User talk:LeadSongDog/Archives/2010/August

Question regarding Homeopathy article, scare quotes
at Talk:Homeopathy - thanks much!! KillerChihuahua ?!?Advice 14:15, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

KPC versus NDM-1
I've moved this up to the section that deals with other classes of carbapenemases diff. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:01, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * +1. KPC is different from NDM-1 and is not the most similiar to NDM-1. VIM-1/VIM-2 are, with " only 32.4% identity" (Yong 09) `a5b (talk) 19:04, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing that. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I keep reading this as the KFC carbapenemase! :) Tim Vickers (talk) 19:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I suppose that'll kill you too, but at least its slower! LeadSongDog come howl!  19:44, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Medicine Barnstar
Hope that you don't mind, gave you a medicine barnstar on your userpage =D Sopher99 (talk) 21:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * What's to mind? Thank you! LeadSongDog come howl!  05:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Clarification
I wanted to ensure that the editors I was quoting were aware that I was quoting them, especially in the context of an Arb Com discussion. Isn't that basic politeness, on Wikipedia or elsewhere? If you ever quoted me at Arb Com, I would certainly appreciate you letting me know that you had. Morever, I don't know these editors at all, so a complaint about canvassing does not seem fair. Also, shouldn't Arb Com want to get testimony about my behavior at BLPN from uninvolved (with Race and Intelligence) editors? David.Kane (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The text of WP:CANVASS is pretty clear. I won't try and reinterpret it for you.LeadSongDog come howl!  16:59, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : LIII (July 2010)
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 21:39, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Autopatroller
Hi LeadSongDog, just wanted to let you know that I have added the autopatrolled right to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature should have little to no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the patroller right, see Autopatrolled. Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing!  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 16:27, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. LeadSongDog come howl!  16:38, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Stephens City
I addressed your concerns on the Stephens City, Virginia talk page. Please let me know if there are further concerns and I will do my best to address those. -  Neutralhomer •  Talk  • 21:13, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:SCIRS
Way back in January you were involved in a discussion wherein was raised the possibility of generalizing many of the points in MEDRS to science articles generally. Identifying reliable sources (science-related articles) is currently in the final drafting stages before asking the community to accept or reject it as a guideline in the next week or two. Your input would be most welcome, as would any other editor's. Regards, - 2/0 (cont.) 15:52, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Your comment on my talkpage
Has anyone tried to reach User:DGG? He stated that he was going to come in and set some ground rules and hopefully clarify things. Have you contacted him? LoveMonkey (talk) 19:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no idea. Why don't you ask him? WP:TPG should be pretty clear in any case. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:33, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Reaching ThaddeusB by e-mail?
Hi, I asked ThaddeusB earlier this month to comment on the current External Links discussion about links to GeoCities sites (something on which he worked quite diligently before Yahoo! shut it down) and heard the same silence. There is an "E-mail this user" link on User:ThaddeusB (as there is on our own user pages); perhaps it might be worth trying just to see if (for example) he's returning to Wikipedia when school resumes. (I'll put your talk page on my watchlist, so no need to visit mine.) —— Shakescene (talk) 20:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I sent him a tickler email earlier today, plus a note on his talkpage. If he doesn't reply in a few days we can consider what other options might be available. Ditto for User talk:Nn123645.LeadSongDog come howl!  20:28, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ThaddeusB also has an email address listed on the source code for WebCiteBOT. Not sure if it's the same one. Thanks for your help with this. - Hydroxonium (talk &#124; contribs) 00:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a little more digging and found ThaddeusB has a facebook contact link listed at his website. - Hydroxonium (talk &#124; contribs) 01:21, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ThaddeusB is back early from a summer break, as you can see from his talk page and the External Links discussion of GeoCities links (see the subsection WebCite Bot). —— Shakescene (talk) 03:12, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Reflinks
hi Lead, it didn't create a mess: added source titles, accessdate etc. futher refinements like yours can be made, Tom B (talk) 21:40, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The Jimbo saith: "...Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information..." or some such. See WP:BURDEN. This isn't just for content, it's also for citations. Putting in an incorrect title in a citation isn't a help, it can lead editors to think the title has been checked. LeadSongDog come howl!  22:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Harv 'unutterable fragility'?
Hi. A while back at WP:Centralized_discussion/Citation_discussion you remarked on the 'unutterable fragility' of the Harv tremplates, and I am wondering if you might enlighten me on that point. I have some experience with them (see Seattle Fault) and have learned to make some adjustments, but I would like a fuller understanding of the problems people have with that template. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've commented there and will amplify further. Thank you for the reminder, I'd forgotten about that discussion. I see your approach at Seattle Fault. While it does work, it is not the intended usage or behaviour of those templates per their /doc pages. An inline instance of should reliably be linked to but those stray white spaces mean the CITEREF for the anchor is differs from the CITEREF that appears in the URL by the insertion of a few underscores. But suppose I diligently ensure there are no excess white spaces and get the links to work. Then when a well meaning editor checks the ISBN and finds the second author is actually Smythe, but he corrects it in only one place. Now the links are again broken. Of course neither kind of breakage is noticable until a reader tries to click on the link and finds that nothing happens. There is no error message that warns the editor that he has broken the link. LeadSongDog  come howl!  05:35, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. So if I understand you correctly, there are problems with 1) inconsistent handling of spaces between Harv and citation (and also cite?) in creating a CITEREF, and 2) breakage of links if one of the key elements is changed. Perhaps the problem with the year/date parameters should be included (or is that only a citation problem?).  Are there any other "fragility" problems with Harv? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The only other major issue I can think of is that the year=2010a parameter tends to be troublesome. If an article cites a June and an August paper as 2010a and 2010b, then an editor adding a February paper has to revise all instances of the previous 2010b to the new 2010c, then the previous 2010a to the new 2010b, before inserting the new 2010a. Very cumbersome, error prone, and hard to check afterwards, especially if another editor works on the article in the same time span, mucking up the edit history.LeadSongDog come howl!  20:13, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The multiple author-year problem is, I think, not so much a problem with the 'year' parameter, or even Harv, as with the the concept of author-year referencing, combined with the stylistic notion that multiple instances should be listed in chronological order. (E.g., no problem if an editor could select any unused suffix.) So, strictly speaking, not a Harv problem, though still a possible problem in the broader context of using author-date referencing. From experience I know it actually occurs, and is vexatious, but would you agree that Harv does not make it worse?  I would say that using Harv actually helps in such cases, in reducing the citation clutter that makes it hard to check these things. ? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * There may be other templates that link to CITEREF anchors, but harv & friends are certainly the most common of them. The issue isn't just one or the other template, but the fact that info in different parts of an article has to be correctly revised in synchronization to not break the linkage. Another variation on this is discussed at user talk:citation bot/bugs, where we were discussing Smith et al. vs. Smith, Jones, et al. vs. Smith, Jones, Taylor & Wong. With no firm rule on how many names to represent, harv can wind up with a different choice than citation gets. My current thinking is that the minimum number of names to uniquely identify the bibliographic entry should go into the CITEREF, with the year. In most cases that number will be one, though harv uses up to four, I think. There's no value at all in including "et al." in the CITEREF, that should be dispensed with entirely, as should the embedded "_", wherever it arises. LeadSongDog come howl!  21:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * In summary I would say that only the space problem (and perhaps the 'year' parameter problem?) are really "fragility" issues with Harv itself. I'd say that the synchronization problem is inherent in using any kind of link (short of some tool to fix links).
 * I finesse the et. al issue by using "others" as an author. But it is an annoyance. And also an issue because in the sciences it is generally preferred to use et. al.  I'd like to see a fix, but still coming up to speed here.  Thanks for the discussion. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:00, 27 August 2010 (UTC)