User:The ed17/Archives/90

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I'd be interested to read the article when it comes out :)

Assuming it's online. Serendipodous 08:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Serendipodous: I'll let you know! I don't know if the article is using it as an interesting side fact or is its focus. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

GOCE June 2015 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2015 News

May drive: Thanks to everyone who participated in last month's backlog-reduction drive. Of the 38 people who signed up, 29 copyedited at least one article, and we got within 50 articles of our all-time low in the backlog. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Coordinator elections: Nominations are open through June 15 for GOCE coordinators, with voting from June 16–30. Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Biblioworm and Philg88.

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

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VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

Screenshot showing the link tool's context menu


The link tool has been re-designed:

Screenshot of the link inspector


There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
  • If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
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Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

Quotemark

I think you need to re-read that sentence: there's “who won Bruce Jenner’s OIympic medals?” ... and where else is there an unclosed opening quotemark? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 03:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: Oh damn, I only saw the first quotemark. Thanks for having sharper eyes than mine. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

USS Oklahoma (BB-37)

Hi - found you on the peer review for this article (done way back in 2011) and saw your offer of help back then. Many editors at OMT are inactive now so I'm asking for help where I can.

I'm slowly working on Oklahoma-related articles and this is an important one for many reasons. Could you take a look at it when you have time and offer some suggestions? It's rated start-class, which is clearly incorrect, but I'm not sure it's anywhere ready to submit to GA review. Help? KrakatoaKatie 00:03, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@KrakatoaKatie: Amusingly, I looked in the history and found that I wrote the construction section—not that I remember it. :-) I own Phister et al and can verify the references in there if needed. The narrative is pretty comprehensive right now, but we'll need a few more citations. I'd also try to find more sources; Wallin would be a good start, at least for the salvage operation (and I think he has a separate book on it?)—it's one of the two most notable uses of parbuckling. Bonner, Osprey book, and Friedman's "Innovation and Administration in the Navy Department: The Case of the Nevada Design" (on JSTOR) should help; I've been planning on buying the middle one anyway, and I have access to Friedman.
I'd prefer to replace Phister's Pearl Harbor coverage with a couple books that focus on the event. We can also remove some of the less useful sources, like Fitzsimmons, and mine the New York Times for more info. I'll check my other books here for references to the ship when you're ready to start work on it (and if that's now, all the better!). :-)
Also, if you discover why the turrets were still in place after the parbuckling, I'd love to know. As far as I'm aware, turrets of that weight were only kept in by gravity; they would fall out if the ship flipped over. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:13, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Isn't it funny how the stuff we wrote years ago slips from our memories? I wrote most of Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and couldn't tell you how I formed the words. I can work on the article now, at least until I have to to go Canada next week for 10 days, and then again when I get back. My admin areas (RFPP, AIV, and PERM) seem to be a little better covered lately. I also have Phister, and while I think I updated all the page numbers correctly, I agree it's a bit overused here. Afraid to say this out loud but much of Bonner's Oklahoma section is available with a search of the free preview at Amazon, which is kind of cheating, I guess, but I'll take it anyway. ;-)
I need to go to the Oklahoma Historical Society and the OU Libraries in July for several reasons; both have beaucoup secondary sources about the ship but I'll look at their primary sources too. The ship's anchor is not far from the Murrah Building site in OKC, and I'll have someone take a photo of the ship's mast next time that someone is in Muskogee. The ship's bell has been fixed outside Science Museum Oklahoma since I was in high school about 80 million years ago. I don't know the story of how it got there, but I'll ask. The museum is easier to get to for me than the park where the anchor is, but I'll try to get photos of both. It's almost impossible to grow up here without at least some understanding of the story of this ship. :-) KrakatoaKatie 10:33, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
@KrakatoaKatie: I should have some time to work on the article either this weekend, if I'm lucky, or next week. I've got a few blog posts that I have to write up for the WMF that they need asap. You won't be surprised to hear that I used Google Books to cite Bonner in the Nevada article. ;-)
I normally limit my primary source usage to newspaper and journal articles (speaking of the latter, I should be able to dredge up an account of Oklahoma's trial runs somewhere), but if you can find them, I think we should include or at least list them in a "further reading" section. I should be able to find better sources for the inter-war modifications than I used in Nevada, which if you couldn't already tell was my first FA. Stepping back from the content angle for a second, I have a contact at NARA that might (stressing might) be able to get us better photos of the ships than the Navy's standard 740x500-something, and I can check the usual NARA and LOC areas for anything they've already scanned and uploaded.
Re It's almost impossible to grow up here without at least some understanding of the story of this ship, could we run with that? Do you think there's anything on it in sources? We could include a few sentences or a paragraph on the ship's enduring legacy in the minds of the Oklahoman (is that what you call yourselves?) public, perhaps similar to the second paragraph here. For example, it's popular enough for an entire traveling exhibit.
This could be a FA, you know! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:03, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
'Oklahoman' is correct. Just don't call me an Okie. Most people here are okay with 'Okie' now and I've tried so, SO hard to get over my revulsion at hearing that word, but to me Okies will always be the ones who left for California, a la The Grapes of Wrath. The term originated as an insult and it's still an insult to me because my great-grandparents stuck it out through incredibly difficult years here. This is just about the only subject on which I'm old and crotchety. ;-)
The photographs are what I'm most interested in seeing in the OHS archives and in OU's Western History Collection. The photo of the port side torpedo damage is incredible - found a ref last night that said in several places a torpedo boat could have passed through the ship. Also found a memoir from one of the salvage divers. Info on the trials would be great, because I've been looking and can't find any.
We do need a section on the ship's legacy. Don't know about an RS on how teachers address Pearl Harbor here but OU might have something. I can look in their microfiche while I'm there. I was mistaken about the ship's bell (it's from the first USS Oklahoma City) but the ship's starboard propeller is mounted outside the museum. It's ginormous. Yeah, this should be improved to FA - it's an iconic ship and it still gets news coverage, currently about the exhumation of the unknowns in the Punchbowl. I've been too busy to do other than admin stuff today but I'll get to work on it tomorrow. I don't think GA is that far away for us, really. I've never been through the review process for higher than GA so you'll have to hold my hand. ;-) KrakatoaKatie 02:53, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
That makes sense. I'm not in that part of the South, so I don't have to deal with your people often. ;-)
Torpedoes did some crazy things in WWII. There were a couple cruisers that had their bows taken clean off, and the battleships didn't always fare much better: for example. It didn't help that the ships weren't originally designed with a good deal of torpedo protection. They got bulkheads in the '29 modernization, but they're pretty useless when you get hit by however many hit Oklahoma.
No promises on the trial info—the ship was commissioned during WWI, after all—but I'll get looking. Typically it's searching through pages of Google Books results until I hit upon the article in the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers.
Don't go overboard if you can't find legacy info; it's definitely not going to be needed for FA, but it would be nice. I think we'll be alright with FAC. If it's not ready to go, I'll tell you. :-) GA definitely isn't far away. Honestly, it could probably pass that with just Phister—but then it would be harder to rewrite things for FAC. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:38, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: May 2015





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The Signpost: 10 June 2015

Histmerge request

G'day Ed, sorry to trouble you.Draft:Battle of Buna–Gona was used to overwrite Battle of Buna–Gona with this edit: [1]. I wonder if it would be possible for a histmerge to be performed on the article to ensure appropriate attribution? If so, would you mind doing the honours? I made the request at WT:MILHIST a few months ago, but I think the thread was archived without a response about whether it was possible. Any advice or help you could provide would be most appreciated. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:17, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

@AustralianRupert: It's no trouble at all, really. How does it look now? Tangent: will you please finally let me or another Milhister nominate you for adminship? ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:44, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
G'day, Ed, thanks very much for that. Looks good. Regarding adminship, actually I have been thinking about it recently, but unfortunately I'm not sure I've got the time at the moment. I appreciate the offer; maybe something in the future. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:17, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: The moment you decide that you have the time, let me know and I (or anyone else in Milhist, really) will happily write you (a) nomination(s)! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:55, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 2, 2015

Ed, a summary of a Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. Was there anything I left out you'd like to see put back in? - Dank (push to talk) 19:03, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dank: I'm planning to nominate that in year or two for Chile's Navy Day (May 17). Could the TFA coords select a different article? I'll be happy to store the blurb in my userspace to save you future work. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:44, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Pinging Brian. - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but we have a big backlog of Milhist articles waiting to be TFA, and they can't all wait for a particular date in the relatively distant future. I like to meet such requests if I can, and if it was required for a specific date in a month or two, OK, I'd change it, but "in a year or two" doesn't in my view justify the change. Brianboulton (talk) 22:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
@Brianboulton: Then run another Milhist article in its place? I have a list of when I'd like to run these articles, albeit one I almost forgot to look at for Rivadavia. In any case, since when has TFA disregarded the wishes of article writers? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:24, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
OK, you select one from the MilHist list for this date, that you are absolutely sure is not going to have someone complaining that they'd rather see it on another date. It's not a question of disregarding the wishes of article writers, but we can't be mind-readers about their intentions. As fewer nominations are made at TFAR, co-ordinators are having to make more and more choices, and it is a considerable pain in the arse to have to change a nomination once it's been made. Brianboulton (talk) 23:45, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
@Brianboulton: 1) There's plenty to choose from; all it takes to lessen your workload is to post a message on an editor's talk page asking if they would be okay with x article appearing on the main page on y date. Or for an alternative approach, post a message on an editor's talk page asking if they have any articles they'd want to run on y date. 2) I'll be happy to pick a different one to run on this date and come up with a blurb for it. I'll send a couple messages shortly. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:33, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Brianboulton: @Dank: Ed alerted me to this discussion. How about running Air raids on Japan on 2 July? We're currently passing through the 70th anniversary of that campaign, so any day in July would do the trick, and the earlier the better given that I imagine the article on the atomic bombings will run on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Nick-D (talk) 08:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I will run the air raids article on 2 July. As explained on Nick's talk page, deference to the wishes of article writers cannot be the only factor in selecting TFAs. We have to try to ensure that the range of TFAs is properly representative of the range of available featured articles. That means scheduling around 6 MilHist articles a month; if the MilHist people would nominate that many each month, in good time, there would be fewer problems. Brianboulton (talk) 10:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Brian. I'll have a go at a blurb tomorrow unless you beat me to it. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:02, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
I do all the TFA columns, Nick, but none of the scheduling. (Although ... I'm going to start inviting some of the prolific GAN nominators to work on a few of them.) It does help when people write their own, because that gives me an idea what they consider important. I make an effort to retain as much of a nom's wording as I can. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, Brian and Nick-D. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:06, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
@Brianboulton: @Dank: I've just replaced Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 2, 2015. I'd appreciate it if you could copy edit it, and confirm that it meets all the criteria. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 10:57, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
  • For the future, it would help if you, Ed, made use of Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/pending. That tells me that there are dates in mind for these articles, and I generally don't schedule them on other dates. Brianboulton (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
    • @Brianboulton: Ah, I wasn't aware that page went so far into the future. I'll add my proposed articles there. There's a couple others that I'd like to go farther in the future, but that's alright. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:06, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 June 2015

Pk67's blog link is broken at the Signpost

...and at the WT:Milhist discussion. It seems they may have moved the original Wikimedia blog entry. Thought you'd like to know. Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 22:09, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Buckshot06: It's unfortunately a bit more complicated than that. Please see my comment over at Milhist. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXI, June 2015

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The Signpost: 24 June 2015

Giano

Do you think it's proper to take a passing swipe at a retired editor in a nice safe environment?[2] For my part I think it's assholish. Oh, and in the context where you did it, certainly sycophantic. Bishonen | talk 08:09, 26 June 2015 (UTC).

Gee Bishonen, your post is all class. I'm not sure if the loaded question at the start is more "assholish" than the blatant personal abuse at the end. Nick-D (talk) 08:19, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Mentioning that editor there in that situation was unnecessary as they are not party to the case nor participating in the discussion.--MONGO 09:17, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

So, do you think it is acceptable to have a go at Giano in a context that was nothing to do with him at all? Wikipedia doesn't need your kind of drama-mongering, especially when it's just for the sake of trying to impress. Sycophantic indeed. --RexxS (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Bish and Rex! It's been too long, but now it's like February 2014 all over again. Remember, Gorilla is an "extremely stupid woman" and I'm her "acolyte," as well as "assholish and oblivious." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:30, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

My behavior at Talk:Great Stink

I like to think I can take criticism when I need it, and pay attention when a qualified third party tells me I'm out of line. Would you mind telling me what I did to make you think I was baiting, and what I should do next time to avoid it?

Also, is it common for people to be miffed to see a policy they could be expected to already know of linked at them? I always thought it was a courtesy, but I can stop. (I already self-consciously left out a link to WP:BAIT above.) FourViolas (talk) 12:48, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's a start. ;-) It's considered pretty impolite to quote and link policies at people. For example, if I'm going to talk to you (an established editor) about reliable sources, I'm not going to go down the laundry list of WP:RS, WP:V, WP:SPS, etc, linking them all. It's one thing to do that in a dispute, and it's another to do that in polite conversation; it comes off as patronizing. Does that make sense? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:30, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Okay, thank you for letting me know. I've never experienced that personally, but I can understand it and will be more careful. FourViolas (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

EC's page

Might be better if you back off from comments at Eric's page. You're poking the bear and you know that the situation is not clear-cut, even if you think your opinion of it is correct. There are plenty of other threads elsewhere in which you can comment about more or less the same things, and seem often actually to be doing so. - Sitush (talk) 11:14, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

It's certainly clear-cut, but you're right in that I should back away. My disappointment in Eric's behavior is perhaps a bit too apparent. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 11:16, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Arbitration enforcement

By motion, the Arbitration Committee authorises the following injunction effective immediately:

  1. The case is to be opened forthwith and entitled "Arbitration enforcement";
  2. During the case, no user who has commented about this matter on the AN page, the AE page or the Case Requests page, may take or initiate administrative action involving any of the named parties in this case.
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You are receiving this message because you have commented about this matter on the AN page, the AE page or the Case Requests page and are therefore restricted as specified in (2). For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:30, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement arbitration case opened

By motion, the committee authorises the following injunction effective immediately:

  1. The [Arbitration enforcement] case [request] is to be opened forthwith and entitled "Arbitration enforcement";
  2. During the case, no user who has commented about this matter on the AN page, the AE page or the Case Requests page, may take or initiate administrative action involving any of the named parties in this case.
  3. Reports of alleged breaches of (2) are to be made only by email to the Arbitration Committee, via the main contact page.

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has, per the above, accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement/Evidence. Please add your evidence by July 13, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. Apologies for the potential duplicate message. For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:43, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Signpost article and blacklisted URLs

There's no technical requirement to un-blacklist a link temporarily: if you feel like it, you can try a couple of other things. (1) Rollback isn't affected by the blacklist, so you could just use rollback, and in the discussion you're already having, you could note that it was just a technical hack. (2) Delete the page, restore the last version before her edit, make a minor change (so the link's in the current edition of the page), and then restore her edit, which will thus be an old revision. Nyttend (talk) 16:48, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I tried to undo it and was blocked. I'll remember those solutions for the future—thanks! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:03, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Don't worry it won't happen again! Liz Read! Talk! 19:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC)