Talk:List of people killed by and disappeared during the Brazilian military dictatorship

How to keep this article in sync with ptwp?
The Brazilian community have been working on this list on Wikidata and the Portuguese Wikipedia, and it's thanks to their work that I could put together this English version using Wikidata list (I haven't researched this myself). As it stood, the list would have automatically updated to keep in sync with the changes they make on Wikidata and ptwp, but the cosmetic changes you've made here have stopped that. The Brazilian community is still researching this list, so it will change there in the future. I assume you have a different plan to keep things in sync, or plan to research this topic yourself, could you elaborate on how you will do that please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The other editors you have pinged will be able to answer the more technical part of your question but IMO there are a couple points that are problematic in your request. Each languages wiki have different standards, policies and guidelines. So first, to my mind, is that our articles should not be updated by items from another wiki as there is no way for editors on this WikiP to know that changes have been made. Then add to that there is no to WP:VERIFY that the information added there is accurate. Next, I know that items copied from one of our Wikipedia articles to another need to have been attributed to avoid copyright problems (gads I mangled the English there but I can't figure out how to fix it at the moment.) I don't know how this would work between different language wikis so I will ping to see if she can check on this up for us. Maybe my concerns will be cleared up by other editors but I would not but I would not try to sync the articles until that occurs. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 20:34, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * First of all, I have to say that I'm impressed by your work to convert the citations, thank you for doing that, although I wish you hadn't felt the need to do so - most of that could have been automated. I know the different wikis have different approaches, but in this case this is a list that's been directly imported from the wiki where it is being actively maintained by people that know about the subject matter. Updates to the list were tracked in the history, so they can be seen and checked by editors here. Full references were included, perhaps even too many as you were commenting about in the edit history. Copyright isn't an issue here since Wikidata is CC-0. The problem here is that syncing the articles has been *stopped* rather than started. I know this is a new way of doing things, so if anything is unclear, please ask! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:21, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I am having to format them as they are bare urls at the moment. As none of our automated systems can handle 100 at a time, let alone the over 1700 you added, I am having to do them in batches. I am still using refill but I am doing so in a sandbox set aside for that purpose. Again syncing should not be started as there is no way to verify here any changes made there. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 21:26, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Please take a step back and look at the wider issue. Bare URLs aren't great, but they are still valid references. Syncing new content from ptwp would also import updated references. The reference formatting could be improved by adding more info to the references on Wikidata, which could then be automatically included in the reference templates here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I am looking at the wider issue. If you would prefer that the 1000 plus refs in this article still to be fixed remain bare then I will be happy to go and edit other articles. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 21:49, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * As much as I love a properly formatted reference (seriously!), the formatting should still come secondary to keeping the article content up to date. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:06, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * And that has nothing to do with the edits I am making so I don't know why you keep pinging me about it. As I said if you are happy with these being open to WP:LINKROT then so be it. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 22:09, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * You can probably resume formatting the references now, given that ListeriaBot was blocked. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:32, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Any thoughts on the subject of this thread, or are you just rubbing it in now? I can't see a good way to maintain this list in sync with the work that ptwp/Brazil community are doing without using Listeria. Maybe creating this article was a bad idea. Mike Peel (talk) 09:29, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I believe that Articles for deletion/List of female Egyptologists and Articles for deletion/List of women linguists show that the entire idea of using a bot to keep content in sync from another wiki, to the exclusion of local edits like MarnetteD's, is fundamentally against consensus. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * As I demo'd below, both of those can be significantly improved if you resynced them now with Wikidata. But regardless, in this case the article wouldn't even have been created without Wikidata, and it's not likely for this copy to be manually maintained by the community here. Mike Peel (talk) 16:30, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not "a new way of doing things"; it was tried and rejected in 2016. There's a tradeoff to be made here between local control over content and centralization (allowing it to be automatically updated). This community has chosen the "local control" side of the tradeoff. * Pppery * it has begun... 21:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking back at both of those cases is quite embarrassing. Compare List of women linguists with User:Mike Peel/List of women linguists, and List of female Egyptologists with User:Mike Peel/List of female Egyptologists. Which one is better? Mike Peel (talk) 22:04, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Commenting on the attribution issue, since I was pinged. A simple alphabetical list contains no creative element, so attribution is not required. Normally I would do inter-wiki copying with an edit summary, like this: — Diannaa (talk) 22:28, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Attribution is not required for copyright purposes, however it is to avoid plagiarism. I don't think that's really an obstacle though.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough  (the apparently calm and reasonable) 13:04, 5 May 2020 (UTC).

Splitting article
This article is currently sitting at 489k, making it the 9th largest article on enwiki by size, and far beyond the template limit. Can the list be split into separate articles, either alphabetically, chronologically, or by affiliation? It's a monster. pauli133 (talk) 15:12, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It was only 250k when we were using Wikidata, most of the excess is due to the reference formatting that's been introduced since. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:23, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There are clearly too many references here. Surely one reference for each entry is enough, and it could be any of the references that are used for each. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There is disagreeing data (here is a video on how this was dealt with), so one reference for each case won't do it. --Joalpe (talk) 23:06, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Are the sources inconsistent? Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:59, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No. The sources that are used are the main databases on the topic. Yet, data was compiled on each one of these databases using different methodologies, especially for dates of death and disappearance, which leads to situations in which information cannot be pulled adequately by one source alone. Why can't this list be brought back to how it was originally created? It is how it was done on ptwiki, and the list ended up featured there. --Joalpe (talk) 20:41, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There are many entries with four of five references, and surely this is unnecessary. If you want to revert the article to a version that has a smaller size, I completely support that. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:25, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * and other editors who are keeping track of this discussion: do you agree to go back to an earlier version of this entry to prevent it to be too large? My suggestion would be to go back to this version. The advantage of this version is that content will be updated automatically. This version is also way smaller than the current one. What do you think? --Joalpe (talk) 01:25, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * How is this list different? Automatic updating does not sound like an advantage. There are still far too many references in this version. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It excludes unnecessary formatting, which reduces considerably the size of the article. --Joalpe (talk) 12:58, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The automatic updating wouldn't work anyway, because Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13 erupted since and definitively established that Wikidata-based lists should not be used in articles. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:30, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note that the discussion did *not* "definitively established that Wikidata-based lists should not be used in articles" - it did however result in the bot code being modified to not update lists in mainspace. There are technical ways around that if needed though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:55, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, the refs are breaking, so it's time to do this. I've broken the table up by letter. Unless someone has a better plan, I say we split this into articles covering A-D (~91k), E-I (~119k), J (~108k), K-P (~80k), and R-Z (~71k). pauli133 (talk) 15:02, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * How do you plan to maintain the lists in sync with ptwp with that setup, please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:57, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't, but if a bot can make updates to the monolithic table, surely it can be modified to check for names in certain letter ranges. pauli133 (talk) 13:06, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears that unnecessary references are two thirds of the page size, so let's start with removing all but one for each. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've cut out all redundant archived refs (leaving those for entries that would otherwise be unreferenced). It looks like we have three main sources, and I'm not going to make a judgement call about whether one is better than the others. pauli133 (talk) 16:09, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

current status, 2021-01-12
After this morning's work, the article is now sitting at 221,155 bytes, all of the templates are functioning, and I don't feel that it requires splitting at the present time. Size will go up as refs are fleshed out, and potentially down if there's a consensus about which/how many of the major refs should be kept for each entry. It will of course also grow if more entries are added. pauli133 (talk) 16:17, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

References January 2021
Hey, what's going on with these references? These are massive increases to the article's size and it's rather confusing but I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. Might it be a good idea to postpone these expansions? Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:55, 4 January 2021 (UTC)


 * , I'm using reFill 2 to expand the citations, and it seems that others are as well. most of these citations are just a bare link or missing most of the info a normal citation would have, so there's a lot to fill in. Finnaboing (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you know how many are left to fill? Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:09, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * A lot. Over a thousand, I think. Mostly because a lot of them are just external links. Finnaboing (talk) 22:20, 4 January 2021 (UTC)