User talk:Johannes Schade

Adolf von Deines
Hello! I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to guide me through the GAN process for this article. I've contributed piecemeal to wikipedia over the years, but 2022 was the first time I've actually created and taken the time to edit, source and curate articles. It has been a labor of love, and the assistance of experienced editors has been beyond value. I speak very little German, so I have spent many hours sitting with a source on my screen or my knee, and a German dictionary or translation site on the other, piecing together sometimes garbled paragraphs. I hope that my responses to your posts on the review page are appropriate and correct, I wasn't sure how to let you know I'd read and edited accordingly. - Evansknight (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear Evansknight. Thanks for your kind message. You are doing fine. I am not very good at guiding because I myself lack experience. The normal way to let me know that you have read my remark and edited accordingly is to indent and write "Done". You can e.g. look how the User Edwininlondon has reacted to my remarks in the review "Talk:Betsy Bakker-Nort/GA1". Of course sometimes my remarks or suggestions are not well-founded and you can refuse. All you need for GA is to complay with the criteria. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 08:32, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Edwininlondon -- Edwininlondon (talk) 09:22, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry
The article Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Edwininlondon -- Edwininlondon (talk) 21:02, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Dates
Hi, thanks for the tip, have fixed the quotation errors. A curious question for you: I notuced that often you use e.g. 20 May 1689 ( with & n b s p ; ) instead of 20 May 1689. Is there a particular reason? Regards Denisarona (talk) 08:37, 19 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Denisarona. Thank you for your quick reaction. It was indeed so quick that I had written you another remark about the non-breaking space in the meantime. I looked up in the MOS and there is MOS:NBSP which suggests (but does not prescribe) the use of nbsp between the date and the month, saying "It is sometimes desirable ...". However, I think that means you should not delete nbsps used in reasonable way such as between the date and the month. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 08:53, 19 August 2022 (UTC)


 * It's just that I don't understand the reason for using MOS:NBSP when the normal use is perfectly ok, especially when both are used in different sections of an article. Regards Denisarona (talk) 09:16, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear Denisarona. You have of course much more experience with the MOS than I have, but with regard to non-breaking spaces betwen the day and the month in a date, I would interpret the MOS to recommend the use of nbsp over the ordinary space in all locations where an end of line (i.e. a carriage returns) might occur between the date and the month. This is essentially everywhere in the lead and sections of an article, but not in the infobox and possibly neither in tables nor captions. I would think it should be used consistently in an article. However, it seems there are users that do not want nbsps in "their" articles. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 09:41, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Recommend WP:Twinkle
Hi, I noticed your question about formatting a proposal for deletion (prod) on Dianaa's talk page. I think you'll find the tool WP:TWINKLE helpful. It adds a TW menu to the top of pages. In the menu, there are options for nominating for speedy deletion (CSD), prod, AFD, as well as to apply different tags or request page protection. For users, the menu lets you welcome or warn the user, or report them for vandalism, edit-warring, or sock-puppetry. Give it a try! Schazjmd  (talk)  14:41, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin
See the section WP:FREECOPYING in guideline WP:Plagarism. There is a absolutely no prohibition on using copying copyright expired text into a Wikipedia article, providing proper attribution is used. Indeed paraphrasing it is more likely to breach the WP:Plagarism guideline if the required attribution is not added.

The issue of citations to the secondary source is coverd by WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT.

"" (WP:MERCILESS).

I hope that helps. Don't hesitate if you need more advise". -- PBS (talk) 19:27, 3 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Your talk page is quite big. I suggest you set up archiving (WP:AUTOARCHIVE) — PBS (talk) 19:31, 3 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear PBS. I see you are busy with some good work on Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin.—You have a good point saying that a verbatim copy-paste, adequately attributed, is surer than a paraphrasing that might be judged too close or does simply not reach the quality of English that the original had. According to WP:PLAG it seems to be good enough to place a single attribution tag at the bottom under the sources and before the succession box, but articles even when started with a simple copy-paste of a public-domain source, can quickly evolve into a mosaic of remains of the original copy, interspersed with pieces of text added by various Wikipedians. Should not in such cases the attribution also evolve reflect the actual state of the text? Should not inline attribution tags (e.g. ) be used to mark the surviving pieces of the original copy-past? Or could it be considered that inline citations suffiently mark the pieces that are not from the original text? Inline attribution tags seem to be rarely used. This can become quickly difficult to maintain and understand and there might be a point when it becomes better to lose the last verbatim fragments and remove the attribution? With best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 15:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah you see the complexity. You have to understand that the WP:PLAGIARISM guideline evolved because editors like the late user:SlimVirgin were firmly against copying copyright expired text and other "free source text" into Wikipedia article. I and others thought it a very good way of getting high quality text into Wikipedia quickly. So the Plagiarism guideline is a compromise. It makes sure that any text copied in is highlighted as a copy. There are projects dedicated to this, and lots of such templates see examples in user:PBS/Notes

The two projects I have been most involved in are:
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography

Basically the way it works is that if a lot of text is copied the it is usually best to place one attribution at the bottom and link it as I have done in Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin. The way to get around the problem you have described is like this:

If someone adds in new text and a new fact

This is no different from any other insertion. Often it is necessary to update the language in EB1911 and DNB even if the facts are right, because the 100+ year old Victorian/Edwardian text is rather old fashioned. It does not hurt to leave the Attribution in place, but it does hurt if it is removed when there is a high correlation with the original text. There is a tool to help decide when it is appropriate:
 * Earwig's Copyvio Detector
 * Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin — for example
 * John Woodward (naturalist) — example 2

As you can see in Example 2 there is a match but it is decreasing as time goes by and the match is now only needed for a couple of paragraphs.

The DBN may be updated with information from the 21st century ODNB. Often all they did was copy the old article and amend it with modern facts, but occasionally they completely rewrote the original. It is however a very useful check to see if the information in the old DNB article is still up to date even if the style has dated.

-- PBS (talk) 16:44, 5 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear PBS. You explain very well. You have a gift for teaching. I see how your method of distinguishing the various origins is used in John Woodward (naturalist). I tried Earwick and found that the URL comparison works with Wikisource but fails with Internet archive, e.g. https://archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati41stepuoft/ for Inchiquin. Do you understand why? That is in fact very bad news for me as a high percentage of my sources usually are found in Internet Archive. Interesting to talk to you. Thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)


 * You flatter me. My family consider me to be a terrible teacher! Forget the Internet Archive for DNB, because the full source is on Wikisource. The link you gave will not have worked because you linked to the main page you would have to go to the full text https://archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati41stepuoft/dictionaryofnati41stepuoft_djvu.txt but that is basically the source for what appears on Wikisource.
 * There is a full Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) on Wikisource to access it use the templates template:CE1913 template:Cite CE1913
 * Most of 1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica is on Wikisource to access it use the templates template:EB1911 template:Cite EB1911
 * There is also the WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB Epitome which can be useful for brief biographies.
 * Those are three of the major ones, but there are a lot of others best to follow the links in the templates in the links in the section in my notes (List of PD Templates -- I fixed the link to the same section above). Sometimes before you copy text from Wikisource into Wikipedia, you need to edit the pages on Wikisource first to clean up the pages due to OCR (optical character recognition) errors. There are also the Wikipedia Projects which cover some of the other Wikisource to Wikipedia work, with other editors go give advise. BTW, although I have not looked at it for some time, you may find some of the links in my library useful (User:PBS/Library).
 * --PBS (talk) 08:23, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear PBS. I have made another edit on the article Donogh O'Brien, 4th Earl of Thomond trying to add inline attributions correctly. I inspired myself from how it is done in John Woodward (naturalist). The article has now several citation footnotes and one attribution footnote, numbered [20], used several times and appearing in the middle of the citation footnotes. Accordingly I changed the header from "Citations" to "Citations and attribution". That looks a bit strange. Perhaps, I should rather have used the method you showed in "Mary had a little lamb" above, but that does use citation footnotes everywhere, even for the parts that have been copy-pasted vertatim. The difference between citation and attribution seems to be lost. This seems also to be what you do in in Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin. Perhaps I should have defined a special footnote group for the attributions. Thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 18:45, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I modified the section headers to remove the word "Attribution" because the bold Attribution is only there as a flag to appease those who claimed that copying text from a source was plagarism. To counter that it was argued that placing the sources from which text was copied at the end of the list of references with a clear statement that text is copied from a source donates clearly that Wikipedia is not hiding the fact that text is copied and gives credit where credit is due (and so no plagiarism). If the arguments for and against interests you there are the archives of them below Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism where this issue was throughly aired.
 * Dear PBS. I have edited Donogh O'Brien, 4th Earl of Thomond again using a group, and have written a comment on the talk page of that article. I wonder what you think about it. Sorry, I was busy with real life yesterday and today. Greetings, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally I think it was an error to call the templates "reflist" and "notelist" by those names because they are misleading. The section heading "Notes" is a shortened form of "Footnotes" and inline citations are a form of footnote, because if you look in a book numbered citations in text either appear as a footnote at the bottom of the page along with other footnotes or in an endnote section.
 * Dear PBS. Perhaps. I have never had problems to understand what they mean. Greetings, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Likewise editors misuse it was never intended to be used with bullet pointed lists of refrences it was intended in the early days for roll your own lists of inline references. Using  on a list of bullet pointed refrences means that their size is deminished compared to the "External links" section, implying to the casual reader that external links are more notable than references!
 * Dear PBS. I struggle to follow. What do you mean with "roll your own list?" Like probably most of the editors now active, I was not around in the early days. Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I prefer the section heading containinga list of references used in an article to be "References" not "Sources" to clearly deliniate them from the "Further reading" section. The reason for this is that some people with a commersial intrest in selling a book will try to sneak books into the References/Sources section in the hope that a reader of the Wikipedia article may buy the book and unless as an editor places User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js in User:Johannes Schade/common.js as I see you have, such entries can be hard to spot.
 * The reason why I prefer "References" to "Sources" is because in culinary related articles sources has another possible meaning. Likewise "Bibliography" can mean list of books written by an the subject of a biography rather than a list of references about the subject. So IMHO it is best not to use "Sources" or "Bibliography" as standard appendix section headers in Wikipedia articles. If like me you run AWB you come to appreciate this issue.
 * Dear PBS. I struggle to follow. Culinary? Sources are not sauces. The problem with references is that WP:CITE uses citations, references, and source almost interchangeably. I do not understand your remark about AWB, which seems to be important. I do in fact use AWB but only to make searches on the articles in my watchlist, pratically never to edit. Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * In my opinion placing the section headers for footnotes and referece lists inside a wrapper section heading is uneccery and just clutters the Table Of Contents (TOC).
 * -- PBS (talk) 08:19, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Surely it is not necessary, but when flat TOCs get long (perhaps beyond about 7 entries) they are not nice to read. Introducing some structure makes long TOCs more readable (so I believe) Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally I would not use the attribution template in both the inline section and the bullet pointed references section because it becomes very bloated as the number of pages goes up (eg Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Thomond). So personally if I use long inline citations in an article then the "Reference" section will contain just the with no other other bullet pointed list, so the attribution prescript is placed in the inline reference. If I use short inline citations then I place the attribution at the bottom of bullet pointed list of long citations. Ocasionally the inline citations are a mixture of inline long citation first mention followed by inline short citations, in which case I would place the attribution prescript before the initial inline long citation. -- PBS (talk) 08:52, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear PBS I am not so sure I understand. Wikipedia's citation terminology seems to be so muddled up. I feel WP:PLAG quite clearly prescribes "an attribution template in a footnote at the end of the sentences or paragraph". This seems to be often ignored, but it is part of the guideline. I am learning so much from you. With many thanks and greetings, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

My mistake on sauces (spelling is not my strong point). AWB allows complicated regular expressions to be entered. The more section header options people use the more complicated the syntas can become and the easier it is to make a mistake. Not only do regular expressions work in AWB they can also e used in the search bar eg
 * — all the links not currently using the DNB template.
 * — all the links to wikisource DNB articles not currently using the DNB template.

Don't worry about roll your own inline citations that was 15+ years ago, but using infront of a bullet pointed long references is in my opinion silly as it causes  "external links" to appear bigger and more important than "references".

As for WP:PLAGIARISM see the start of the two relevant paragraphs: My emphasis. — PBS (talk) 20:57, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Attribution:
 * Attribution:

Date change
✅ Regards Denisarona (talk) 09:52, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

More on Attribution as required by the Plagiarism guideline

 * Dear . Thank you for the amazing patience you had with me. You practically taught me all I know about the subject. I am thankful for that. I have not ignored your explanations in the whole of this thread but have come quite a way from my initial misunderstanding (I thought that verbatim borrowings even from PD sources were unwelcome, except in quotions or indirect speech ("in-text attributions"), then my first misunderstood approach to attribution (inline attributions separate from the citations using displayed in a separate section called "Attributions"), to my latest approach using the "ordinary" citations (i.e. ) with an attribution postscript, which I discovered only today and is much better than what I had invented.


 * A crucial question probably is in which cases WP:PLAG prescribes, tolerates, or forbids the use of inline attributions in addition to the general end-of-referenc-section attribution notice for unquoted borrowed text passages. I would expect it allows it in the present case. Just like WP:V seems to accept general references only for early-stage articles and expects in-line citations for more advanced ones, so does WP:PLAG. Under "A practice preferred by some" WP:PLAG says "specifically mention the section requiring attribution" and "In a way unambiguously indicating exactly what has been copied verbatim". The next question then would be which form the in-line attribution should take. WP:PLAG mentions, which probably remains enigmatic for most readers. seems to implement . I find WP:PLAG difficult to read. It seems always to say "this but also that" due to the history of the finding a consensus between you and some other editors such as Franamax and SlimVirgin (both deceased). It sometimes also uses terminology that is perhaps not common knowledge. I had difficulties to grasp that "inline" and "in-text" attribution is not the same and that "in-test attribution" means by indirect speech. The articles mentioned as examples do not seem to be particularly well-chosen. Do you think there would be a chance for straightening WP:PLAG out and make it a bit more prescriptive?


 * The same source and even the same passage in the source might be sometimes be cited verbatim and sometimes summarised. The citations that also serve as inline attributions must be distinguishable from the ordinary ones. I still feel that it is helpful to give column and line so that the reader has a better chance to find the borrowed passages in the source within reasonable time. I do not think it is fair to cover all in a general attribution alone and let the reader who is worried about possible plagiarism (probably a GA or FA reviewer) err around in the text trying to find the relevant locations. GA criterion 2d and FA criterion 1f require the reviewer to check for plagiarism and will have to discount the ones that have been attributed and point out the remaining ones to the nominator. These GA and FA nominations are often quite long articles and have hundreds of citations as you know well.


 * My use of footquotes WP:FOOTQUOTE in the ordinary citations is a separate topic, which we should perhaps discuss in a different thread. You are not the only one to criticise me in that regard.


 * I am not so sure I understand the sentence above the table "There is also a problem ...". Concerning the second row of the table, you rightly point out that the given citation does not entirely cover the given information. Either another citation must be added or the given one must be replaced with a better one as you propose. It is one of the advantages of the footquotes that it makes it much easier to find such shortcomings. The article is rated C, perhaps somewhat generously. I agree also with your warning against an apprach that is too genealogical. I often fall into this trap because many historical biographies are of noblemen for which genealogical sources, always the same, are readily available. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 21:14, 18 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Apart from too many instances of inline attribution "There is also a problem" to do with quoting something that the reader can easily check themselves by looking at the sources. In the second example there is a further problem of . I think you misunderstand my offering a second source. As Wikipedia often summarises several sources simultaneously you probably need two or three sources for that sentence whether in their own ref..tag pair or bundled into one). However in the instance as I noted in the table, I would remove the second half of the text in the sentence (rather than adding citations to support it), because it can be found via the link Henry. This is the difference between a biography and a genealogy. Modern biographies in works such as the ODNB usually do not mention children unless they are notable (ie have their own biography in the ODNB), or appear naturally in the text as a notable event (eg who inherits the title), and they do not detail their genealogy in the main subject's biography. In Wikipedia's case because some people are interested in genealogy, it is usually considered acceptable to give a one sentence summary of a non-notable child. This is particularly useful for daughters because thanks to European society before the 20th century they often are not notable enough in history to warrant an separate biographical article, but their marriages into other notable families can help someone understand the politics of powerful dynasties, both at the country and country level in part through family ties.


 * As it happens I have been working on the DNB articles with broken links thanks some editors replacing dash with ndash within the dab extensions of some Wikisource DNB articles. These are two articles were I cleaned up the sources and work as examples
 * James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk — inline short citations with the attribution before the long citation in the references section.
 * George Birkbeck Hill — attribution before the inline long citations (in this case for EB1911 but it demonstrates the point).


 * So I would argue that:
 * The first example works better because it is referencing multiple pages in the original references, which is why short and long citations are usually used. If someone is really interested in the citations then they will see the attribution in the references section. It helps keep the inline citations short which makes editing the text much easier, and presents the inline citations in a clean way in multiple columns.
 * In the second example, the EB1911 is only one page long so it fits in neatly with the other inline long citations and cleans up the Appendix sections
 * In the second example if the EB1911 was multiple pages long then as the style already developed was for inline long citations citations, a solution is to keep the first citation to EB1911 long with the attribution prescript, but with specific page number (or numbers), and then use short inline citations with different page numbers linked to the first instance that has a the attribution, but the later inline citations are just short citations or similar with no attribution (unfortunately I do not have an example to hand).
 * The other alternative is to move all the long citations down into a bullet list in the references section and then add short inline citations linked to the bullet list (like example one above), however that is a change in citation style and someone might object. What is not acceptable is multiple inline long citations to the same book (that is not covered by change in citation style ]] see the section Duplicate citations in WP:CITE—it is a mistake that many editors make when they first start to edit Wikipedia articles and have yet to learn how to format inline citations (because at first ref...tags are complicated and confusing for many).


 * This will be my last posting to this section, because I think we have said all there is to be said about the citation style in this article and we are drifting off into a more general conversation. I will continue on your talk page. -- PBS (talk) 10:59, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

The first thing to understand is that while Wikipedia is not a battle ground the people who wrote that have obviously not read Clausewitz or understood his maxim "War is the continuation of policy with other means". To try to read the Wikipedia policies and guidelines as one does legislation will end in tears. It is more important to understand the whole and not the parts: think of the polices and guidelines as a Bible, rather than legislation. If you read the Bible literally and take passages that support your point of view it will end up with others doing the same to support their's. However if you can compromise with others, then it is usually possible to come up with wording that everyone can live with (or at least most can). As an example see how long and hard it was to get the sentence " into the lead of WP:V because the opposition to its inclusion argued that Copyrights is not one of the three core content policies. Once it was agreed to include it in the lead of WP:V lots of problems went away and the precise wording of the sentence really does not matter.

One has to understand that polices and guidelines evolved organically over time, and as you point out usually a compromise between different editors. Those editors often coalesce into temporary parties (alliances) as people come and go. This means that things are often contradictory because shifting as the sands it depends on which party at a particular time and place can command a consensus, or more often a non-consensus that prevents change to rationalise the polices and guidelines. This does not mean that Wikipedia is a battle ground just that like any organisation "office politics" is prevalent, although because is a charity, the politics are motivated by what editors believe are the best interests of the project rather than for personal gain, although obviously some editors can be vindictive and spiteful (which motivates their behaviour in any given dispute with them opposing an editor they dislike or hold a grudge rather than considering the issue with disinterest) -- just see the behaviour of some editors on the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. In some cases some editors are having a hard time in the real world, or are off their medicines, or have issues like autism, any of which can make them difficult to work with.

Let me give you two examples. The first is WP:ATTRIBUTION which is a failed policy. A party of editors decided that they would stream line WP:V and WP:NPOV in a new policy called WP:ATTRIBUTION. They did not develop it in secret, but most editors did not know that they were doing it until they suddenly redirected the two polices to the new combined one. At first because they were a coherent party, and because they had invested a lot of time developing the new policy they were invested in it, they were able to show that they had a consensus for the change. It might have stuck. However when User:Jimbo Wales came out against the change a poll was held which showed there was no consensus for the change.

At the time although a very active content maker I had no idea about the poll, as I did not look at the various forum where this was discussed. However as a rule I am very against large changes to policies (and to a lesser extent guidelines) and prefer incremental changes, as I think that the former is very disruptive and particularly as large changes always have unforeseen consequences.

The second is the difference between the Article tiles policy and the WP:Manual of Style guideline, the AT policy is based on "follow the sources Luke" while the MOS tends to be prescriptive. Although 95% of the time these two methods tend to end up at the same place on a specific issue, there can be disagreement over the 5% of differences, often with those who like the prescriptive approach, trying to change the AT policy, (I am in the follow the sources party) and this difference has existed since at least 2006.

2005–2007 is an important period in the development of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. They came about because of the outside pressure by the press which at the time enjoyed finding silly things in Wikipedia and publishing how dumb the project was. This lead to SV's creation of the section] WP:BURDEN in verification policy on 30 August 2005 and a year later based on a proposal by Jimbo at Wikimania 2006 to  the creation of 100,000 feature-quality articles (on  14 September 2006).

Most editors would like to think that their contributions will help others. To do this Wikipedia must appear in searches. At the time search engines did not automatically place Wikipedia at the top of close to the top of their searches. There was a danger that unless Wikipedia was viewed regularly then its profile would slip and it would become as irrelevant (see List of online encyclopedias). Suddenly things like "If you want to publish things on Wikipedia you must provide sources ... see this policy", started to appear more often than before in talk page discussions, and non-sourced text would be deleted based on policy. This meant that people who wanted to add content had to acquire a knowledge of the policies and guidelines. Of course the old maxim "The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from" (attributed to various people) can just as well be amended to "The wonderful thing about policies and guidelines is that there are so many of them to choose from", but choose from them one is a must in talk page conversations about content on Wikipedia. This was not so in the very early days. In-text and in-line have two distinct meaning in guidelines on Wikipedia. The WP:INTEXT section was introduced by SV, and while I did not and still do not agree with her completely about its use, but I think the meaning is clear. In-line is used to distinguish between citations within the text and those located as bullet points in the reference list in the references section at the bottom of the article. The term general-reference used to mean a reference that appeared at the bottom of the article in a bullet pointed list which might or might not also support in-line citations. This meant that its original meaning was shorthand for the references in the "bullet pointed list of references at the bottom of the article", which thanks to its now different meaning means that one has to use a phrase when before one used two words! Sigh I lost that particular debate!

You write "" — Yes it does but only for as does  and so on, like  are for in-line and "bullet pointed list of references at the bottom of the article", are for books which do not have customised template.

You wrote .. — You are totally wrong about this. Apart from the example I gave you above see for examples Alexander I of Russia (which uses and one of the examples in the guideline Battle of Camp Hill which uses.

You wrote "" — this is true for most of the policies and guidelines, particularly common ground between them.

You wrote "" — I explained those two above, but this is always a problem of in-group slang/shorthand in any organisation. What annoys me is when people use short links without giving them eg ASSERT instead of ASSERT on their first use in a posting, on the assumption that everyone can knows and remember every acronym use in the Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

You wrote "" — I think this is where you have a major misunderstanding. It does no harm to the project to attribute text that is no longer needs attribution, it does harm not to. As you know may know "no editor owns an article and any contributions can and may be mercilessly edited" (Five pillars:Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute). This means that with other contributions and style changes an article that starts of with text copied from a PD source will move further and further from that source, until it is no longer a copy in any meaningful way. When that point is reached is nuanced and an editorial decision, but eventually most articles will end up no longer needing attribution to a PD source, although the source may still be cited there is a tool that can help do this objectively Earwig's Copyvio Detector one of a set of tools in the box. As example of this is Alfred the Great: All First Revision as of 20:04, 27 October 2001‎, some Revision as of 14:13, 3 January 2011‎, None [Current Revision as of 12:22, 16 September 2022‎]

You wrote As I chose them I think that they are well chosen, although when I chose them there was a limited pool to choose from :-). However I think that your misunderstanding of WP:Plagiarism has more do with your observation than fact. As someone who has been working on the project for about 2 decades it is difficult for me to see the text through someone new to it. However changing things without an understanding often leads to unforeseen consequences. I suggest that you do not change anything until you have a better knowledge of the issue and have looked at lots of links to the  and  templates.

-- PBS (talk) 14:24, 19 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Thank you for teaching me so well. I admire your patience and wonder whether you are not wasting your time teaching me, while you could do better things. I feel some improvement in the WP:PLAG done by you should come out of our discussions. However, I fully agree with you that guidelines must not be upset by drastic changes but should evolve slowly getting clearer and more understandable, having less exceptions, and adjusting to the expectations of the editors and readers. Such changes should be lead by one or several senior Wikipedians like you and supported by a wide consensus. I am sometimes afraid that a small radical pressure group could force hurried revolutions upon us that might endanger Wikipedia's survival.


 * It is interesting to learn about Wikipedia's history. It is certainly a good thing that WP:V is taken more strictly and seriously. Verifiability through inline citations is certainly needed. It seems that many teachers tell their students to use Wikipedia, not for its text, but for its sources. An important step that I saw myself was when in September 2020 got it right to deprecate Inline parenthetical referencing. It seems the decision was taken by a discussion and vote in Village Pump (see ). I have not counted precisely but about 200 editors participated, which is not bad, but there are more than 119,682 active registered editors in the English Wikipedia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics). You talk about a poll. I do not know how that works but I suppose it involves bigger numbers.


 * I have the impression you are telling me to omit the attributions from the citations verifying the verbatim borrows from the DNB. Is this somehow prescribed in the 2nd paragraph of the section "Where to place ..." of WP:PLAG? It says:


 * "If a significant proportion of the text is copied or closely paraphrased from a compatibly-licensed or public domain source, attribution is generally provided either through the use of an appropriate attribution template, or a general attribution template such as source-attribution, or similar annotation, placed in a "References section" near the bottom of the page. In such cases consider adding the attribution statements at the end of the Reference section directly under a line consisting of "Attribution:" (Attribution:) in bold:[19]"


 * Excepted the final recommendation to place a general Attribution at the end of the References section, I find it not clear at all. It says "either-or" offering a choice between an "appropriate attribution template" and "general attribution template". What should an "appropriate attribution template" be?. The footnote 19 tries to fend off critcism for using (Atribution), which is kind of a pseudo section header. Perhaps it does not break the instruction by the letter but well in spirit.


 * However, in reality the only attribution template used is the one at the end of the references section. Inline citaions are used.


 * Yesterday I worked on Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, mostly on the sources but there is still so much missing, even page numbers. I would like to cite the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB), published in 2009, a nice recent source (I have been criticised for using outdated sources). The local library has the 9 volumes. There also is an online version, similar to the one for the ODBC, but luckily unlike the ODBC freely accessible. The text has been updated in some cases but in most cases is the same as in the book but without the page numbers. The article about Hugh is quite long and I do not really know how to cite it. Shorter DIB article I have cited by counting paragraphs (e.g. Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry).


 * It is late and I go to bed. The day passed fast and I have still not answered you properly. Please excuse me. Thanks for the explanations about in-text and inline attribution. That is now clear to me, even if I find the words chosen are quite confusing for the apprentice Wikipedian. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 21:00, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * "an appropriate attribution template" links to Category:Attribution templates so only use if there is no specific template for that reference. Appart from anything else many of the specific templates have maintenance categories attached. See for example Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Dictionary of National Biography.
 * "" so don't include page numbers in the short citation just "author 2009", and place the online version in the list of long citations. Thats all you need to do (don't worry about the page numbers in the hard copy as 99% of readers who verify the source will use the online version). Do not count paragraphs for example the ODNB amend their entries adding a new date when they do. Counting paragraphs will only confuse the issue. Online has text search available, so just cite the whole article, an interested reader or editor will be able to find the information without needing a cou t of paragraphs.


 * You misunderstand footnote 19. You need to read the link in the footnote. If one places a semicolon at the start of a line the text will appear in bold, but the html that generates that will be broken unless the line ends in a full colon and has a specific meaning. So automatic text readers used by sight disabled people barf at that construction. Hence why we recommend creating bold with three single apostrophes:
 * ; Attribution
 * Attribution: ✅


 * -- PBS (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear, Thanks for the explanations. I understand now what the appropriate and the general attribution template are. What would you think of the following formulation for the paragraph under discussion:


 * "If a significant proportion of the text is copied or closely paraphrased from a compatibly-licensed or public domain source, attribution is generally provided only at the end of of the "References section". No inline attribution is given in this case. The attribution at the end uses either a source-specific attribution template (e.g., or the general attribution template (i.e. ). The attribution template should appear under a line "Attribution:" (Attribution:) in bold:[19]"


 * Hmm; still some more work needed on this.


 * You talk about speed and users with slow connections. I think it is almost always the pictures or other graphics and not the characters on which a loading chokes. I learned this years ago from some some very experienced web programmers. The numeric details are difficult to work out but I think in well illustrated Wikipedia articles the images and graphics are several times the number of pixel than the text and the references together. For example on Donogh O'Brien, 4th Earl of Thomond the Page Size tool reports an HTML document size of 177 kB and HTML text is 57 kB (text + references) . The picture by it self has 342 KB, but somehow less than than seems to be downloaded. So normally it is not worthwhile to worry about a couple of characters more or less. —I am in trouble again Wikimedia wants to delete a picture I use in the article Almeric de Courcy, 23rd Baron Kingsale. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:43, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter
 Baffle☿gab  03:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

O'Neill Article
I was just going off the links in the articles when I edited that, but since you linked a pedigree. It says in the article his father is Henry MacShane O'Neill. Is this a different man than the Henry (d. 1608) in your pedigree? If so maybe the link to him should be killed in the article to clear up the confusion. The confusion that Shane O'Neill is an ancestor of the Kinard O'Neills. You are a good editor, you don't need to defer to me. You have a source! User:SKIBLY101 (talk) 19:31, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
 * DearUser:SKIBLY101. Thanks for your quick reaction. To answer your question: our Turlough's father Henry Oge O'Neill (d. 1608) is not Henry MacShane O'Neill (d. 1622), son of Shane O'Neill the proud. The O'Neills are a big family with many branches and lots of people having the same name, many Hrnry O'Neills, many Hugh O'Neills and many Shane O'Neills. On must always consider the date of death if it is available. I wonder how the MacShane came into the title of the article. I would have called the biographical subject "Turlough mac Henry O'Neill (died 1608)". I also wonder whether the article as it stands establisheshis notability. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:23, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Claud Hamilton, 1st Lord Paisley article
The year 1911a and 1911b seemed to be working ok, I guess you worked it out. However thanks for the changes in how the date and year are handled in CS1, use the date parameter rather than year so the template displays the long citation with the appended date letter eg. -- PBS (talk) 13:20, 25 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear PBS. Nice to hear from you again. Yes, the citations are fine now. However 1910 and 1911 would have been better than 1911a and 1911b as 1910 and 1911 is what the reader will find printed in the book if he looks at it. - With regard to your change on the image: we have now "alt" two times, once as parameter of "CSS image crop" and once as parameter of "Infobox noble". Is that what you intended? With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 18:38, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Theobald Dillon, 7th Viscount Dillon
Hi Johannes, thanks for your message. I have reversed the date changes, as you suggested (was working too fast and missed their location). The change I made to the Theobald Dillon article was for the use of the Passive in this context. if you want, you can change it back. Again, many thanks for your kind comments. Denisarona (talk) 09:30, 24 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Denisarona. Thanks for your quick reaction. You made yesterday two corrections on Theobald Dillon, 7th Viscount Dillon
 * In the first at 15:27 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theobald_Dillon,_7th_Viscount_Dillon&diff=next&oldid=1123243359) you changed "forfeit" -> "forfeited". My sentence was "As he had been attainted, his title and his lands were forfeit.". It became "As he had been attainted, his title and his lands were forfeited." I did not intend to use the passive voice but to use the adjective "forfeit" predicatively (see the Wikipedia article predicative expression). I still believe that my original sentence was correct and no correction was needed. One might even argue that the predicative expression of the adjective "forfeit" is better than the passive voice of the verb "to forfeit".
 * In your second correction (which I had not yet seen) you changed "by whom she was mother of Brigadier General Lally" -> "by whom she was the mother of Brigadier General Lally". I wonder whether the "the" is really obligatory according to grammar and it should certainly not have been changed here because it appears within a quotation from John Lodge (archivist) (1790).
 * With many thanks and greeting, Johannes Schade (talk) 10:43, 24 November 2022 (UTC)


 * All done, as requested. Best regards, Denisarona (talk) 16:49, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
 Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter
Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter error
The GOCE December 2022 newsletter, as sent on 9 December, contains an erroneous start date for our December Blitz. The Blitz will start on 11 December rather than on 17 December, as stated in the newsletter. I'm sorry for the mistake and for disrupting your talk page; thanks for your understanding. Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Spelt & Spelled
Hi Johannes, the reason I change is that spelt is more common in British English, whereas the alternative spelled is more typical in American English (according to Oxford and Longman dictionaries). The articles where I change are British-based English articles. Regards Denisarona (talk) 12:20, 27 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Denisarona. I am referring to British English, where both forms are accepted and "spelt" was formerly predominant; but recent Google-Books ngrams (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=spelled%2Cspelt&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=3) show it is not any more so. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) Johannes Schade (talk) 13:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
We are currently running a study to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative algorithms for providing personalized task recommendations through SuggestBot. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet. The study is scheduled to end on Monday, January 9, 2023. Please note this is a bit later than the initial estimate specified in the consent information sheet.

Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 23
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Redmond Roche, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page William Wiseman.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:06, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report
Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Your GA review of Lucien Brouha

 * I very much second this barnstar. Marvellous work! Chocmilk03 (talk) 01:33, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment
You are receiving this message because you were a Good article reviewer on at least one article that is part of Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 or you signed up for messages. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of Good articles for copyright and other problems, unless a reviewer opens an independent Good article reassessment and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information. A list of the GA reviewers can be found here. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. You can opt in or out of further messages at this page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 16
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Siege of Derry, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page George Philips.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Robert Dillon
Hi - you made a complex edit of the article, but I'm wondering if you accidentally cut the mention of O'Hurlihy. Shtove (talk) 11:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear User: Shtove, you are perfectly right. Sorry, my fault and thanks for telling me. I inserted the missing word "arrest" and added a "Further reading" section for the source that I could not access and therefore replaced with another, unluckily much older one. With many thanks and best regards in hope of further good collaboration, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

McCarthy of Muskerry → MacCarthy of Muskerry
Hello, @Johannes Schade, this is a message concerning an article you edited recently. After performing the move of MacCarthy Mor dynasty to MacCarthy dynasty and Mac Carthaigh Riabhach to MacCarthy Reagh, I encountered a problem moving McCarthy of Muskerry to MacCarthy of Muskerry. You can view more details here.

After researching what happened through the segmented history, it appears the article originally MacCarthy of Muskerry, but was moved to Mac Carthaigh Múscraige and moved to McCarthy of Muskerry by a user that was likely unaware of the implications of the title when moving the article back as per WP:UE. BurgeoningContracting (talk) 03:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Ernie O'Malley
Hello Johannes,

Thank you for undertaking the above. I will of course abide by your comments unless there is something or other that you have missed. As to the modest number of edits I have on the clock, I'm fairly sure that quite a number more were made before I created my account. There was also a period of some years when I wasn't active on Wikipedia at all. Anyhow, you've likely worked out that I am from broadly the same part of the world where you presently live. Regards Billsmith60 (talk) 19:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Billsmith60. Thanks for your friendly word. Yes, that is all fine. Of course I live here but am not really from this part of the world. You will see that there are quite a few Irish particularities that are perfectly normal and obvious to you but which need to be explained to me, which is probably a good thing as the English Wikipedia is read worldwide and cannot cater only for the Irish reader. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Billsmith60. I made a remark on missing URLs on the review page. Of course your citations are fine for passing the GA – but are you satisfied with that citation style? I find it is amateurish, and inefficient. I would replace the inline citations with Sfn and the free-style descriptions in the lists under "Writings" and "Secondary sources" with formal descriptions using templates such as Cite book and Cite web. What do you think? That is a bit of work, but I think it would be worthwhile, not only for this GA but also for all your future work. As examples look at the recent FAs Frederick the Great and Joan of Arc. What do you think? Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:15, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello Johannes, I've invested lots of work in this article, and I find Wiki referencing tiresome. Moreover, as I normally edit on my phone, the various referencing templates are awkward and do not assist me. Therefore, I'd prefer to let the references stand as they are, given that they are good enough to pass that aspect of your GA review. Thanks again Billsmith60 (talk) 12:48, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've taken note of your initial comments and will begin addressing those as soon as possible. Thanks Billsmith60 (talk) 13:09, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Billsmith60, I edit on a Lenovo V145 notebook, 15.6'' screen, AMD-A9 processor, bought for about £390 about 3 years ago, into which I plugged an external keyboard and mouse for more convenience. This is a basic kind of laptop. You do not need anything fancy for Wikipedia editing. It seems you can get similar laptops now for cheaper. I do not own a cellphone and can therefore not directly compare, but quite obviously you can type faster on a keyboard. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 17:22, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Güten Tag Johannes (or "Dia Duit a Johannes" as Irish speakers would say). If you want to assess, for instance, the entire "Revolutionary career" section of the O'Malley article, I'd be able to do more at one (conputer) edit. In other words, feel free to "charge on" with your assessment if it suits you to do so – you don't need to wait for me to finish one section at a time – and I'll get to making the changes as soon as I can. Alles Gute Billsmith60 (talk) 12:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Billsmith60, have you found a computer on which you can work? I thought you could always go to a public library to use one there, at least one can do that here at the Bangor library and also at the Central Library in Belfast, but it might be too inconvenient. I agree let's not wait for each other on the GA2 page. I go ahead as I can and so do you. I looked up "Dia duit" and was surprised to learn that "Dia" is not Latin "dies" (day) but Latin "deus" (god). It seems it means "God with you", a bit like the "Dominus vobiscum", but in singular. Is "duit" cognate with Latin "tu" (thou)? A huge problem with Irish for me when it appears in the English Wikipedia, is the pronunciation. Thanks for your German – and Dia duit, Johannes Schade (talk) 15:16, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Dia" (genitive "Dé") is possibly cognate with "Deus", although Irish is one of the oldest Indo-European languages. "duit" means "to you (singular)": you'd say "Dia daoibh" to more than one person. Their answer would be "Dia's Muire duit" (Dia is [short version of agus ("and")] Muire duit" = God and Mary be with you. It could go on forever if the first person added a saint's name each time, thereby obliging a further reply! I can get to a desktop computer now and again. Go raibh maith agat. Slán Billsmith60 (talk) 18:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello Johannes, I will be able to fix the issues you have identified, but not until Tuesday when I can access several sources. Hence, if you are able to continue on with your assessment I will have plenty to do on that day and Wednesday before taking a short break away from Thursday to Saturday. Regards and enjoy your weekend Billsmith60 (talk) 09:13, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Billsmith60, that is of course fine. You do what you can and so do I. From my side, I must tell you that I will be away with my wife to see her family from Tuesday 4 April to Sunday 16 April. I will be completely out of touch as I cannot take my laptop with me and do not have a cell phone.
 * I spent some time looking at the Irish language. Even if it is one of the Indo-European ones, it is quite different from the Germanic or Romance languages (all the languages that I am even remotely familiar with are in these two groups). Similarities with Latin can sometime be found. I hoped that I would be able to read Irish pronunciation from its representation in IPA, but discovered that Irish uses several IPA symbols (and sounds) that are completely new to me: the consonants ɟ and γ, the vowels ɤ and ɯ; and then the verb-first word order and the distinction of slender and broad. Not an easy language to learn for a person of my background.
 * I am a bit concerned about the quality of the citations. The article is densely cited for a GA nomination but the few checks I have made seem to show that the citations only poorly support the statements. Some contributors seem to have quite freely interpreted the sources, inventing likely detail that is not found in the source; e.g. the rifle from CnG, the closed schools. Greetings Johannes Schade (talk) 11:51, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * At least Irish doesn't have a middle voice like Greek, although I accept that an "ng" sound is tricky even for an accomplished speaker! It also employs the passive voice quite a bit and follows English in (mostly) putting the verb before the subject or object. It's the opposite with your mother-tongue and Latin, the latter of which I studied to a reasonably advanced level some years ago. As to the citations, it seems you're checking every single one and will pick up any errors – these shouldn't be a major problem, however. Have a safe, pleasant trip, and if you can leave me as much as possible to do on Tuesday, it'll be there for you on your return. Gute Reise. Billsmith60 (talk) 14:04, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Billsmith60, I did a little ancient Greek at high school but have forgotten about all of it, inclusive the middle voice. How did you hear about the middle voice? I always had very bad marks in Latin and in Greek and almost failed matric for that reason. English was my best subject, but my teacher pronounced v for w and so still do I. Thanks for the chat.
 * I do believe that unsupported statements (or detail) in phrases or sentences with citations at their end count as OR and justify rejecting a nomination under GACR Rule 2c "original research". Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:23, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello Johannes, while I did very little Greek at school, my best friend studied it and told me about the "middle voice". I was not displeased to have avoided it! All the best Billsmith60 (talk) 18:46, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello Johannes, unfortunately an edit conflict occurred a few minutes ago when I was adding my observations to the two assessments you made yesterday (the Talk page, that is, not the article which has been updated). This caused the loss of everything I wrote in response to you. If I had copied the code first, I might have been able to salvage my comments, but the code changed to the latest version after your edit. Anyhow, I'll charge on and make today's changes as soon as possible (b tomorrow early afternoon) and will make all observations to you at the one time. All the best Billsmith60 (talk) 13:11, 21 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Billsmith60, sorry to hear. Unluckily this happens quite often in GA talk pages. When the error comes up you must not close the conflicted page. Your edits are preserved at the very bottom of it. You must then open a new copy of the GA talk page in a new tab. This will hold the latest state of the page. Then paste in your changes from the edits you salvaged out of the conflicted page. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 13:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Good morning Johannes. I assume you've been busy with other work, as you've not commented further on all outstanding Ernie O'Malley GA changes I submitted at one go last Monday. I had to return all additional books I needed to the National Library, hence I hope the nomination can either be passed or failed the next time you're available to close it. We've been at it for a very long time indeed! My best wishes to you Billsmith60 (talk) 10:52, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Billsmith60, welcome back. You guess right, I am busy with my GA nomination Antoine Hamilton, that User:Mike Christie has started reviewing. He has 431 (!) reviews and 29 GAs to his credit and is very good. Please pardon my excesses with regard to your citation style and the requirement in Criterion 2a for what I might call a "consistent citation style". I mean the interpretation of the sentence "Editors may use any citation method they choose, but it should be consistent within an article .", which appears in MOS:LAYOUT. I have never really found a guideline or an essay that explains what the citation methods or citations styles are and when mixing different techniques starts violating the requirement for consistency. There seems to be no help for plain-text citations, whereas there is HELP:SRF for the shortened footnotes citation style.
 * My own experience is quite limited. I started with various citation styles using as probably all beginners do. First I used plain-text for content, then Cite book, Cite journal, etc. Then in fact quite quickly shortened footnotes using first Citation, then Cite book for the full citations the source list. I used these shortened footnotes for books, but often do not really know what to do with sources that lack authors and years such as newspapers and gazettes.
 * While making some additions to the article Claud Hamilton of Shawfield, I met User:Unoquha, the major contributor to this article: more than 56,000 edits and an expert in Scottish history. I hade used shortened footnotes in my additions and was busy slowly changing all the citations in this article to that style. He objected calling my shortened footnotes "exotic". I had to change back as WP:CITEVAR demands. Doing so, I learned the basics of his plain-text citation style. I am not sure that my reconstructed plain-text citations in Claud Hamilton of Shawfield truly reflect his style. Rather see Jewels of Mary, Queen of Scots where the citation . Like you he uses author-title rather than author-year. He never uses source lists.
 * So I think it is fine and I can promote this now. I must urgently learn more about citaion styles. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 17:05, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Johannes Schade, thank you for this very in-depth and collegial review! I was just checking out Ernie O'Malley to see if it had ever managed a second review, and I am very pleased to see all this. Maith thú to you both! -- asilvering (talk) 18:46, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Johannes, I am thrilled at the article having passed your eagle-eyed GA assessment. I genuinely mean that as a compliment, and you have nothing to be regretful about concerning references. It's been a good learning experience for each of us. Thank you for your interest, diligence and patience. As for going for FA status, that's some way off but you never know! All the best Billsmith60 (talk) 20:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Antoine Hamilton
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Antoine Hamilton you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mike Christie -- Mike Christie (talk) 14:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Mike, thank you very much for starting to review Antoine Hamilton. I am amazed by your track record: 401 reviews and 29 GAs. I hope I will learn a lot from you, not only how to improve the quality of my contributions to articles but also that of the reviews I am conducting. At the moment I am busy reviewing the article Ernie O'Malley. Many thanks again and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 15:36, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I hope I don't disappoint you! I picked Antoine Hamilton to review partly because it looked interesting, but also because you've done many more reviews than GAs, and I think people who are putting more effort into supporting the GA process should get their articles reviewed quickly if possible, as a thank you. I've left some notes at the GA review page and will watch that page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 16:46, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 8
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Antoine Hamilton, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Anne of Great Britain.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:29, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Help on Uí Néill pages
Hi Johannes Schade, do you remember we crossed paths editing Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin some time ago. I would now ask you for some help. I am not sure if you're interested in the O'Neill dynasty, but I've encountered a disruptive editor ('Queenmedb99') vandalising/edit warring two pages: McAleer and Branches of the Cenel nEoghain, with uncited nonsense relating to DNA, and I was wondering if you could lend a hand or help monitor those pages.

Thanks, Gaelicbow (talk) 11:31, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Alfred Verdross
Hello Johannes, I just wanted to let you know that I've recently published an article on Alfred Verdross, where I applied most of the things you taught me during your outstanding review of my article on Hugo Krabbe. For me that experience was very useful and I am sure that the task of the next reviewer (I intend to nominate also Verdross for GA or FA) will be much lighter than yours because of what I learnt from you. Thanks, Gitz (talk) (contribs) 14:34, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 31
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Antoine Hamilton, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Orientalist.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter
Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:38, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

James Hamilton (English army officer)
Hi, you have introduced a number of reference errors into James Hamilton (English army officer):
 * Harv error: link from CITEREFGleeson1947 doesn't point to any citation.
 * Cite error: Invalid is quite an interesting citation style. I never know what to call these styles when discussing them in reviews or elsewhere. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Antoine Hamilton
The article Antoine Hamilton you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Antoine Hamilton for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Mike Christie -- Mike Christie (talk) 15:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello again
It's been quite a while since we corresponded, so probably you will guess that I'm looking for a little help. I've been working on John Ogilby to get it up to GA standard but I approach it from an interest in cartography rather than as a historian. Given how long the queue for GA evaluation is, I would like to be sure that I don't fall at the first fence with silly errors. So if you can spare the time, please, could you give it a read over and point to any elements that need more work?

No obligation: if you can't afford the time then I'll ask elsewhere but I think it is in your period of historical interest? (1600-1676, including Ireland around 1641).

Best wishes. (The artist formerly known as user:John Maynard Friedman.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:03, 12 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear JMF, I am pleased to hear from you and to see that you are still active in Wikipedia and busy preparing John Ogilby for GA. I would be pleased to help, but in the moment I am busy reviewing for GA the article Rachel Yakar promoted by Gerda Arendt. Perhaps later when still needed. Friendly greetings, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you anyway. If you can think of another editor with an interest in the Wot3K or Restoration period who might be willing to give it a read through, I would be most grateful if they would do so without any commitment to doing a full GA evaluation. Meanwhile, best wishes on your own endeavours. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:37, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

August 2023 Good Article Nominations Backlog Drive reminder
The August 2023 Good Article Nominations Backlog Drive is at the halfway mark, and has seen incredible progress, dropping the backlog from 638 to 359 unreviewed articles -- a 43.7% reduction in only fifteen days! But we still have over two weeks to go, and there are plenty of articles left to review:


 * We've gone from 14 nominations 270+ days old and 65 nominations 180+ days old to 2 and 0 respectively. No more articles will reach 270+ status during the drive, and only three more will reach 180+ if unreviewed, so this is your last chance to get the higher age bonuses!
 * We still have plenty of articles in the 90+ range, but the list is shrinking fast.
 * Some articles need new reviewers, either because they're officially on second opinion or because the original reviews were deleted or invalidated. You can help prevent these articles from waiting longer!
 * While there are starting to be clear favourites for the Content Review Medal of Merit, the field is still very open. A late entrant can still pull an upset to get the most reviews in the drive!

And remember: if you've done reviews, you should log them at the backlog drive page for points, so they can be tracked towards your awards at the end.

Thanks for signing up for the drive, and I hope to see you reviewing! Vaticidalprophet 02:01, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

You have received this message as a participant in the August 2023 Good Article Nominations Backlog Drive who has logged one or no reviews. This is a one-off massmessage. If you wish to opt out of all massmessages, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.

August music
Thank you for your patience regarding Rachel Yakar. In the meantime - see my story - Berit Lindholm died, and now also Robert Hale. I keep hoping that there will be a break eventually! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

After Lindholm became GA, and I updated Hale as far as I could I finally turned to Yakar again, translating the Diapason article completely. I took one sentence, but otherwise found that it would loose in translation, for example the one-word charactisations for roles such Fiordiligi. The detail about Poppea sounds better in French, and seems a bit undue weight. So, please check again. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:28, 4 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Gerda, I am in hospital again since a week, but my wife brought the laptop, so that I can do my tax declaration and also work on Wikipedia when I am not too tired or tied up with medical stuff. Greetings, Johannes. Johannes Schade (talk) 14:27, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel so sorry for you, and listen to your wife and me: do only what are up to with pleasure. Recovery is more important! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Septermber GOCE newsletter
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for continuing the review. I hope you are well enough for such stress, and hope for good recovery! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Gerda, thanks for your kindness, understanding, and patience (note the Oxford comma before the "and" in the enumeration). I am much better now and hope we will be able to finish this business soon to both our satisfaction (note the absence of a comma before the "and" in this sentence because the "am" and the "hope" share the same subject.) Johannes Schade (talk) 08:51, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Memoirs of Count Gramont
Hello Johannes, I hope you are well. I recently, by chance, came across your draft article for the Memoirs of Count Gramont. Do you have any intention of publishing the article at any stage? I think it would be valuable! A few weeks ago I started working on my own one, but it is not nearly as advanced or comprehensive as yours. KerryCommon (talk) 18:14, 25 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear KerryCommon, you seem to be User:WatermillockCommon with a new name. Perhaps a shorter name is better. We seem to have so much in common: according to your userboxes you seem to be fluent in French. My wife is French.
 * Please go ahead and write the article.
 * I have never written an article about a book. I tried with the Memoirs of Count Gramont and wrote the draft you have seen in my sandbox. That was quite a while ago. All my experience is in biographies. I think my draft is not good. Too much importance is given to enumerations of various editions. There are far too few citations. It follows neither the article structure proposed in [WP:WikiProject Books/Non-fiction article] nor that in WP:Wikipediaproject Books.
 * At the moment I am trying to bring Antoine Hamilton the book's author up to GA. My first attempt failed because of the recent changes to GA that demand that all statements be supported by citations.
 * Do you have experience with articles on books? Perhaps you do not need it and you are a good literature critic by nature. Obviously the short treatment of the book in Antoine Hamilton would have to be equilibrated against the article you are going to write. Do not hesitate to use all the material that you can find in my draft and in Antoine Hamilton. Read examples of FA and GA articles on books to inspire yourself from them. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 20:32, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Good afternoon, many thanks for your reply. My French is not what it used to be, but I enjoy speaking it when I have the opportunity!
 * Thank you for the information about your work. I will see how I get on with an article on the book, and I will certainly let you know if it progresses. I am sure your input would be invaluable. KerryCommon (talk) 13:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Deletion discussion for Elizabeth, Lady Thurles

 * Hi there, Johannes Schade. The major contributors to this article, Evangelista and MartinCollin, have not edited on Wikipedia for many years. I should nevertheless point out that many biographies of women from this period draw on details from articles about men as women were not generally considered important enough for individual attention. It is therefore not surprising that your own interesting historic biographies are all about men. I've called for the article to be kept. Thanks by the way for your own improvements to the article.--Ipigott (talk) 10:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Ian, thank you very much for your intervention in the AfD discussion and the amazing extent of work that the "homework" you did for the AfD led you to do. I want to thank you especially for rating quite a few of "my" articles. I had not known about the new style that sets the class for all project uniformally in one go. It is a big improvement. Besides, "my" biographies are not all about men. Elizabeth, Countess de Gramont ranks 5th, Helen Burke, Countess Clanricarde 12th, and Frances Talbot, Countess of Tyrconnell 25th in my list of articles by number of edits, and there are still a couple more further down the ratings. It is good that Wikipedia makes an effort to fill the gender information gap. However, Wikipedia has not yet gone for affirmative action, where the criteria for inclusion of women would become less demanding than those applied to men. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 13:48, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Glad to see, Johannes, that you have also been contributing to biographies of historical women created by other editors. It's unusual for a German to take such a deep interest in historical figures from Ireland.
 * Articles about women should certainly not be treated more favourably than those about men but I think we do need to bear in mind that many historical women of note did not attract the coverage that men in similar positions would have received at the time. Details about their lives can therefore frequently be extracted from records of their male relatives and associates. I presented this view on the deletion discussion but others might agree with you that the article should be deleted. If so, then I would hope that the details in the current article could become moulded into the biographies of the gentlemen with whom she associated.
 * I also welcome the simplified approach to the assessment process. For your own information. WikiProject Military History is among those which still require individual attention. If you are interested in spending more time on biographies of women, you might like to become a member of WikiProject Women in Red where we are trying to chip away at the gender gap on Wikipedia. (In future, if you want me to see your reactions, you should make sure to ping me. I don't always look back at recent edits.) --Ipigott (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Ian thanks for your kind reply. I live in Bangor, Northern Ireland since about 5 years. Focussing on one country and one time (mostly 17th century) allows to build up a knowledge of the relevant sources. With Women-in-Red I would have to jump around in unfamiliar places, times, and languages. I would be much less efficient. I do not really understand what you mean by "Military History is among those which still require individual attention". Do you mean they refuse a general, not project-specifc rating?
 * At the moment I am trying to prepare Antoine Hamilton for a 2nd GA review, having failed the first one for still having statements not covered by citations. On what are you working on or struggling with in the moment?
 * Besides, one of my grandmothers was born in Tinglev, but I do not speak Danish. My wife is French and therefore I get often exposed to that language. Nice to chat with you, many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 18:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting to have more details about your background. I read your user page explanations on Commons and Wikipedia. I'm pretty fluent in several languages including German. Instead of continuing to create lots of new articles myself, I now spend more time on helping other editors along and encouraging them to spend more time writing about women. It seems strange to me this would upset your priorities but raising articles to GA or FA status is of course admirable. If ever you think I could help you along, please let me know.--Ipigott (talk) 19:51, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Dear Ian. I have often hoped to find an experienced Wikipedian whom I could ask for advice or bother with problems I struggle with. You might be that person—let me explain how I came to open an AfD on Elizabeth, Lady Thurles. I wanted to extend the article but was afraid that I might invest work into an article that was doomed because of the subject's lack of notability. I find that extending an article is mainly finding additional citations. The article has a citation style (what do you call this style?). Most articles do, probably because articles are often created by newbies or people who use Visual editing or do not care about how their citations look.
 * Due to WP:CITEVAR one has to obtain consensus to change citation style. Unless my own contributions are predominent in the article, I therefore ask the major contributors to allow me to change the citations style to comply with shortened footnotes and more recently also with list-defined references. I write a note on the article's talk page. I have done this on 23 articles including, this morning, on Elizabeth, Lady Thurles. The form has slightly changed with time but not much. I usually wait a month before I go ahead (but in the present case I have added the children's list in the new format, I should probably not have done this). I have never had a refusal, some contributors give permission, but most do not reply. Curiously, I seem to be the only one who asks for change of citation style on talk pages.
 * Besides, I still have not understood what you meant with "Military History is among those which still require individual attention".
 * With many thanks for your kindness best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 13:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message
 Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:51, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter
Message sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 17
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Philippe, Duke of Vendôme, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Hachette.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:10, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

 * You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. 

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 23:18, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Your good article nomination
Hello! You currently have a good article nomination waiting for review, but you haven't edited in a while. Are you still available to respond to a reviewer when the review begins, or should the nomination be reverted so you can renominate at a later date? The big ugly alien ( talk ) 01:28, 18 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I've removed Antoine Hamilton from the GAN queue. It can be renominated at any time. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 00:14, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Johannes has suffered micro strokes and he is unfortunately unable to read or edit articles at the moment.
 * I wanted to inform Wikipedia about it but couldn't find a way.
 * I apologize forthe inconvenience it causes you.
 * Emmanuelle (Johannes's wife) and 86.179.45.121 (talk) 07:19, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to hear that. I wish you both the best and I hope for a speedy recovery. The big ugly alien  ( talk ) 21:43, 6 July 2024 (UTC)