probably did.

Note about above warnings

Hi Attawaysmith has taken the time to explain the situation on my talk page. Before continuing to edit, please add a notice to your user page, or at least below this message on your talk page, containing the following information:

• I do not receive, and do not expect to receive, any compensation for my edits, per WP:PAID.
• I am aware of the WP:SOCK policy, especially the part about "meatpuppetry". Attawaysmith is a different person, but might share the same IP address. We are, with the policy in mind, sometimes editing the same article together to clean-up the writing.
• I am not affiliated with the article subjects in any way; I do not have a conflict of interest per WP:COI.

After that, feel free to remove all my warnings from your talk page, consider them "done, solved" and have a nice day. If there are any questions left, you are always welcome to ask at the Wikipedia:Teahouse or on my talk page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:34, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Sent to you:

Note about above messages

Hi Thank you very much for taking the time to explain the situation on my talk page. Before continuing to edit, please add a notice to your user page, or at least below this message on your talk page, containing the following information:

• I do not receive, and do not expect to receive, any compensation for my edits, per WP:PAID.
• I am aware of the WP:SOCK policy, especially the part about "meatpuppetry". Cecilrrose is a different person, but might share the same IP address. We are, with the policy in mind, sometimes editing the same article together to clean-up the writing.
• I am not affiliated with the article subjects in any way; I do not have a conflict of interest per WP:COI.

After that, feel free to remove any or all of my messages from your talk page, consider them "done, solved" and have a nice day. If there are any questions left, you are always welcome to ask at the Wikipedia:Teahouse or on my talk page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:36, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Please always keep in mind to write from a neutral point of view, adding verifiable statements only, especially when editing biographies of living persons.

Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:53, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Clarification and response to your questions

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify my role in editing on wikipedia. In response to your specific questions: 1) I receive no compensation for my edits 2)I am aware of the WP.SOCK policy an the meat puppetry guidelines. Attawaysmith and I are indeed different people 3)I have no conflict of interest regarding the subject of the of the article I have edited Cecilrrose (talk) 13:27, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Cecilrrose, thank you very much! I have copied the above message to your user page; feel free to modify it in any way you like to. Have a nice day! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:38, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Spanish Royal Guard edit

Sorry, forgot to add the source here: http://www.guardiareal.org/Menu/Historia/resena/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.102.181.161 (talk) 12:50, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey 218.102.181.161, thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:26, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

About My Editing

Excuse me,

I just wanna add some information to that page, and also i want to add the web as my reference. Can i edit the reference so i can put the website link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edo PD (talk • contribs) 14:02, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) You can add the reference. See WP:CS. —AE (talk • contributions) 14:11, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

No, wait, please don't. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:13, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi Edo PD, thank you for the explanation.

You had made the following two edits to the article Periorbital puffiness: Diff 1, Diff 2

There might be multiple problems with these edits.

• The website does not appear to be a reliable source, but rather a quickly setup blog that, as of this writing, does not even seem to have a working "About" page or an imprint. If you are affiliated with this website in any way, please be very careful before adding any more links to that website. Repeated addition of this link may cause it to be added to Wikipedia's spam blacklist. You seem to be the first editor on the English Wikipedia who has ever added a link to that website.
• There might be a conflict of interest. Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and decide carefully if it might apply to you. If it does, please follow the advice there.
• Wikipedia is not a guidebook or a manual. Directly addressing the reader with "you" should be avoided; see also: MOS:YOU.

Keeping all these possible issues in mind, I would not recommend adding a link to that website again, not even in a reference tag.

While writing, I see that you might have already followed the friendly advice above my reply: Diff 3

In addition to all the points above, there is another possible issue with this specific edit: It has been marked as a "minor edit", but it does not really seem to be a minor edit. Please see Help:Minor edits for more information.

I hope this helps. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-35

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• You can now see moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [15]
• Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [16]

Problems

• Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [17]

Changes later this week

• The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [18]
• AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [19]
• Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [20]
• Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [21]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

TN eCampus External Link

Hi,

I received your message regarding our eternal link on Motlow community college. This is a useful resource for Motlow students and applicants. Would you prefer we list it in another location on the page? Tnecampus.org is the TN Board of regents site covering all online education programs by TBR institutions. Each institution has it's own page with easy access to online programs, accreditation, enrollment, etc. https://tnecampus.org/institutions/97/overview?institution=Motlow%20State%20Community%20College

Thanks,

Chris TBR