User talk:JMF/Archives/2021/February

Incomplete DYK nomination
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with db-g7, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot (talk) 18:58, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty GA2
Dear John Maynard Friedman. May I ask you for a favour. Can we play the same game with reversed roles? I nominated the article "Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty" for GA on 25 November 2020, got a reviewer on 29 December, but this reviewer first put me on hold and then stopped answering since the 16 January. Not much has been achieved. I have now decided that the reviewer has withdrawn and have followed the instructions for "If the reviewer withdraws". The article is in the list of nominations under "Royalty, nobility and heraldry" and can again be selected for review. Could you please review it? You can say No, or not now if you are too busy. With many thanks, Johannes Johannes Schade (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. Thanks you very much for accepting. Go to WP:GA and read the instructions under "Reviewing". Find the entry for the nomination "Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty" under Royalty, Nobility and Heraldry. Click the blue "start review" link. This should open a page called "GA2" under the talk page of the article. Follow the instructions there. Besides, somebody told me once that a talk-page conversation should stay on the talk page where it has been started and not alternate between the talk pages of the two users. Many thanks and friendly greetings, Johannes Johannes Schade (talk) 08:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. Something went slightly wrong with GA2. I never got the message "Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article" that Legobot should have placed on my talk page. It may be that you wrote something above the marker that said but nevermind I discovered yesterday late that you have stated to review. I like your comments. They are very much to the point! I will sometimes write to you here for "asides" that should not really go into the GA2 history. Thanks and best regards, Johannes Johannes Schade (talk) 06:19, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * No, I was careful to go below that line but very likely missed something else. When doing the DYK submission, I misread a / as a | and broke the whole system for a few minutes.
 * Yes, feel free to leave side notes here. I will continue to review on and off for the next few days. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:20, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. Thank you so much. You are doing great work. Friendly greetings, Johannes Johannes Schade (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

GOCE
, as a general principle, I would always put a comma after the year, as in "On 3 April 1640, Strafford left Ireland", but I don't actually know that this is considered good practice. I guess you haven't asked the WP:GOCE to review the article? If not, I would strongly advise that you add it to their queue now, as it will take about a month to reach it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:53, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. Thanks for telling me. I once somewhere read a rule that said a comma should appear when more than 4 words precede the subject. The article Callaghan MacCarty, 3rd Earl of Clancarty, which is a biography of one of Donough's sons, is similar but shorter, having only 21 citations, and is rated C. It was was submitted by user CaptainEek for DYK after I developed it from a Redirect and was copy-edited by user Twofingered Typist. This article contained a sentence starting with a date which goes "On 27 November 1658 his father was created Earl of Clancarty by Charles II in Brussels, ...". Twofingered Typist corrected this to "On 27&amp;nbsp;November 1658 his father was created Earl of Clancarty by Charles II in Brussels, ..." inserting a &amp;nbsp; between the date and the month but no comma before "father".
 * However, some people recommend to always insert a comma between a leading clause or phrase and the subject, e.g. Jean-Luc Doumont (https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/effective-writing-13815989/). This is besides, the rule generally applied in French. I feel I can get away with carefully going through the corrections made by two-fingered Typist in this article and applying them to Donough. At least for the DYK, if I will really submit it for that. I have no idea for the DYK catch phrase. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Responses to my notes
It would be better if you used :: [indent] to respond to my * [bullet] otherwise we risk losing my supplementary notes. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:13, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Fine I will do so. You can also change them from * to : as you go along. Johannes Johannes Schade (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * But see MOS:LISTGAP! So naughty but the most practical to distinguish action points from discussions. I won't tell if you don't. ;-D --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, the action points (thanks for having a word for them!) become difficult to see when editing in the code. Perhaps action points should become sections. That would solve the MOS:LISTGAP issue. What do you think?. Johannes Schade (talk) 08:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Listgap is not really an issue in this narrow context, do long as we know that we are consciously breaking the rule and don't do it where it matters. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:05, 6 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Another topic. I wonder whether the two tables of parliamentary sessions are useful. Perhaps they should be deleted from Donough and be used in some articles about these two Irish parliaments to be written. Johannes Schade (talk) 08:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would be sensible. I have been concerned at the extent of wandering off topic. It is v difficult to decide how much is essential background and how much is too much. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:05, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Collapsible lists again
Please review MOS:DONTHIDE, it may be a show-stopper? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:05, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * [MOS:DONTHIDE] seems to be often ignored. It also says that collapsing items must not be used to hide "spoiler" information" I am not so sure what they mean with spoiler information but I do not think that anything I hide is spoiler information.The FA article Caroline of Ansbach has an Ancestry section whose only content is a collapsed ahnentafel. The FA article "Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette" has three collapsed footer navboxes. The FA articles "Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham" features an infobox most of whose content is collapsed. The article also has a collapsed footer navbox. I get the impression that many reviewer do not enforce MOS:DONTHIDE. But of cause would be very easy to display the collapsible tables and family trees open. Johannes Schade (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A spoiler is information that would spoil enjoyment of say a detective story, giving away the ending. So obviously it doesn't apply in this case. Collapsible sections in infoboxes are very common, to have sections of detail that are "available on request" like historic records of passenger numbers in railway station articles. At Caroline of Ansbach, yes her ancestry is given as collapsed, it is at the end rather than embedded like yours (and in all honesty, I don't know why anyone bothered to make it collapsed, it just looks "gosh, aren't I clever, see what I can do" and extraordinary in a FA. The reason for my concern is that "MOS compliance" is one of the criteria for GA and this one worried me, it seems rather unambiguous. Have you requested a WP:GOCE review? because they are the experts on MOS compliance. please don't tear it all up and start again, let me see if I can get a second opinion first. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. I am exploring and learning. I still do not understand why MOS:DONTHIDE talks about "spoiler information". You mentioned stations, so I looked and found that the GA articles about London Paddington, Waterloo, and Blackfriars each has a collapsible route map, but we are looking for collapsed tables or graphics. I found none. With regards to ahnentafels, I found about 30 aristocratic FA articles Afonso, Prince Imperial of Brazil to William IVin the same case. I also searched through my watchlist and found 7, all were collapsed. It seems that ahnentafels are often presented collapsed.
 * I expanded the collapsed tables, family trees, and the timeline of our GA candidate so that we can see clearly how it looks and what the consequences are. I still think it looked better collapsed. I have the impression that GOCE does traditional copy-editing, limited to grammar, spelling, punctuation and looking more to Chicago Manual of Style than to MOS. I still would like to know at what occasion you were told not to hide? I think Wikipedia should give us a means to collapse the entire citation apparatus (notes and list of sources) that occupies huge amounts of space and is certainly not read in detail by the common reader but needs to be laboriously bypassed by those who want to see the sections below it, such as Further reading, External links, the succession boxes and navigation boxes. Johannes Schade (talk) 14:44, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * GOCE definitely applies the Wikipedia MOS, not other style guides (though the WP MOS is v similar to Chicago). My problem is that GA criteria require me to affirm that the article complies with the MOS (but I won't check every jot and tittle). I have never come across an article that uses clists to the extent that yours does. I do understand your point and expanding them has made a dog's breakfast of the layout - but the solution may be to change the layout. Certainly I didn't find them particularly relevant to the text where they were placed. But I do understand the frustration: you must have noticed how the Calendar Act article is littered with efn footnotes because I couldn't bear to leave a begged question unanswered but realised that it would bog down the article in orthogonal detail to include it inline. If I were you, I should definitely move them to the end of the article, but I will ask for a second opinion if you prefer? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Another topic. Do you know whether red links are considered detrimental in GA or FA candidates? The article has a couple of them. Johannes Schade (talk) 14:44, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess it might be considered a bit sloppy for a GA and I have never seen one in an FA. In the early days of Wikipedia, they were a Good Thing, see WP:REDLINK but nowadays the pressure seems to be wp:write the article first (though re-reading those articles, it may depend on context). If you have an example, you can always write a stub provided the topic is notable (otherwise it may simply be deleted again): it may be easier to make it a section of an existing article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And still another topic. What do you think of my way of repeating citations using ? Is that OK? Should I rather repeat the entire Sfn or is there another way? With many thanks for your patience and attention to detail, Johannes Schade (talk) 14:44, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The named reference technique is the norm in Wikipedia, sfn is the exception. For multiple references to the same thing, named references are ideal. But for multiple references to diverse pages in the same book, sfn works better. The handling is clever: if you have (say) two sfn calls for the same page, they get listed once in the references and given the same citation number. Despite attempts to lay down the law, there is no rule - see WP:CITEVAR. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You write "My problem is that GA criteria require me to affirm that the article complies with the MOS": They do not. Reread the criteria and WP:GANOT. By according a GA you say that the article is: (1a) Clear, concise, understandable, grammatical, and correctly spelled, (1b) complies with MOS:LEADLENGTH, MOS:LAYOUT, MOS:WTW, WP:WAF, & MOS:LIST, (2a) the citations comply with MOS:NOTES, (2b) inline citations (if any) refer to reliable sources, (2c) complies with MOS:OR, (2d) has no copyright violations and plagiarisms, (3a) addresses the main aspects of the topic, (3b) is focussed on them, (4) is neutral, (5) is stable (6a) illustrations (if any) are tagged with copyright statements, and (6b) are relevant and accompanied by captions. In addition criterion (2a) is usually interpreted to also mean that all direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged should have citations; but that is really all. This is much less than what Military History demands for a B-class. So do not worry about full MOS compliance. But of course, between you and me, we would like to go a bit further, learn, discuss, understand. With best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes you are correct. I mis-remembered 1b and seeing the reference to MOS:DONTHIDE touched an old battle-scar. So you can reinstate your collapsed clists, if you decide to keep them where they are (indeed you need to do so because in expanded form they are ruining the article layout). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * On the redlinks, Luke Plunket, 3rd Earl of Fingal can just be made a section of Earl of Fingall unless and until he merits his own article; I would pipe Ballymore Castle to Castlelyons as it probably will never be more than a section of that article; Lord Gormanston you could pipe to Viscount Gormanston?; Lord Kimallock will have to stay red as the title is not even mentioned at Kilmallock. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have submitted the article at GOCE. That was a first time for me. I had not known that one can comment on the submission so I profited from the occasion to explain our MOS:DONTHIDE problem and some others. They will expect that I help by copy-editing somebody else's. I will try that once we are finished here.
 * I do not think I have understood your system of "*" and ":". I tend to get lost in our GA2 page and somtimes miss your new backtracking entries. I wonder whether we do not need some mark to mark new edits.
 * I understand and indeed I could see that the mixture of * and : notations was increasingly confusing the issue, so I reset it all to use * only. I an now [ab]using template:xt which renders like this for the substantive points I raised that we have to resolve and close, everything in plain text is just discussion. I have been marking tasks that we have closed with a done or (where we agree that it should not be done), not done. I've also been date-stamping, so that should make it clear what is new and what is old. The last resort (which is what I use to see how you have changed the article itself) is to have a diff open in another tab (you can have the talk page open concurrently in two tabs, one that you are working on and one showing the changes since the last time you edited). Would it help if I mark items that I don't believe that we have resolved with a marker like item still open? (May I assume that you can see the different font and colour?)
 * As I said at the beginning, this is the first time I've done a GA assessment and I'm finding my feet. There must be a better way but I haven't found it yet. I'm afraid that the process has proved to be rather more extended and extensive that perhaps either of us anticipated.
 * I don't believe that you have to volunteer to join the Guild. I had thought that maybe I should give it a go because well I'm good at this stuff, aren't I? Oh dear... The amount of work they did on my highly polished Calendar Act article has disabused me of that notion! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:54, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. You are of course welcome if you want to copy-edit the article (if this is what you propose). I also believe you are good at this stuff. Johannes Schade (talk) 19:56, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you but the person who does the GA analysis shouldn't also be an active editor of the article. Ok, a big fraction of the copyedits on the Calendar Act article was changing spaced-ndash ({tl|snd}} to unspaced mdash, which per MOS:RETAIN ought to have been left alone. But there were also a few terrible howlers that made me cringe at having missed them (in my defence, I didn't write them either and I was reluctant to change other editors' contributions without a convincing reason. I should still have seen them. Also, I am still discovering MOS policies the easy way by assimilation but, to join the Guild, I would have to do it the hard way and learn them. The GA award doesn't have to wait for the GOCE and I will be interested to see what they find –  if anything. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:46, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have always preferred "alpha &amp;nbsp; – bravo" to "alphasndbravo". I find it more readable, but admittedly the other is shorter. Johannes Schade (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John Maynard Friedman. Sleeping it over, I was worried about the verifiability of the information in the family trees. I give a Efn with some embedded Sfns in the introductory sentence of each family tree, but no details. The Sfns give page ranges. Strictly speaking there should be citations supporting all the parent-child and married relationships and all the life-span years. On the other hand, one might argue that for GA purposes, citations are needed only for "quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged" (GACR 2b). The easiest solution is always to delete, but does this improve the article? Thanks for all your hard work. I learned a lot from you. Johannes Schade (talk) 10:31, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't consider it mandatory to cite each and every one provided that someone following the citation in the introductory sentence can reach the same results. I certainly didn't go into that depth of verification of sources. Certainly you may continue to improve the citations going forward if you like. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Passed! Thank you very much! That was hard work. I learned a lot from you. Thank for all the clever remarks and for keeping good humour. Johannes Schade (talk) 14:21, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It was a good experience to get into really close analysis and showed, no matter how conscientious one is, there are always blind spots – I couldn't believe how many really obvious errors that you and the GOCE found at the Calendar Act article. Nobody can say that we let each other off lightly by doing each other's articles. :-D --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:44, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I liked your last-minute "I've changed my mind on this one because 'for the king' guides readers to the relevant definition on Wiktionary". Johannes Schade (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Featured articles
Besides, you seem to have FA experience. Where does it come from? I searched your User Contributions for "Wikipedia:Featured" but found nothing. Thanks Johannes Schade (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * None whatever really. I toyed with the idea briefly, especially when I saw one that I wouldn't even have awarded a GA to, but that was very much the exception. I only looked at a few but they were really finely crafted, engagingly written, not too challenging and likely to appeal to a worldwide audience. On a very small sample, I gained the impression that if you think getting to GA standard was difficult, FA is even more so. There can't be any loose ends, so they tend to be quite short. Also, there is a lot of competition and the selection is of necessity a judgement call by the selectors. I wouldn't be willing to give it that much commitment. But if you want to try for it, I suggest you spend time studying say a month's worth of FAs to see if you can work out what made them hit the spot. And maybe who nominated them. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:32, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just exploring the possibility. Yesterday, the FA was a biography: Bernard A. Maguire, so I had a look at the article (1722 words, 33 cits: 52w/c) and its review. Nominated by Ergo Sum and promoted by Ian Rose (coordinator). Nikkimaria rose the 1st issue, which was that [[File:]] should not have a fixed px width in, so I changed "Giovanni_Battista_Rinuccini_Archbishop_or_Fermo.png (talk) 10:12, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I have always assumed (surely correctly?) that the minimum pre-qualification for a FAC is that it is already a GA. If so, then the major MOS compliance tests have been done and only the finer points remain. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * No, that's completely incorrect. I'd guess only about 50% of FAs have ever been GA. But the criteria and standards are very different, and your second sentence is even more wrong. I took a quick look at Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty, & my first thought was that they seem to be few sources less than a century old, which would be a problem. Johnbod (talk) 12:19, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Shock, outrage! But that certainly explains how the one that I questioned so heavily got through with so many silly errors. I just assumed that whoever did the GA review didn't know much about the topic or just didn't look too hard. That leaves me with a variation of the Graucho Marx conclusion: I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that accepts such low standards.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:33, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

You changed an article name without debate
You renamed an article 'Oxford–Cambridge Expressway' when the official title of the now defunct proposal was always 'Oxford to Cambridge Expressway'. I'm not sure anyone cares, but it seems bad manners. Tomintoul (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair comment, I should have checked first. The style of all the A <-> B road/rail articles is to use an mdash so, without really thinking about it, I took it as a historic oversight that hadn't been noticed until now. (BTW, I suspect that it is about to come back on the agenda, see my recent edit to Oxford Cambridge Arc.) I will see if I can revert. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:58, 22 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, please revert.Tomintoul (talk) 20:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Disruptive editing
, as you have separately had to deal with and, may I ask your advice? Would you have a look at the history of Calligraphy, please, because I strongly suspect that they are the same person (dialect, behaviour). Is a referral to ANI necessary? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:15, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, John Maynard Friedma, I'm not sure I can spare the time to investigate this further for the immediate moment. I feel like I'm spread pretty thin right now. Regards, El_C 17:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Another Admin blocked Owl-USA, that should also stop the IP. If the IP resumes the same behavior, let me know. Doug Weller  talk 13:51, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Backslash
I went out, spoke with several people, spent several days searching online, all to find about nothing. I guess the history of the backslash is currently lost.


 * I will continue to look every once and a while to see if I can find anything. Tadfafty (talk) 09:12, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * you moved the provenance back 20 years when nowhere else on the visible internet had the information. You are the one who deserves the barnstar!


 * I suspect that it will be exceptionally difficult to uncover what came before because of probable military use and thus secrecy during the war. Also, since no regular typewriters had it, you would need to search handwritten records. Mission Impossible? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:10, 28 February 2021 (UTC)