User talk:Jmcgnh/Archives/2016/09

Graphology correction
Thanks for catching that. Have no idea why that goblygook was mixed in with the edit I pasted from my sandbox... probably a copy/paste error when I was previously doing a page search and it was a search string meant for the Find line that got pasted into the text instead! How did you catch it - and so fast? RobP (talk) 21:21, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Regarding your latest edit to my addition: Format looks nice, but why did you delete the citation from The Write Stuff reference in that material? I thought that was important there as it is the source of what Dunning is quoting. RobP (talk) 23:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I already had that article on my watchlilst. I spotted the stray text when I tried to figure out what "summa" was doing there. At some point, I pulled up the Dunning transcript and made the more exacting comparison.
 * As for the dropped ref, it's a bit complicated. Whether or not to add references to a quote is somewhat controversial, since a) it adds clutter and b) may be interpreted as changing the quote, while we still want to adhere to the WP desire to provide references for everything. Since the book was already in your references list, I did not feel anything was lost by dropping the footnote at that point. If Dunning had placed a footnote there, I would have left it. If the book wasn't mentioned anywhere else, I'd have tried to work it in some other way. I also moved the footnotes for Dunning to before the blockquotes so the footnotes do not clutter the quote.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  01:37, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I knew it looked awkward... And I did not know about blockquotes. Will add that to my editing toolbox. Thanks for helping to improve the page! RobP (talk) 03:16, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Bigfoot
My fault for attempting to use a tablet for editing. Will use the laptop from now on and do editing in one session.

Asuato (talk) 09:27, 5 September 2016 (UTC) 
 * Nice kitten. It does not matter if edits are made piecemeal or in large chunks.
 * It looks to me like you may be trying to change the overall tone of the Bigfoot article to be less skeptical. Whether or not that is your intent, changes like these need to be first proposed on the Talk page so that other editors may comment, argue with you, or otherwise find ways to accommodate both their views and yours.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  09:47, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Leuven or Louvain
Hi, I would gladly agree with you, but I notice English speakers have difficulties to use Flemish placenames and mostly prefer the French variant. Just see articles on World War I : Ieper - Ypres, Brugge - Bruges, Veurne - Furnes, etc... That's why I left Louvain, although here in Belgium everybody uses Leuven. Regards Filiep (talk) 18:50, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * {Replied on Filiep's Talk page to keep thread together.}  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  21:42, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this
I didn't know how to do these boxes and couldn't get the references to stick in the right places. Thanks for that; learned something new! :-) Got2Bthere (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Affected by IP Range Block
I had to reboot my DSL modem today and got assigned a new IP address. When I went to edit, I found I could not. This new IP address was part of a range that had been blocked, presumably because some fellow customer has been behaving badly, so I was blocked from editing as well. It's apparently a hard block, so I could not even edit here on my Talk page.

I've asked for an IP Block exception so my logged-in account can edit despite the IP range block, but I understand it may take a couple of days and that these exceptions are not easily given out.

Since the block is not caused by something I've done, I believe I'm allowed to continue to edit through other ISPs, such as my library or my phone's data plan. It's not convenient, but will do while I wait for the decision.

Below is the message from the UTRS system recording my request.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  01:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

--UTRSBot (talk) 00:06, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your very helpful comment in the Teahouse
I wanted to thank you for actually addressing my question that I raised in Teahouse and posting a rather comprehensive answer to it. It was more than I could have hoped for and I appreciate your willingness to take the time to write it. I knew it was pie-in-the-sky but I wanted to start a discussion on what could be done about bad editors who actually cause harm to Wikipedia by their endless numbers of bad edits, for which there appears to be nothing that can be done about it. The anybody-can-edit aspect is a great strength to encourage newcomers, but it is of course one its biggest problems. But the idea that providing some kind of process where editors would have to earn their wings would discourage people from joininig is not necessarily a bad thing. How good would would TIME or Newsweek be if anybody could edit it? It's just that I've been editing on Wikipedia for over 10 years now, and I want it to be the very best it can be, and I just wish the incompetent editors could be done away with. And let's be honest: there are too many of them and they keep it from being the best it could be.

Reading your response also reminded me of another problem here: how difficult it is to get a reasonable answer. I don't know if you read the rest of that section, but something bizarre happened, and two other editors misunderstood what I wrote. I'm still trying to figure out what happened. But thanks again, __209.179.36.56 (talk) 04:07, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, User:209.179.36.56, I saw that misreading trainwreck as it happened and tried to convince the other editor that they should try a generous re-reading of what you wrote. It was plain to me that your were condemning the practice alluded to and not the allusion itself. And it was particularly surprising coming from a long-time conscientious Teahouse host who normally seems to bend over backwards to be friendly and welcoming. Your recent try to get them to reconsider seems to obtained a ritual apology, but no clear understanding.
 * There was a recent incident - the explosion in Chelsea, NYC - that my daughter was about a block away from when it happened. The fact that people without qualifications could tweet about it gave evidence of both the benefits and the limitations of allowing "everyone can edit". The scope of the explosion as being loud, but not extremely damaging became evident fairly quickly, but so did rampant speculation about whether it was a gas explosion or a bomb, who did it and why, and whether it was connected with other incidents, all with no discernible basis in fact.
 * The supposed superiority of the Time or Newsweek editorial model is questioned all the time these days. The NYT, ''New Republic", and other publications have all had scandalous incidents of author misconduct where the inability of the fact checkers and editorial process to prevent the occasional hoax, fabrication, or just incompetent reporting from getting published has been demonstrated. It's not a perfect process and I don't think WP can be perfect, either.
 * I've been editing WP just long enough to begin to appreciate what it is and what it isn't. Apropos to the discussion in the Teahouse, I found that there is a WikiProject Editor Retention that's been going on for a few years, regularly handing out Editor of the Week awards. Meanwhile, in the outside world, there are articles like Nobody wants to edit Wikipedia anymore.
 * I recognize that I am far from the front lines. I try to help out in the Teahouse but don't consider myself a host there. I can only imagine what it's like to be on Recent Changes Patrol or New Pages Patrol, but from the small window I have on things, there's an intense amount of simple vandalism and jackassery along with generous amounts of cluelessness, COI-motivated editing, and some plain old "how on earth am I supposed to verify this claim when it references a print-only source I don't have access to or something in a foreign language I can't even get Google Translate to make sense of?". And don't get me started on copyright.
 * I plan to continue editing, gradually getting up the courage to make larger changes. Cheers,  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  05:39, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

WISENut/WiseNut
Hello Jmcgnh – I see from the talk page discussion that you have called off your merger proposal of the above companies. Can I just confirm then that this proposal is now finished with, and I can close it off at Proposed mergers? Thanks. Richard3120 (talk) 20:20, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes you can. It developed that the two pages looked alike temporarily because of what another editor called hijacking. Once the proper content was restored, the two pages no longer were about the same subject and were no longer candidates for merging.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  21:06, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying – just trying to do some housekeeping... there's enough unresolved topics on Wikipedia as it is, so anything that clears the backlog helps. :-) I notice one of those articles is now up for deletion anyway... Richard3120 (talk) 21:11, 21 September 2016 (UTC)