User talk:Hydrargyrum/archive06

GOCE February 2018 news
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:00, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

June 2018 GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Script-assisted cleanups: imaginary death dates
Hydragyrum, thanks for your recent "script-assisted cleanups" of various pages.

Your script, for some reason, inserts a commented-out death date into living person's infoboxes. Of course, a commented-out date doesn't appear in the page, so it doesn't violate BLP. Nonetheless, if I were famous enough to have my own Wikipedia article, and out of curiosity I clicked on "edit" and saw that my death date was already listed but commented out, I might find it rather creepy! It's as if Wikipedia were just waiting for me to pass away.

I've fixed the two instances of this that I found:    If there's any way to tell your script not to do this, that would be great! Thanks. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 23:22, 9 July 2018 (UTC)


 * They're not "imaginary death dates". They're placeholders for inevitable death dates.  Nobody escapes it — not you, not I, nor even Jesus of Nazareth.  Yes, I can fix the script. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 23:38, 9 July 2018 (UTC)


 * My bad. When I saw the form, I saw that it wasn't blank -- it had dates already filled in, like this:  .  But now I understand that the filled in dates are not the anticipated death dates, but rather are the birth date which is used to calcuate the age.  Nevermind! &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 00:22, 10 July 2018 (UTC)


 * It's quite alright. In addition to working on Wikipedia, I also occasionally work on Find A Grave, which includes visiting local cemeteries to snap photos, where one will find headstones of living people, already inscribed with their birth date and a blank space for the death date. One can think of them as placeholders, too. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 15:26, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Norm Macdonald
lol I was reading Norm's talk page for some reason and saw your old comment from 2010. You might want to talk about John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and a Scotsman.24.137.114.17 (talk) 02:36, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Removing convert templates
This otherwise good edit that you made removed cvt and convert and replaced them with plaintext, which should not have happened. Was this an error in the script you were using? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 23:09, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


 * It was deliberate, and I only do it in the lede section, i.e., the first 200 words, or so, because tool-tip previews suppress display of templates. Putting inline templates in the lede results in run-together text or a puzzling syntax discontinuity, defeating the purpose of tool-tip previews. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 00:56, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * And by that you mean WP:POP? It has a setting to attempt to render templates. If the default settings of the gadget are causing problems with the convert template, the solution is to fix the problem in the gadget, not to remove widely used templates from articles without explanation in the edit summary. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:48, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah, perhaps I should have written a summary paragraph, or broken down the edit into 20 steps, each with its own detailed summary. The correct solution is not to use inline templates in the lede in the first place, and being an experienced computer user and programmer since circa 1970, I can guarantee you that 99.9% of Wikipedia users will never figure out how change the default behavior of Navigation popups or even take the time to read the relevant Wikipedia page. Wikipedia isn't and shouldn't be a site for nerds only. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 02:41, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * You're making a potentially controversial and non-obvious edit by removing those templates - the onus is on you to explain it in whatever way that you best can. (You don't have to break down all the parts of the edit, but explaining unusual aspects is a reasonable thing to ask.) In this case, I strongly object to you worsening an article for all readers and editors in order to accommodate a buggy opt-in script. Why not fix the popups instead of hurting the articles? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:26, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Alternately, you could comment out the replaced convert templates. The comment would explain the purpose of the substitution, and make it easy to reverse when the popups fixed. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 06:13, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I like your suggestions. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 15:30, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

August GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:25, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

September 2018
Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Talk:Stefan Molyneux, you may be blocked from editing. Grayfell (talk) 00:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Since when is commenting on the (poor) quality of an article "disruptive editing" on Wikipedia? Editors have been blocked or banned permanently for less than what is going on in the Stefan Molyneux article.  A bit over ten years ago the Wikimedia Foundation was facing potential legal action for abusive writing in biographical articles.  Perhaps you need to review WP:NPOV. Furthermore, your charge of vandalism constitutes an unwarranted threat against another editor that can bring penalties on its own. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 01:35, 25 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Insinuating that another editor is hateful, and has a jaundiced view of reality, is a personal attack, which you should know is not allowed. Take it to a noticeboard if you think this is a legal issue, but do your homework first. Grayfell (talk) 01:42, 25 September 2018 (UTC)


 * My mistake: If someone were to publicly describe you as a dirty, rotten —, that would be construed as hateful and possibly actionable, and we would immediately remove any such wording from your Wikipedia article. However, if that same someone were to quote a source that his or her bigoted, biased friends have determined to be "reliable", and such source publicly describes you as a dirty, rotten —, then it is deemed within Wikipedia's guidelines and entirely acceptable. Got it. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 03:02, 25 September 2018 (UTC)


 * You want to make actionable suggestions for how to improve the article, do that. Your post to that talk page was just complaining, however. If you want to complain about "shitty articles" and Wikipedia's "bad reputation" and how seriously you take your own editing, you can start a blog or something. If you think the article consitutes defamation, as a serious editor who's been around a while, you should't have any trouble finding a better venue. Grayfell (talk)


 * — I don't even write about inanimate objects in Wikipedia in the manner of the present Stefan Molyneux article. As for "actionable suggestions", perhaps you'd like to peruse the talk page history and editing history of the instant article and tally how many such suggestions have been suppressed or reverted, or where editors have gone out of their way to reinstate disparaging remarks about the subject. "... start a blog or something ...". That's precisely the advice I would give to those who write such articles, using Wikipedia as their personal soap box, and to those who defend such writing. In reviewing the article editing history, it appears you've done your share.  As such, I don't need any more hypocritic lecturing from you. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 03:52, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Please take the time to check the sources used to support the article's content. If they are misrepresented or contradicted by a number of other reliable sources, there is room for specific improvements and legitimate criticism.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 22:53, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Caribbean Airlines logo-600x270.png
Thanks for uploading File:Caribbean Airlines logo-600x270.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:26, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Problem with your script
Just wanted to let you know ... the script you used for your cleanup should recognize that the US English term for a ground-level intersection of railroad tracks and a road is "grade crossing". I had to change four instances of that back. I know the idea was to avoid redirects, but MOS:TIES takes precedence there. Daniel Case (talk) 15:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)


 * — The script handles correction of repetitive, common syntax errors in articles, and while the edit session is open, I often perform additional changes manually that are not conducive to automation. It's not a problem with the script; it's a problem with the level crossing article quality by not explaining that "grade crossing" is a preferred term in the United States, although I doubt that's even true.  Many things in Wikipedia that editors may insist are axiomatic usually turn out to be merely personal preference. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 18:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

ndash
Hi! I noticed that you are replacing the ndash with the name "ndash" followed by the ndash itself, why is it better than just the — itself? Also, you are putting spaces to the sides of the ndashes, which is not what our WP:MoS indicates. Cheers! --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 11:29, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * — It's a  HTML "non-breaking space" symbol entity followed by the UTF-8 en dash or em dash symbol, as appropriate, followed by a space character.  This prevents the dash from wrapping to the next line on-screen, which disrupts rapid reading and comprehension.  Competently typeset publications will never wrap a hyphen or dash to the next line for this same reason.  Different browsers handle en dashes and em dashes in an inconsistent manner; some break lines after the dash, others break lines indiscriminately before the dash.  The chances of getting the line break to happen in the right place are improved, though not 100% assured, by using a combination such as  . The WP:MoS article you cite was written in a vacuum by individuals who apparently have no idea how Web browsers work and don't know (or care to know) that HTML is for content control, not formatting control.  HTML was never intended to be a desktop publishing tool.  In my experience since 2004, trying to get such misconceptions corrected in Wikipedia is like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, i.e., a useless endeavour.  I use a script to routinely replace all instances of ndash, spaced ndash and variations thereof with the HTML symbol entities, as the templates are a waste of computing cycles and slow the entire system down compared to using HTML entities directly.  Moreover, if such inline templates are used in the lead section, such as in separating a birth date and death date, their display is suppressed in tooltip previews, making them essentially useless, while the HTML symbol entities display as intended without producing run-together text.  I have no idea why somebody thought it would be smart or cute to package such simple HTML sequences within templates. In the past I have edited the documentation sections of such inline templates to warn editors to avoid using them in the lead section of articles, but my edits have usually been reverted.  Go figure. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 19:25, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Comprehensive answer!! --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 22:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Spacing around images
Please stop removing the spacing around images on the Bush article. As I noted here, spacing makes it easier to find the beginning of paragraphs, especially where there are long captions. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * — If you're not already doing so, I suggest you enable the "Syntax highlighter", found under Preferences > Gadgets > Editing. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 20:24, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Spacing around images makes it easier for everyone to find the beginning of paragraphs, whatever their settings, and does not change the output. Please retain the spacing. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * — Nice, but have you activated syntax highlighting for your account yet? It makes editing much easier for you and you don't have to pester other editors about formatting a certain way to make it "easier for everyone". — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 20:35, 1 December 2018 (UTC)


 * OK, but with the spacing, someone does not have to know about this setting to fix the difficulty. And most new editors surely will not know – I've been editing for over a decade and didn't. So why not make it easier for everyone to begin with. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 20:43, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

December 2018 GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:INTDABLINK violation
Please do not make direct links to disambiguation pages, as you did here. This creates false positive reports of disambiguation errors needing to be fixed, which involves the time and effort of disambiguators. If you have done this anywhere else, please pipe the links per WP:INTDABLINK. bd2412 T 16:40, 4 December 2018 (UTC)