User talk:DavidBrooks/Archive 3

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Rounds and rations
I think that a bullet point is better because it gives guidance to an new editor on how to add another source to the references section. It also means that they are constant. However my main concern is not that which you have highlighted but (1) the placement of the after the bullet citations (that include  in the references section and (2) the lack of any  at all in some articles with a  entry in an article. I at the moment parsing the articles in the list created by your [[:Category:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica articles with no significant updates.

I think that all the articles that contain a single sources should carry inline citations otherwise eventually we end up with expansion and it becomes more and more difficult to tell what parts of the text ought to be attributed and what parts carry no citations. So along with moving or adding I am also adding  or some other similar template.

The complicated AWB script I am using will add a bullet point, and I am loath to take it out, because I use it in several different places in the script, however I will not be re-parsing this set in the near future, so if you do not like it in cases where is the only entry in a references section I will not be re-adding it.

There is one other situation where I do think it is much better to use a bullet point, that if there are endnotes copied from EB1911 then the entry looks best/clear as:
 * endnotes:
 * book 1 (1902)
 * book 2 (1903)

rather than

endnotes:
 * book 1 (1902)
 * book 2 (1903)

or

endnotes:
 * book 1 (1902)
 * book 2 (1903)

-- PBS (talk) 20:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * outdenting...

To unpack several things here (and number them for reference):
 * 1) I understand your point about the sub-bullets. I don't feel strongly, so will revert to your advice. Might even use AWB to fix mine.
 * 2) I never liked putting the standalone in a section called "References", when it is an unextended copy of EB1911, but I guess you can interpret it as a single footnote for the entire article. Some editors have invented a "Sources" section. I used to use the now deprecated Attribution sub-head, but no more. Any thoughts?
 * 3) In such cases, I think you tend to use a standalone at the end, with  after each paragraph. I tend to use embedded markers for articles that contain non-EB1911 text. My main reasons are (a) it requires only a single hop to find the link to the source (b) I think we agreed a while back that if the source appears in a footnote it is not necessary to also include it standalone at the end. But maybe I was mistaken on (b).
 * 4) The problem with both approaches is that it doesn't make a distinction when some part of the paragraph has been extended with a small interpolation. If I find one (which requires close attention that I usually don't have time for) and it's unreferenced, I tend to add a . This may be obsessively detailed given the larger problems of attribution in WP, but I don't think it's wrong.
 * 5) As to the new category: its rationale is explained in the Category page. It seems to me that if an EB1911 copy hasn't been substantively edited in over ten years, it probably never will be, so I'm comfortable with a single attribution in the foot of the article and assuming that will be valid forever. David Brooks (talk) 19:31, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * ETA: 6. I see your moves of reflist from References to Notes. Good move; I think that's right but have been generally too lazy. Do you have a RE that automates that? David Brooks (talk) 19:36, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

[edit clash]
 * 1)
 * 2) I have no problem with placing it in a references section. I do not use a bold attribution if it is the only source. But if there are more than I place the ones from which text is copied at the bottom and use the bold Attribution: line. I always include a ==Notes== section with, unless someone else has come up with some other local sane method of dividing up notes and bulleted citations.
 * 2a) I think it is short sighted to assume that an article will not be extended, and I think that all articles should have inline citations, even if there is only one citation at the moment. Given the way that you prefer to footnote the article using inline=1 why not use   and a References sectyion with a  instead? That way you will be meeting WP:V requirements, the plagiarism guideline and encouraging other to use inline cations if they expand the article.
 * 3) I prefer inline short citations as a style. How do you handle page numbers in your inline long citation style if the EB1911 article is several pages long?

4) Here is an example of what you talk about: If the person who made the additions had not footnoted them then I would have added for those sentences after the start of a paragraph and before the start of the EB1911. If the additions are in a separate paragraph of at the end of a paragraph, then I use my judgement on whether I add a . "Earwig's Copyvio Detector" is a very useful tool for identifying this type of problem.
 * earwig William Drummond of Hawthornden
 * William Drummond of Hawthornden recently edited by me (diff)
 * 5 I have no problem with the category, but I do not agree with your assumption as forever is a very long time, and more importantly general references (as some call them) do not meet the requirements of WP:V. As I wrote above you can meet the requirements via 2a with almost no additional effort.

Yes I have an AWB script to do this and much more. Drop me an email and I'll send it to you. -- PBS (talk) 22:37, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * ETA again: you just edited Fiars Prices, which is a great example of the problem. I recently extended it from a copy of Nuttall by adding a copy of EB1911, and I intended EB1911 to mean "copied from EB1911 except for the explicitly cited claims"; you added more footnotes. If I adopted your style and added an explicit ref to each paragraph, would that have worked? David Brooks (talk) 22:14, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. -- PBS (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * When I said one inline citation I was thinking of this edit as an example. I think that longer articles would need a citation at the end of each paragraph. -- PBS (talk) 23:08, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I take your points. I'll start explicitly footnoting each paragraph with, and use Notes as a header (I wish I had done that sooner). There's still the problem of accidentally crediting a later inserted phrase, but we always have that. Thanks for pointing me to earwig's copyvio detector; I had been using dupdet which is obviously harder to parse. Re "how do you handle page numbers?" I think it's adequate to use the entire range of the article in the parameter list, unless I'm just referencing an isolated claim. I do try to include the page number or range even when the link is a wstitle; often they are easily accessible because of the growing use of transclusion from Page space. David Brooks (talk) 17:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC) ETA: this diff to François de Beaumont, baron des Adrets is in my new style David Brooks (talk) 23:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Once someone has added EB1911 inline citations, if in future someone else adds text to the article it is easy to see what it is with a simple diff from the initial full citation. The sooner an article that is a copy of an EB1911 is cited with inline citations the easier it is to spot any more additions to the text. Another way to do the same thing with a high degree of accuracy is to look at the initial author's edit and then diff from there. That usually show the changes from the EB1911 as the earliest text tends to be close to the original EB1911,this of course is not as guaranteed to be correct as using earwig, but is a useful guide if the original article is not easily accessible on the net without a lot of OCR errors. -- PBS (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I had a look at François de Beaumont, baron des Adrets and made some changes diff
 * If there is only one section header it ought to be called "References". "Notes" is used as a supplement to a References section not as a replacement. I think using a refs= parameter in the template is a needless complication, which will be very confusing to new editors. Why not simply include the long citation in the first name reference tag pair? It is simple and more easily understood by another editor if they wish to add another citation, and is by far the most common way of adding inline citations. -- PBS (talk) 00:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Because I often find that a long footnote inline with the text makes it harder to locate and edit the main body of text. On the contrary, I find the refs= feature improves understanding because it's easier to find the anchor of named refs. David Brooks (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I think that for a new editor refs=list are confusing because it introduces them to yet another level of abstraction. For more experienced editors a refs=list is relatively easy to follow if it is fairly small. But I would suggest that when it gets like this one did (before I reformatted it into short ad long citation pairs) then it had become a mares nest for editors. This happens for several reasons, but primarily because the ordering in the list and the ordering in the text is different. ie unless one is very diligent new text is added with a citation somewhere in the middle of the text, and the new citation tends to be placed at the end of the list. Or if a person move a paragraph as there is no need to adjust the list the references in the list do not follow their usage in the text. Coupled to this there is no default name for ref tag names so that in the case of this page one ended up with names like  to name but one pair that appeared in the body of the text. So I think that refs=list is a needlessly high maintenance option. If the sources either appear in inline footnotes or in a visible sorted by name list in the References section then the maintenance looks after itself.
 * I agree with your comment of "long footnote inline with the text makes it harder to locate and edit the main body of text" which is why I use the templates as sort citations to the long footnotes in the References section. Also using that method means that the citations can be broken down into discrete pages which meets the provisions of WP:V "Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)". See for example Alexander I of Russia how would you handle those inline citations by EB1911 to other sources under WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT?  -- PBS (talk) 20:43, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I understand your comments. I think the references feature itself is the bigger hill to climb for new users. The refs= feature can be easily learned by looking at just one example (more easily than looking at the instructions, at any rate).

Because of the nature of the lists I'm working through, I rarely come across a really long article anyway. Sometimes I use a s.v.  notation in the display parameter. Anyhow, I'll continue to go with my preferences unless I reach a compelling case for page numbers (the pedant in me says why not include line numbers as well?). It's more important to keep knocking down the lists of completely inadequate references than to revisit the two thousand and more that I've previously edited, I think. David Brooks (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Line numbers are not usually included in standard references to standard works (although they are appropriate in some works such as treaties, poems, religious works such as the Bible, plays, etc). The work we have both been doing to improve Wikipedia articles with out adequate EB1911 citations is an improvement whichever of the various methods we employ that we have been discussing here. -- PBS (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed on that. Sorry for being facetious. David Brooks (talk) 00:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

EB1911 vs Cite EB1911 templates
Thank you for the note left on my talk page. I reviewed your comments and the templates you recommended and realize I was incorrect in the changes I had made to those pages. Also, I want to especially thank you for the very civilized tone you used in the note. It was very different and refreshing from some of the comments I have received from other editors. Darrend1967 (talk) 16:49, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Web Archive
Hello David, Since I have Afonso I of Portugal on my watchlist, I just saw the change recently made and, since I'm not too savvy when it comes to this, I left a message at this talk page. Could you give me some guidance on where I can find more info on Web Archive, or more to the point, if this is being implemented at en.wiki (replacing urls by adding web archive) at a large scale? I also participate in es.wiki and recently discovered some plagiarism by, after many steps, discovering how this could be done, since I wasn't sure at first if it was plagiarism on our part or by the website and it turned out that the website article had been there years before the article had been created at es.wiki. Don't know if I'm explaining myself too well and any hints would be appreciated. Regards, --Maragm (talk) 05:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Replied at User talk:Maragm. David Brooks (talk) 14:08, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Changes to WikiProject_Encyclopaedia_Britannica
Thanks for the message. I have replied at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Encyclopaedia Britannica -- PBS (talk) 05:55, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Do you see an archive.org redirect?
I use Firefox and have the same problem. I have emailed archive.org (and cced you in). If you do not receive a email copy let me know.

I checked it affects more than just EB1911 uploads by using a completely different source: A link to Silborne's Waterloo Campaign and the page at the start of Appendix IV. It too now redirects to the start of the book.
 * https://archive.org/stream/waterloocampaig01sibogoog#page/n787/mode/1up

It is not the disaster it could have been, because the first page of the volume is still close to the text, the reader will just have to do a little more work than usual until we find a work around.

-- PBS (talk) 09:16, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The problem seems to have been fixed. -- PBS (talk) 22:14, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Pages using EB1911 with unknown parameters
I have been working through Category:Pages using EB1911 with unknown parameters. I have picked of all but the "s". They were grouped by the first letter of the unusual parameter. So for example the "p" collection consisted of p=99 instead of page=99 or whatever the number was. The "s" seem to be all templates with short=x as a parameter. This is wrong because this parameter should only be used in the "Further reading" or "External links" sections with the template, because of course of EB1911 is used it should either be inline or in a References section. For this reason short= does not exist in )

If you decide to work on the list please work top to bottom. I will work bottom to top, that way we are less likely to clash on an article. -- PBS (talk)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. I wasn't paying attention to this list; right now I'm mixing the usual alphabetical verification process with some other remediations (like "all the articles I've touched that still have a naked EB1911, of which 3 are left). Go ahead; I'll not interfere. Although I'm tempted: Alexander von Humboldt's Further Reading should be reformatted into a bulleted list. David Brooks (talk) 22:26, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Be tempted. I've done enough for now, back to the list another time. -- PBS (talk) 23:02, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Looking at the source, I wasn't aware that the hanging indent was an option for refbegin - that's the first time I've seen it. So I won't change that unnecessarily, just the extraneous short. David Brooks (talk) 23:24, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

In Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with an unknown parameter there is a block of articles under "i" which seems to be mainly for "inline=" which is not a parameter in (it is a parameter in

I was starting to go through the 20 odd pages that were there when I realised that the ones I was looking at such as Thomas Widdrington were there because of a glitch in one of your convention scripts (see the edit Revision as of 07:11, 13 February 2016). This in itself is easy to fix, the problem is that in this case earwig shows that there is a 46.5% likelihood of a copyright violation. So (1) I am not sure why you changed from the format that was in used before and (2) you should probably have used rather than  (if so the inline=1 parameter would be the correct one to use). Do you want to sort out these 20 odd articles or will you do it, as it is going to be necessary to run earwig against each of them to see if the parameter inline=1 needs removing or the template needs changing to ? -- PBS (talk) 20:24, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the investigation. Looking at that one, it seems like pure carelessness - for example I could easily have decided it should be a Cite EB1911 and not an EB1911, but didn't remove the "inline" from my canned insertion. I'm not saying that's the case here without more earwigging, but it looks like it. No time now (family about to arrive) but I'll go over those 20 during the week some time. David Brooks (talk) 21:29, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Turns out I'm not the only offender: the second on the list was here: Bodney simply inserted the "Cite" (correctly, I think) before my EB1911. But I'll still check them all. David Brooks (talk) 04:45, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, looking at the list, I don't recognize most of them as those I've ever touched. you also added an "inline" parameter to a Cite EB1911 here and here, at least. As there are only 19 (now), I'll include them in my fixes. David Brooks (talk) 04:51, 24 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oops, looks likes like I've confused the EB1911 template with another one in the past. I've now fixed up Bongo (and used volume= and pages= parameters in the EB1911 template like I've been doing recently) and Charabanc. I don't think I used "inline=1" (he says hopefully) much, if I did it was a while ago. DivermanAU (talk) 05:08, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick work. Actually, according to earwig, those two lines in Bongo (really? I thought "bongo-bongo land" was an archaic racist expression) are exact copies, so EB1911|inline=y is actually right. Don't sweat it; I have some automated tools around earwig that make this stuff pretty easy to analyze. David Brooks (talk) 05:22, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Your edit of Alonzo Potter, etc.
Thank you for doing what you thought needed to be some and not simply leaving a tag saying that it ought to be done by some editor. I have no problem with your edit personally because I don’t expect to read or edit the article again. However, I wonder about the rationale for some of the things you did. If shortening the Reference section is the primary objective, then using the "cite..." templates and the {{sfn} shortcut makes sense. However, I find that full citations make it easier to know the source without clicking the link to the Sources section. Also, in editing an article which uses the "cite..." templates and the {{sfn} shortcut, the full citation on which the {{sfn} is based can get deleted. I don’t have any problem always using the full citation because I cut and paste them in my draft. I use WordPerfect. I dislike Microsoft Word. I have now changed the default quotation mark style from “curley ” to "straight." That causes the problem of quotation marks looking the same as the Wikipedia code for italics.

I am now working on a draft for revising the Horatio Potter article. As was the Alonzo Potter it has no citations and much of the content is from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, some cut and paste verbatim. Right now, that kind of editing is my priority.

You might be interested in articles about formats for Readability on the web. For example, "8 Guidelines For Better Readability On The Web.": 5. Keep paragraphs short; 8. Use highlights, lists, and images. Another example, "How to Improve the Readability of Anything You Write.": Tip #1: Use one and two syllable words if appropriate; Tip #2: When possible, write short, simple sentences. Introduce one idea in a sentence; Tip #6: Summarize important points in short paragraphs; Tip #8: Readers like "lists"; Tip #13: Break up long passages with bold or italicized subtitles and/or captions. Vejlefjord (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Regarding you, you are beginning the golden years of old age, often called "young old age" (65-74). If you want to know what is ahead for you, if you live long enough, I have several articles about that on the website of the Association of Hospice & Palliative Care Chaplains in the UK. I can send you the links. Or you mentioned sending an email to you. How do I do that? I could send the articles as PDF attachments. Vejlefjord (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you
Dear Mr. Brooks, I have posted my reply. Thank you for taking the time to answer for my opinion. Much appreciated! Best wishes and please have a wonderful day!--A.S. Brown (talk) 04:18, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

EB1911 article with no significant updates
see User talk:Rich_Farmbrough, and template talk:EB1911 article with no significant updates -- PBS (talk) 09:00, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks re: citations
DavidBrooks, Thanks for the clarification re: my misuse of circa. I will make the adjustments going forward. TiMike (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Missing attribution
A rave from the past. I am running a script that is updating some citations in Wikipedia articles that link to EB1911 on Wikisource, but do not use either of the EB1911 templates (instead they typically are in free text or more often use ).

I am currently editing Fra Bartolomeo and once I had finished attribution it, was checking the history to see what if anything is supported by a general reference by a William Vaughan. With me so far?

I was surprised to see in the history that for a time there was reference for EB1911 although some of the text came from that source

It turns out that back in 2014 you were running AWB and moved the link out of the references section into external links. At the time the template in use was when it ought to have been. This was probably because back then you were not aware of earwig. You might like to look through that AWB old run and check that you did not do the same for other articles contained text that was not attributed.

I myself are going to have to go back through this current run, because silly me I had assumed that the 350 or so articles that were in the list did not contain copies of text from Wikisource, but in fact one particular editor who does not like the attribution template had been removing and replacing it with. So I am going to have to go back through the list and check the first 100 or so (sigh!).

-- PBS (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching that. I think at the time I was using the old Duplication Detector, whose output is hard to parse. This one must have been an oversight, simply changing Cite EB1911 to EB1911 poster, because several changes before and after did insert detailed inline references. I think the main difference between then and now was that I would just put a general reference at the end if the article was (almost) wholly from EB (e.g. this) where now I footnote each paragraph and add the new template. David Brooks (talk) 18:02, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear that it was not a systemic error (like mine). Happy editing. -- PBS (talk) 06:59, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * :-) David Brooks (talk) 17:24, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Removal of prods
Hi David! I just noticed you reverted and warned Special:Contribs/108.226.60.171 for removing a proposed deletion template and just wanted to make sure you know that it's okay for people to contest the deletion by removing those. Incidentally, I did delete the article because it was unambiguously promotional. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:35, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. I've not been involved in this particular activity before (I've recently started doing some RCP as a break from normal projects). David Brooks (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Memory conformity
Hi. 31.49.2.154 here, my IP naturally changes, so this isn't sockpuppeting btw. Sorry for the vandalism, but I'm not, as you suggested, 2601:241:100:66ab:94ce:1ed3:491c:73d0, nor am I any other of the 'Mandela vandals' (nor am I the guy who made edits to articles on porn actors under this IP in 2009, but that's neither here nor there). Note the plural. The reason we otherwise unrelated people independently all made that edit is because of this video. Thank you for reading this, and please see Talk:Memory conformity for more info.

(PS: Since nobody making the edit is serious, I doubt 'a long and skeptical discussion' would make it go away). --217.42.180.60 (talk) 19:25, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the illumination (here and on the talk page). David Brooks (talk) 20:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

John Julius Angerstein

 * see above 

John Julius Angerstein whoops! I ran a script that removed Llewelynll's kludge, and replaced all of them with and  (or  ).

It had to be quite complicated because, it had to fix different versions that he had used over time and I had to ignore the title he had use and instead strip out the link from before the pipe. In most cases this worked. I did not notice that he had created links in some places, otherwise I would have checked for a lack of a comma in the stripped title, if it had more than one word in it.

So kudzus to you for noticing. Please fix any more you come across.

I checked the history of PBS-AWB the first and last edits were made
 * 07:47, 18 March 2017 Zula
 * 20:30, 18 April 2017 History of encyclopedias

In total there were just under 240 articles changed. There would have been a few more changed by hand that were not in a standard format. The result was that the total count of articles using an EB1911 template would have gone up by about 240 (or about 2%).

At first I just added the template, but then I realised that Llewelynll had ignored the fact that before he edited the articles that many had in them for a reason. So I had to go through them all using earwig to see if the still contained EB1911 text in them. This slowed the process down and in the end I averaged about 8 a day.

In my opinion his kludge for the the harvnb templates, where he has used  should be removed as well and we should use the standard. I did not make that change at the time, because I did not want to get into a potential edit war with Llewelynll over the style of short citations (as it seemed of less importance, than replacing the major kludge).

-- PBS (talk) 16:03, 2 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Links in your sandbox all fixed. -- PBS (talk) 10:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)