User talk: Tom.Reding

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This...should...do it!

Barnstar The Original Barnstar This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation, January 21, 2012. A barnstar for you! The Technical Barnstar Congratulations, Tom.Reding, you've recently made your 1,000th edit to articles on English Wikipedia! Thank you for all the great DAB work you've been doing recently, and for all your contributions to the encyclopedia. Keep it up! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC) A barnstar for you! Working Wikipedian's Barnstar For your incredible WikiGnoming over the past few months. I am in awe. A2soup (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2015 (UTC) Thank you! :)   ~ Tom.Reding & his 200-some-odd lines of regex (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  02:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Tireless Contributor Barnstar You have nearly single-handedly eliminated the minor planet notability problem, which had stood for seven years before you decided to tackle it, because nobody wanted to do the massive amount of work required. If this doesn't deserve a barnstar, I'm not sure what does. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Tireless Contributor Barnstar For dealing with the minor planet clusterfuck as efficiently as you have! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC) There's nothing quite like cleaning up a good, 'ol-fashioned clusterfuck. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC) BTW, this isn't just for the recent banner tagging, but for the shear amount of effort involved in cleaning up the mess for the past year or so. Possibly longer. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Technical Barnstar thanks for helping me with the search codes! Jennica✿ / talk 20:10, 9 April 2017 (UTC) Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors! please help translate this message into your local language via meta The 2016 Cure Award In 2016 you were one of the top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC) Barnstar awarded The Redirect Barnstar Your diligent work in the area of redirect categorization and improvement is duly recognized and greatly appreciated. You are truly one of the unsung heroes of Wikipedia, and we hope you continue to enjoy your improvement of this awesome encyclopedia! On behalf of your fellow editors—and the millions of readers of our work—I sincerely thank you for your contributions that have improved the encyclopedia for everyone. Senator2029 “Talk” 08:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Editor's Barnstar Thank you very much for helping and editing the Joe Campos Torres article, your assistance put a BIG SMILE on my face! Vwanweb (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2017 (UTC) My pleasure; that was a satisfying edit :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:56, 31 December 2017 (UTC) Another barnstar for you! The Bio-star In recognition of your recent contributions to the Life Sciences on en:Wikipedia, analyzing and helping to improve the quality of articles, based on scientific data. Your efforts demonstrate tremendous potential into enhancing the scientific accuracy of The Free Encyclopedia. I am tremendously appreciative of your efforts, especially on the preliminary Taxonomic analysis. ~ Mellis (talk) 23:48, 31 December 2017 (UTC) Editor of the Week Editor of the Week Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your constant positive demeanor. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project) User:Buster7 submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week: I am always on the lookout for potential Editor of the Week candidates, for editors that fly under the radar, whose efforts are unknown except to a few. They don't make a splash, they don't emit a 'notice me' kind of behavior; they just quietly tackle the hard jobs. Tom.Reding is that kind of editor. A while back he "thanked me" via the Thanks Notification for awarding the Editor of the Week to a fellow editor. So, I looked into him and found an editor that does many important WP improving things. He is a working editor (535,847 live and undeleted edits) that fixes, populates, corrects, standardizes, cleans, parses, tries, peruses, adds, formats, listens, expands, updates, corrects, creates, assigns and (my favorite) "consistifies". A member of Wikiproject Astronomy and Wikiproject Tree of Life, he has recently been granted the page mover user right. He provides a human eye and understanding to "bot" problems that arise. In the area of redirect categorization he willingly puts his head together with other editors to work toward solution. A deserving recipient. You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week: {{User:UBX/EoTWBox}} Project Med Foundation Tom.Reding   Editor of the Week for the week beginning January 28, 2018 Quietly tackles the hard jobs. 536000 live and undeleted edits. A page mover. Understands "bot" problems. A deserving recipient. Recognized for work in redirect categorization Notable work(s) Wikiproject Astronomy and Wikiproject Tree of Life Submit a nomination Thanks again for your efforts! ―Buster7 ☎ 20:38, 28 January 2018 (UTC) ! XD <3 TY!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:56, 28 January 2018 (UTC) The AWB Barnster The AWB Barnster Fixing many depreciated syntax on infobox images. Iggy (Swan) 22:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC) A barnstar for you! Olympic Barnstar For your excellent work in getting the bot up and running to tag biographies for the Olympic Wiki Project. Thank you! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 10:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC) Thanks, my pleasure :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:04, 17 March 2018 (UTC) Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors! please help translate this message into your local language via meta The 2016 Cure Award In 2016 you were one of the top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC) Congrats on joining the million edit club! The Tireless Contributor Barnstar Congratulations on being the seventh editor on the English Wikipedia to do over a million non-bot edits! ϢereSpielChequers 12:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC) Thanks! I never thought I'd do so much, but I just keep finding things to fix/improve :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Space Barnstar For your astronomic contributions! For taking up so much space! With apologies for the puns, Ira Leviton (talk) 20:17, 8 June 2018 (UTC) A Dobos torte for you! 7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:09, 15 October 2018 (UTC) You have used your gifts well, Padawan Bringing order out of chaos OCD. It's not an affliction. It is a gift, and is part of the job description for being a Wikipedia editor. See WP:wikiholic. "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." Takes one to know one. Best regards. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:36, 15 October 2018 (UTC) 7&6=thirteen, thank you :) And I really should take the test, but I can't be bothered while editing...perhaps that is or should be one of the questions??   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC) Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors! The 2018 Cure Award In 2018 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 17:41, 28 January 2019 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Original Barnstar Jobe well done when it comes to the article on Prof. Helmut Veith (1971-2016). Terrenus (talk) 14:48, 26 November 2019 (UTC) Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors! please help translate this message into your local language via meta The 2019 Cure Award In 2019 you were one of the top ~300 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a thematic organization whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs. Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:35, 5 March 2020 (UTC) A barnstar for your efforts The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar Thank you for your continued service adding to Wikipedia throughout 2020. - Cdjp1 (talk) 14:01, 20 January 2021 (UTC) :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:40, 20 January 2021 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Bot Creator Barnstar For putting your OCD to good use when you created Tom.Bot. Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:27, 13 February 2021 (UTC) I see we both have OCD. I had no choice but to give you this barnstar. Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:27, 13 February 2021 (UTC) Thank you, comrade.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:21, 14 February 2021 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Original Barnstar thank you for all your help here. Paulhus15 (talk) 09:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Original Barnstar Just a barnstar for you! Your userboxes were fascinating and you seem like a really interesting person. I also somehow see you on every page I edit. Thanks for the contributions you have made! Hhzhang2345 Hhzhang2345 (talk) 16:16, 12 March 2021 (UTC) A Barnstar for you! The Tireless Contributor Barnstar Thank you for helping edit Wikipedia and make the encyclopedia a better place for others. Thank you and keep up the good work. --ThanosYourGod (talk) 22:08, 12 March 2021 (UTC) A barnstar for you! The Tireless Contributor Barnstar Thanks a lot for adding authority control to so many articles Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC) For improving Navseasoncats What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar …or rather, what a succession of brilliant improvements you have made to {{Navseasoncats}}! – Fayenatic London 19:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Article confirmation

Greetings Tom.Reding, After your previous assistance, my article is now available on Wikipedia, it is confirmed. And that inspired me, now I wrote more articles which are exist in other languages, but they are not confirmed yet. Can you please check them out for confirmation this time too?

Thank you very much I appreciate it -Film Contributor

• Ayub Shahobiddinov
• Inkuzart
• Lola Zunnunova
• Utkirbek Kakhorov

Film contributor (talk) 16:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done ~ I went through the above pages and found no significant corrections.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:00, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Request

Hi Tom.Reding, a couple of months ago you helpfully made an adjustment to the Module:Category described in year to add lichens. Since then, I've been populating the categories, and plan to continue doing so, as part of a long-term project to make article for all lichen species (especially those published after 2000). I was wondering if there would be a simple way to have the total number of articles in the subcategories displayed on the "Lichens described in the xxth century" page? I ask because every couple of weeks I manually add up these subcategory numbers to keep track of my progress, and I realised that there's probably a simpler way to do this that I'm not aware of. I think a "total articles" count would probably be useful for all of the "Module:Category described in year" iterations. Is this desirable/doable? Esculenta (talk) 20:31, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Esculenta: if you have WP:AWB, you can set "Source" to "Category (recursive)", and set as "Lichens by year of formal description" your search category. Currently, this returns 1925 results: 1709 articles + 216 subcategories. There's no way to do this on-the-fly on the category page itself, that I know of, but you can use either of these 2 PetScan links: with and without autorun (it takes a few minutes to run).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:40, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Notifications

Hello, Tom,

I apologize for overwhelming your talk page with notices but I feel obliged to inform editors when a page they have created has been tagged for deletion. And it looks like you created the majority of categories in Category:User pages with authority control information which were recently emptied (see discussion on Template talk:Authority control).

There is no need for you to do anything, if the categories remain empty for a week, they will be deleted. Of course, feel free to remove these notices from your talk page when you return to edit Wikipedia so you can see more urgent messages. And thank you for all of your work with templates! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:10, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

@Liz: well, good thing I'm not that busy! No problem. I created them simply to follow the existing pattern of tracking categories that existed prior to when I began being interested in {{Authority control}}. I have no use nor interest in them, and, if no one else does either, then I'm glad to see them emptied.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:18, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Help!

Hello, I hope you are well. Please review Mehran Ghafourian's draft. I made some changes. If the article is rejected again, write the reason. Thanks for your following up Amir ghpro (talk) 19:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

How can I fix “Grace City”

I added a history section. You removed it. What do I need to do to fix it? Thanks, Konroy Konroyb (talk) 20:37, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Cardiff Arms Park

You have previously edited Cardiff Arms Park. An editor has decided to split the article (yet again). I would like to know your view on the new edit....see Talk:Cardiff_Arms_Park#Article_Split_(again). SethWhales ^talk 20:11, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Tom.Reding: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, RV (talk) 01:42, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Precious anniversary

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:33, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Wiknic location

Hi Tom.Reding! Looking forward to hopefully seeing you at Sunday's wiknic. At Wikipedia_talk:Meetup/DC/Wiknic_2023#Different_location_for_the_wiknic? I raised a question about location — I'll copy it here for convenience but if you could answer at that talk page that'd be really helpful. Thank you!

Apologies for the late suggestion: How would folks feel about doing the wiknic at Dupont Circle instead of at Rock Creek Park? Dupont would be easier to get to for folks on the train. I originally chose Rock Creek Park because I was worried about the crowd getting too big (last time I hosted a CentralNotice'd event hundreds wanted to come!), but it looks like there have only been a small handful of signups, which makes Dupont plausible! I'll notify everyone who's expressed interest — please let me know if you have a preference one way or the other. Looking forward to seeing you all!

KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:31, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

FYI

Please don't do this, the line feeds break the infobox in this specific setup. Thanks. Zinnober9 (talk) 02:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Script errors

what is the fix for the red errors in Category:1863–64 in association football? looks like a large blow up in Category:Pages with script errors. Frietjes (talk) 21:31, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed, and all 56 affected categories null-edited to purge.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:50, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Philosophical poets

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Philosophical poets, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL and missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 22:11, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

"Televisions"

Hi,

I've noticed that the redirect page "Televisions" points to "Television". In every case that I checked, it's actually being used as the plural of "Television set", which is understandable, since television as a medium isn't normally pluralised. I'm bringing the matter to you because you were the last person to edit the redirect page, and because I'm inexperienced in these matters. Any thoughts? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 19:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Jean-de-Nivelle: I see your point, but I quickly found List of Nokia products, where televisions currently, and appropriately, links to Television, not Television set, given the immediately preceding text "Nokia divested itself of the industries listed below to focus solely on telecommunications."

There are 85 links to televisions, that I've redirected to the newly created WP:Disambiguation page Televisions (disambiguation), with a bias towards Television set. I haven't done much disambiguation in a while, in fact since long before Dab solver went down, but WP:WPCleaner seems to be the de facto replacement, if you want to go through some or all of the 85 links to correctly resolve them.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:51, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I think in the case of "List of Nokia products" the appropriate target is actually "Television sets": the section gives a list of industries and products that Nokia is no longer involved with. It was previously a manufacturer of television sets, not a player in the television industry. If it had been, the appropriate link would have been "Television", not "Televisions".

I don't think disambiguation is the right way to go: I think the best solution would be to make "Televisions" a redirect to "Television set" since that's the context in which it's being used. I'm happy to check all the pages that link to "Televisions" and make any necessary fixes. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 21:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bkonrad: "totally unnecessary", even given the conversation here? If not to Televisions (disambiguation), Televisions should be #R'd to Television set.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I've no strong opinion about what the target of televisions should be. It is customary for plural forms to redirect to the singular, but this may be an exception. However, the disambiguation set-up was totally unnecessary. If it is changed to redirect to television set, there should be a hatnote added there to [[television (disambiguation) rather than creating an unnecessary new dab page. older ≠ wiser 01:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hello, Tom.Reding. Thank you for your work on List of minor planets: 626001–627000. User:Herpetogenesis, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

Fabulous work!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Herpetogenesis}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

HᴇʀᴘᴇᴛᴏGᴇɴᴇꜱɪꜱ (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The Coronary Stenting and the DES Pages - A merger proposal.

• Drug-eluting stent
• Coronary stent

Both articles are now about cardiac stenting - and PCI. I took the DES article on as a personal project and it has been fleshed out to include PCI and I have also attempted to follow best practices in the layout and structure for a GA type of article.

I am exploring how to merge the articles, they are so very similar but the DES article is I think a child of the CS article.

Just testing the waters - I think they can be rolled into one document - within the GA framework as described on the DES article tp.

Your name was on one or the other articles , and you are an experienced editor - so just politely reaching out.

Thoughts, ideas, how to?

Dr. BeingObjective (talk) 14:47, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@BeingObjective: if the Venn diagram of DES vs. coronary stents shows considerable overlap, then merging probably makes sense, but that's about as far as my interest will take me. I see you've reached out to Maxim Masiutin, who will be much more useful than I am. I might swing by later, after the dust settles, for page and ref cleanup though...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:09, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I am working with Maxim M., he has been very patient and thoughtful offering guidance and links for me to read, the GA effort and proposal came from him.

As a total newbie - I just wanted to contribute and bring the article up to date - many comments seemed to have stalled out in 2009.

Any clean ups and such would be appreciated, I think the DES article is now 'static' so if your get the time/interest - any help/collaboration is appreciated.

Given the shear number of PCI/Stenting procedures performed in the US and EU, I think this an important article and the DES article seemed a little abandoned.

To be honest - I initially wanted to change only the design criteria section - and then my interest became broader - naturally scope creep can occur - but I do not really think so - if the two articles are combined - I think this makes so much sense, 90 percent of stents used are now DES - Maxim gave me a proposed GA framework - and it made sense to me.

I could not discuss DES design thinking without PCI - and modern DES offerings are really one integrated medical device. 20 years ago this was not always the case.

Thanks BeingObjective (talk) 15:35, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi Tom.Reding :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 10:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you

I was wondering why Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects had dropped by about 1,000 since I last checked it, then I saw Special:Diff/1188437036! Thanks for adding that - I have little to no experience in the subject area; but, on the face of it, it makes sense to me to separate the non-Wikidata-linked minor planet redirects to Category:Minor planet object redirects missing QID (as you’ve done). Now to do some more work on fixing some unlinked Wikidata redirects

All the best, ^user:A smart kitten_meow 17:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:TREE cleanup: would it be feasible to check whether Wikispecies or Commons have pages for a taxon?

At Asthenotricha amblycoma, you added a blank line after the taxobox, which I had asked for at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_48#Mass_cleanup_edits?. The other part of your edit was putting {{Commons}} and {{Wikispecies}} before {{Reflist}}, which I had not understood to be one of your proposed WP:TREE cleanup. There are many WP:TREE articles with templates for Commons or Wikispecies links that do not have corresponding pages on Commons or Wikispecies.

Would it be feasible for you to check whether Commons/Wikispecies pages exist in your WP:TREE cleanup efforts and remove the interwiki link templates when the pages do not exist rather than just reshuffling where the templates are placed? Plantdrew (talk) 03:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: I eventually stumbled across pages with {{Commons}}, {{Commons category}}, {{Commons and category}}, {{Wikispecies}}, etc. in other parts of the page (all over, really) that interfered with bullets #2, #3, #5, #12, #13, and #16, so I decided to add those templates to the etc. portion of #2, to move them to their correct locations.

I could certainly check whether sister-wiki pages exist, but there's some grey area there. Like for Asthenotricha amblycoma, the only commons search results is for c:Category:Asthenotricha, but not c:Category:Asthenotricha amblycoma (strange that it shows up as blue here) - though presumably that's still helpful to show? Would it be better to only remove the templates if "There were no results matching the query", like for the wikidata search for Asthenotricha amblycoma? However, after whichever templates are removed, is someone going to recheck these pages for non-null search results, and put the appropriate templates back, at regular intervals? My thinking right now is that it's better to have an easily accessible search link to quickly confirm/deny existence (and find whatever related pages the search results return) than to have none at all.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I had thought that Commons and Wikispecies link templates belonged in an external links section, not above references per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout#Links_to_sister_projects and Wikipedia:Wikimedia_sister_projects#Where_to_place_links.

There are far more English Wikipedia articles where there IS a Wikispecies page but no {{Wikispecies}} in the article than there are Wikipedia articles with OUT a corresponding Wikispecies page but with a {{Wikispecies}} leading to no search results. So yeah, nobody is checking for non-null search results and putting templates in place at regular intervals. The fact that that isn't being done isn't something that seems to me to be an argument for having interwiki templates leading to null search results.

I would like to see links to Commons and Wikispecies made available in mobile view via Wikidata. Commons and Wikispecies links via Wikidata exist in desktop view, as do links to Wikipedia articles in other languages. In mobile view, other language links are available, but not Commons or Wikispecies. Adding the links to mobile view seems like a better long term solution than managing templates like {{Wikispecies}} and {{Commons}}. Plantdrew (talk) 17:58, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: they typically belong at the top of the last section of the page, which is usually the EL section, but Do not make a section whose sole content is box-type templates, so on small pages with no, or an empty, EL, the templates end up at the top of the references section.

I'm ok with looking for and removing just the null-result {{Wikispecies}}.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Template:Back to top

I don't know if you've spotted that Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 3#Template:Back to top was procedurally closed a few days ago in favour of a TfD you indicated you'd be opening, but it doesn't appear you've done that yet. Thryduulf (talk) 12:57, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: thanks for the reminder. It's on my todo list, albeit low priority.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I've decided to just move {{Astro back to top}} to {{Back to top2}} to avoid all the fuss.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:16, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Confusing edits

Why are yo making changes like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_621&diff=0&oldid=920463840? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf: to burn the oldest, 10+ year haystacks of still-DMY pages, to allow myself and other editors to more easily find the needles that have since diverged, like what's now left in Category:Use dmy dates from January 2012 (0) & Category:Use dmy dates from March 2012 (0).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm confused: how is that a problem? I don't see what's in need to fixing. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:30, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf: for example, Simojärvi & 45 other pages from Jan 2012 use YMD dates, The Tree of Hands has an MDY in the wikitext, and the rest either have no DMY, involve dates before 1000, have some sort of garbage littering 1 or more of the various birth, death, age templates, or use them to create an MDY, either via |mf=y or by default, depending on the template.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay, but how is it better to have all of these in just one category that is all "DMY dates from December 2023"? Why do you change the dates of when the template was applied? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:13, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf: because that's what it's for. Per Template:Use dmy dates/doc, "Use the parameter |date= for the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting and fixed any found."   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:21, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, let me change this subheading from "confusing" to "perfectly sensible" and thank you. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

"… and fixed any found." But the edit Koavf pointed to, and many, many more, didn't need any fixes. Why can't those articles be left unchanged? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:22, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Because the documentation says to update the date when it was checked. If you disagree with the template documentation, Template talk:Use dmy dates is the right venue. I recommend that you check the archives of that talk page. It looks like the most recent discussion of this issue was held in 2019. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems I misunderstand what 'and' means. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

"Zero" is a possible value of "any". The wording in the template documentation could probably be improved. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for merger of Template:R from category navigation

Template:R from category navigation has been nominated for merging with Template:Category redirect. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. HouseBlaster^talk 14:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

MEATBOT

Please stop engaging in WP:MEATBOT edits like this and this, that make no practical changes to the article from the readers's perspective and fix no actual broken code from the editors' perspective. There is no point whatsovever to twiddling with the "Use [xxx] dates" template's date-stamp when no dates' formats were corrected, nor replacing template redirects with the actual template name. All this does is annoyingly hit people's watchlists with pointless changes and waste all our time examining them. This problem is why we have MEATBOT. It is permissible to make non-destructive but not actually helpful twiddles of this sort only if they are made in the course of other changes in the same edit that are actually substantive. (e.g. this was fine since it subtantively fixed a MOS:DASH error in the course of making twiddles that were otherwise not objectively useful).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I'm not "sacrifice[ing] quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity"; I'm doing the exact opposite, checking each edit that is itself checking hundreds of templates to be in their correct location as per WP:MOS/Layout. I decided to start at the shallow end of the "Use [xxx] dates" templates pool, with pages with relatively few, or 0, of these mistakes. Even so, I'm watching for frequent unintended results that need to be accounted for. I suppose I could make a WP:BOTREQ for the pages with 0 other fixes, and they will likely be addressed by other editors by the time it gets approved, so 6 in one hand vs. half a dozen in the other.

Re: "substantive" - the edits are substantive because, if nothing else, they update a tracking category.

Re: "and fix no actual broken code from the editors' perspective" - the point of confirming that a page still follows an old date format (see right above @ #Confusing edits), is to allow editors to easily find the pages that do need date fixes.

But I'll address pages with more complex fixes to avoid confusion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:34, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

But I'll address pages with more complex fixes to avoid confusion. Thank you. If the edit in question does something that is actually necessary for WP:P&G compliance, repairs an actual technical error, or improves the content for readers, then no one is going to object. As for the other bits: sacrifice[ing] quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity is not the only criterion. In particular, bot-like editing is by definition editing that is like that of a bot, and bots are not permitted to make such non-substantive changes (by themselves) per WP:COSMETICBOT. If you think you've discovered a loophole, you have not. (Various editors going around making trivial and costmetic edits of this sort have been topic-banned or blocked when they don't stop. It's not like I just made this up out of nowhere. I had to change my own cleanup-editing habits to compensate as a result, because I used to do stuff about the same as what you are doing.) There is no reason to update the tracking category if nothing at the article has changed; there is absolutely nothing wrong with an article that has {{Use DMY dates|October 2018}} in it remaining in the Oct. 2018 category, if none of the dates in it were non-compliant. So, that is non-substantive. The fact that editors might like some kind of distingishing between two categories of articles (or articles that could be separately categorized by some criterion but are not yet), based on some formatting in them, is not a matter of broken code or other errors in the page code. That sounds like you are looking for some other kind of tool or process, and one might need to be created (e.g. automated analysis of date usage in an article and adding a tracking category when one is found to have a mix of date styles). But it is not a reason to go around changing hundreds or thousands of articles in ways that affect neither readers nor any editors other than you.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: the edits aren't cosmetic, as they fulfill bullet #3, though I see how someone not interested in them might deem them trivial.

Re: "affect neither readers nor any editors other than you" - other editors I see operating in this space are Dawnseeker2000 & SSSB, which I believe I am assisting. If I'm not being helpful, please let me know.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Recent, relevant edits regarding SMcCandlish's misinterpretations of WP:MEATBOT & WP:COSMETICBOT: 1, 2.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:21, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Incredible progress we've made there in the last few days. Much appreciated. I've been working on that since July 2019. Crazy, right? I have a bunch of AWB settings files that I've been using in that space. The goal is to look at some of those articles that haven't been audited in some time and run Ohconfucius's module on them. I've modified it and the settings files to accomplish several tasks at once. It's only when I've exhausted all opportunities that I manually run the stand-alone MOS:NUM script (now actually testing a version that was modified by DavidBrooks). Dawnseeker2000 05:21, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

One more thing: I would be interested in seeing the outcome of an RfA (if the interested parties want to take it to that level). My interest would be in seeing if there's a better way of handling the date format categorization and tagging. I'd definitely participate as I've been working on date format auditing for a few years. Tagging folks that have commented on this in the last few days: @Jonesey95, @InfiniteNexus, @Legoktm, @Headbomb, @Anomie, @Primefac, @Trialpears, and @SMcCandlish, as well as @Ohconfucius for their overwhelming work in this space. Dawnseeker2000 23:59, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

@DavidBrooks (one more developer that's been helping refine AWB and the MOS:NUMDATES set of scripts.) Dawnseeker2000 00:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@Dawnseeker2000: my talk page is definitely not the place for so such a large discussion, though I would certainly participate in or at least follow it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I assume that meant WP:RFC not WP:RFA. It could be addressed that way, I suppose, but I think that the community response would be "this is already covered by WP:MEATBOT and by the instruction to human editors in WP:COSMETICBOT, and by WP:COSMETIC and by WP:FLOODING and by WP:SPECUSE". In short, no one cares if these edits, which neither improve the output for readers nor fix an editor-facing code problem, are done along with one or more substantive change in the same edit, but they are viewed as disruptive bot-like behavior when pursued as a purpose in and of themselves across a large number of articles, because the pound the watchlists of innumerable editors and waste their time examinging this pointless trivia for substantive issues that might need addressing. If this still isn't clear somehow, consider: "the community deems [costmetic edits] to not be worth making in bulk, even though those edits might change the output HTML or readable text in subtle ways" from WP:COSMETICBOT; and this from WP:FLOODING: "flooding or cluttering ... is one of the main reasons for the existence of WP:COSMETICBOT. The bot flag is designed to reduce the impact of flooding on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist, but will never completely eliminate it. Meat bots [i.e. human editors working in a bot-like manner] do not have access to such a flag." This necessarily means that meat-bot editors like Tom.Reding need to stop making these kinds of changes without also doing something useful (to others than themselves) in the same edit, because none of us have any way to suppress their flood of twiddling edits in either our watchlists or in RecentChanges.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't entirely follow the rambling text above, but maybe Template talk:Use dmy dates is the best place to have a discussion about that template, with an additional note at Template talk:Use mdy dates pointing to that discussion. A concise statement of the problem and a proposed solution would be useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:31, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Let's vacate Tom's space and head over to the DMY template:
→ Template talk:Use dmy dates § General discussion regarding use of this/these templates Dawnseeker2000 04:47, 21 December 2023 (UTC)