User talk:JamesLucas

Removal of country names from infoboxes

Hi, i've noticed you do this on a couple of pages (for example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Sainte_Catherines&diff=prev&oldid=1092646281). Why are you doing this? --FMSky (talk) 11:33, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, unnecessary removal of information. It's not like Philly is a country. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:00, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Moved from Talk:JamesLucas#U.S. in infobox

Sto removing U.S. from the infobox please Yankees10 18:39, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello, FMSky, Mac Dreamstate, and Yankees10. Sorry to keep some of you waiting. Here’s my basic thinking behind the removals of ‘U.S.’ from disambiguated place names where I believe the city alone or the city-state combination to be sufficient.

1. Inclusion of ‘, U.S.’ after ‘[City], [State]’ is relatively uncommon in infoboxes unless it has been put there by editors with a more-is-always-better approach to Wikipedia (I see that Yankees10 has made hundreds of edits that do nothing except add ‘, U.S.’ ). ‘[City], [State]’ is natural to people and almost always deemed sufficiently informative. One could argue that’s biased toward American editors and users (and lord knows we do sometimes forget there are other people out there) but…
2. The median U.S. state population is about 4.5 million—well within range of the median national population of 9 million—so it’s not unreasonable to assume that, even to non-U.S.-residents, state names are going to be about as familiar as nation names. As far as I know, no one is arguing that we should say ‘Tallinn, Estonia, E.U.’ because Estonia is too small to be known. Yes, it’s a sovereign state recognized by U.N., and that’s significant, but most states are much larger in area, population, GDP, etc., so it’s not crazy to think of them as entities lots of people recognize.
3. Technically the comma that separate city and state is working like an open parenthesis. In prose, a second comma is needed to close the interruption begun by the first comma, so using additional commas to stack layers really makes a hash out of the grammar. As far as I know, it is condoned by no style guides. I grant you that infoboxes aren’t really prose and need to be approached flexibly in some ways, but beyond a certain point torturing language is bad there too.
4. It is so easy for people who don’t find ‘Austin, Texas’ or ‘Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’ sufficiently informative to click the link. That’s why it’s a link! For everyone else, reducing clutter is good.

I have made serious attempts to find MOS guidelines on this matter since FMSky first left a message and found nothing obviously relevant/authoritative. If I have missed something, please let me know. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 01:32, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

1. It is explicitly recommended by the documentation of major infoboxes, eg. {{infobox person}}.
2. The median population of other subnational entities is in excess of 9 million, and yet we don't expect people to be able to recognize the names of eg. Indian states or Chinese provinces. As an international encyclopedia it is appropriate to provide that context for all readers, not assume that everyone knows US geography.
3. Commas are used to separate place-name elements. That's the case in every style guide that addresses the topic. This is especially true when the information is being presented as data - compare for example the MLA referencing guide.
4. Readers should not need to follow links to get essential information

You should also be aware that since your edits have been disputed and you haven't established consensus for them, you're in breach of the rules around use of AWB. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:10, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nikkimaria. Thank you for your well orgainized message! Responses:

1. The recommendation at Infobox person § Parameters contradicts WP:USPLACE—a guideline specific to article naming but still worth noting for the more broadly applicable principles motivating it—so I would take it with a grain of salt.
2. Your point about India and China is something I’ve been mulling for a long time. I don’t touch these instances in either direction as it seems like any conversation about that is going to need to grapple with how much our editorial policy acknowledges or denies the reality of the U.S.’s cultural dominance over the past 80 years and what balance we strike between making Wikipedia efficiently informative for real-world users and making sure we aren’t repeating the biases of Britannica and its ilk.
3. I may not be understanding your third point, but I’ll say that I’m certainly not disputing that commas are used to separate place-names—adding necessary commas is kinda my whole thing. My work on that front, though, has taught me that some editors hate commas, so in the interest of achieving proper grammar while ruffling the fewest feathers, I’ve come try to be on the lookout for opportunities to remove a word instead of add a comma. FWIW, my MLA guide (which is old enough to have a section on “Oriental Names”—yikes) does not address tri-level place names (e.g., city, province, country). I don’t have access to their subscription content, but I see the relevant freely accessible page doesn’t address them either.
4. I agree with the philosophy of MOS:FORCELINK, but the objective championed there is to provide readers with a clear concept of the subject, not to inundate them with commonly known information. We don’t, after all, feel compelled to include the word ‘human’ in the lead sentence of every bio.

Regarding my using AWB, I want to be clear that I do not use AWB’s automation features to make these changes. Such removals have been part of maaaaybe 2% of my edits, and there are plenty of instances I wouldn’t want to remove, such as when country of death is different from that of birth or when the country in question is no longer extant (e.g., Prussia).

Finally—and this is may be more significant than everything above—in the process of drafting this response I found a guideline I had never found before. From Naming conventions (geographic names) § General guidelines:

5. References: When referring to a place from another article (e.g. in infoboxes) note these guidelines do not prohibit, nor do they require, the suffixing of country names to the place. Both "Middletown, Connecticut, U.S." and "Middletown, Connecticut" are permissible. The presence of the country should not be changed arbitrarily.

From the edit histories, I deduce that you left me the above message in responding to my edit of George Otto Gey. In the case of that article, if I understand point 5 correctly:

• There was nothing wrong with how the infobox was created (with city and state only) in 2016.
• You were wrong to add ‘US’ to the infobox in 2019.
• I was wrong to remove ‘US’ to the infobox a couple days ago.
• You were wrong to add ‘US’ back to the infobox later that day.

I would not wish to continue this cycle through another removal, but I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the no-country version of that particular infobox is the legitimate one because that’s how it was first created. And, as I noted to the trio above, the no-country version of birth_place for U.S. and Canadian bios is far, far more common. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 20:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Point 5 indicates that that guideline neither prohibits nor requires inclusion - which is appropriate since it is a titling guideline, and a section specifically on move discussions. Thus as other guidelines support inclusion - or indeed as community consensus supports inclusion, as has been increasingly the case (and which makes your assertion of commonality suspect) - inclusion is an appropriate non-arbitrary choice. It also helps to address the point you make about biases - just as we don't assume people know Chinese provinces, we also don't assume they know US states. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Nikkimaria—sorry, I’m not following you. Point 5 says what you say it says, and then it says, don’t change it just to change it. Right? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 00:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep. And that means if there's reason to - as there are, as outlined above - it can be changed. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Your justification, if I’m understanding it correctly, apparently applies to everything. If your justification applies to everything, why would point 5 to exist? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 01:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

It exists to tell us two things: that that guideline doesn't cover the topic either way, and that you shouldn't make changes without having a reason. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:30, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Notes

Again, please stop removing this.-- Yankees10 00:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Again stop.-- Yankees10 17:36, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

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U.S. in infobox

Moved to Talk:JamesLucas#Removal of country names from infoboxes

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Y —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 22:53, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

You reverted my edit!

Add it back or else. Elaboratescanner04 (talk) 09:58, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, Elaboratescanner04—no can do. Your additions did not benefit the article. But I like what you did with your user page. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 11:15, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Could

Please forgo the reverting and discuss wording possibilities/changes.Exquisite2 (talk) 01:59, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@Exquisite2: I appreciate your efforts to ensure that I was alerted to your follow-up to my request for discussion. In case it is helpful to you in the future, I will note that you can get a user’s attention directly from any talk page by using a template such as {{u|Name of user you want to alert}} rather than having to craft a separate message for the user’s talk page. Cheers. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 14:10, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Roger Masson

Hi @JamesLucas: How goes it? Could you take a look at Roger Masson if you have some time. Thanks for updating the Sarah Goldberg article. scope_creep^Talk 21:57, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello scope creep—glad my edit was helpful. I am happy to take a look at Roger Masson this coming week. Did you have a particular approach you wanted me to take? I ask because I sometimes do some pretty serious reshaping and tightening of articles, but my edit on was Sarah Goldberg, which was basically glorified spellcheck, would not have hinted at that. I’m generally a follower of the principles outlined by the Writing better articles essay, and I don’t have any misgivings about unilaterally overhauling an article in the application of those principles, but I’m not looking to hijack a new article, especially when I’m there by invitation. (In case it’s helpful, here are a few of the more substantial edits I’ve made in recent months: Kate Baker; Fred Lowry; Dominic Ng; Altdorf, Uri; ID3.) Cheers! —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 17:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

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Y —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 17:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

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Abbrevations

Hi, these abbrevations you inserted into various infoboxes, "Calif.", "Ala.", "Penna." (1 2) should not be used in infoboxes, see MOS:POSTABBR --FMSky (talk) 16:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

​OK—looks like that rule was modified in 2017 or so. Good to know. Kinda contradicts § Use sourceable abbreviations, but what’s a MOS page without a few vague or misleading statements anyway! (FWIW, ‘Penna.’ was a goof. It’s in the historical signage near Penn Station, and it slips out of my fingers from time to time.) Cheers —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 17:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

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Question about creating new page

Hi @JamesLucas would you be willing to collaborate on creating a page for Anonymass (record producer) who also manages Caskey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caskey_(rapper) ? I am new to creating pages and thought maybe you could help. Thanks FreshlySnipe5 (talk) 23:24, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

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AWB edits to change citations linking to Fultonhistory.com

Hi, JamesLucas, I noticed that you are using your alternate account to change citations with the parameter |via=fultonhistory.com so that the link text now says Old Fulton New York Postcards. I do not think this is optimal, for a few reasons:

1. The name of the website is not as well known as the URL itself. In fact, the citations I've found refer to the website as variously "Old Fulton New York Postcards", "Old Fulton NY Postcards", "Old Fulton Postcards" or even just "Fultonhistory.com".
2. In some cases, like the Empire State Building article, other citations use a similar format, e.g. |via=newspapers.com, so this creates inconsistency too.
3. Some of your other edits, like this edit to Unisphere, not only changed the citation formatting, but also changed other parts of the article. For example, you removed a link to Queens, and even all mentions of the U.S., when most people will probably have to click at least two links to figure out that the sculpture is in the U.S. (I see there's a discussion about this further up your talk page). Second, that particular edit also changed the title of a source from "La Guardia International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Airport Access Program, Automated Guideway Transit System (NY, NJ): Environmental Impact Statement" (which is the correct title according to Google Books) to "...(N.Y. and N.J.: Environmental Impact Statement" (which is not correct).

Happy to hear your thoughts on this. – Epicgenius (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

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Hi, please correct the typo at WNW: 192½ → 292½ on the Ukrainian version of your cool 32-point compass rose. Iketsi (talk) 04:50, 30 January 2024 (UTC)