User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2010/July

Welcome back
Lightmouse, I have a hunch that you're really really busy in RL nowadays. This is a pity, since many aspects of your work have changed WP over the years for the better. I'm thinking here of the conversion practices for imperial/metric units, for starters.

I hope you find time to help out in the future. This pic is a token of thanks for your contributions. Tony  (talk)  17:28, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Nice to see you back! - Ahunt (talk) 12:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Lightmouse (talk) 12:15, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Welcome back.  SilkTork  *YES! 09:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Lightmouse (talk) 13:28, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Polycrystalline silicon photovoltaics
Just for the record: do you oppose replacing  with   in this article? —bender235 (talk) 16:34, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Arbcom
Been giving this some more thought, and, in line with the comments currently present on the request, given my recommendation for due process, which I have copied below. Does it sound reasonable? Only slightly different from your present proposal, per Kirill really.

1) Lightmouse submits a new (date/unit) BRFA; 2 or 3) The BRFA is endorsed by Arbcom - they amend prior remedies to allow its passage; 3 or 2) The BRFA passes (or fails) the standard process, which will include a short trial. 4) Instead of being free to continue as he pleases, Lightmouse will remain under trial conditions for three months. Put simply, he will be on best behaviour and expected to be a top operator in responding to comments and complaints; he will be expected to, and I will, check a sample of his own edits at regular intervals; admins and others will be more heavy-handed in stopping the bot from continuing.

- Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 16:07, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine to me. I'll submit a BRFA (Lightbot 4) which will consist of the 'units of measure' section of Lightbot 3. The other sections of Lightbot 3 will not be submitted. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 16:13, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Moving units
Please stop and discuss first! There is absolutely no consensus for moving, say, Barn (unit) to Barn (area). Hqb (talk) 13:14, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * There isn't consistency. Some are in one form and some are in the other. Resolving inconsistency is a good thing. I'm not that bothered either way but simply chose the most specific form as being helpful to the reader. If you'd like to help resolve the inconsistency, please join me. If you'd like to take the issue to a general forum for discussion, feel free. Lightmouse (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Previous discussions (will look up specifics) have uniformly come down in favor of disambiguating as "(unit)", rather than as the name of the quantity in question. Hqb (talk) 13:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I'd like to see the reference. I'm surprised the inconsistency remains after the decision. If the decision was reasonable and clear, the inconsistency can be resolved. Lightmouse (talk) 13:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

See, e.g., here or here. There is still some inconsistency for mainly archaic units, but all the mainstream scientific ones uniformly use "(unit)". I don't think anyone will object if you start moving move all the remaining non-ambiguous ones (with exceptions only for Carat and the like) to "(unit)". Hqb (talk) 13:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Good references. I'll do as you suggest with five so you can see what happens. Let me know what you think. Lightmouse (talk) 13:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that you limit yourself to the non-controversial cases at first, i.e., proper units of measure for physical quantities. So, from your recent batch, Seah (volume) → Seah (unit) is fine. On the other hand, I would object to Slab (NCR) → Slab (unit), since that one is very NCR-specific, so disambiguating by domain seems more proper. Likewise for R-value (insulation) → R-value (unit); I think it was a mistake for that one to even be included in Category:Units of measure at all. Hqb (talk) 14:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah. I had no clue what NCR meant so it seemed very odd. Lightmouse (talk) 14:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * With R-value (unit), I took a clue from the text "The R-value is a measure of thermal resistance"
 * With Slab (NCR) I took a clue from the text "A slab or syllable is the primary unit of memory"
 * See also the merge proposals I've made. Lightmouse (talk) 14:11, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I think my main point is, "There is no deadline". This is a delicate task, definitely not suitable for a bot, or even a bot-like quick scan. Let's be sure to do this carefully, balancing the other concerns brought up in the previous discussions against the desire for consistency. Again, I think the right approach is to do the easy/clearcut cases first, and then perhaps initiate formal move discussions for the remaining ones, or at least be prepared to discuss them individually if someone objects to a WP:BOLD move. Hqb (talk) 14:33, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Two weeks ago, I drilled into categories and produced a list containing unit articles. You can see that it would be easy enough to produce a list of candidates for discussion. Lightmouse (talk) 14:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Right; most of those should be fairly simple, and probably do not require any up-front discussion. We have a lot of historical/customary "(length)" and "(volume)" articles, which I don't think would be problematic to move to "(unit)" (after individual sanity checks, of course). The ones disambiguated by "(domain)" could take a bit more deliberation – I'm not convinced that they would all be more naturally dab'ed as "(unit)" instead. Hqb (talk) 14:55, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Here are the candidates:


 * Acetabulum (volume)
 * Ald (length)
 * Amphora (volume)
 * Barrel (volume)
 * Bucket (volume)
 * Butt (volume)
 * Cana (length)
 * Canada (volume)
 * Cash (mass)
 * Chain (length)
 * Coomb (volume)
 * Cord (volume)
 * Cun (length)
 * Cup (volume)
 * Digit (length)
 * Drop (volume)
 * Faggot (volume)
 * Finger (length)
 * Foot-pound (energy)
 * Foot (length)
 * Gal (acceleration)
 * Gill (volume)
 * Gō (volume)
 * Gradus (length)
 * Grain (mass)
 * Grave (mass)
 * Hand (length)
 * Hekat (volume)
 * Homer (volume)
 * Jiffy (time)
 * Kenning (volume)
 * Lambert (luminance)
 * Last (measure)
 * Length (horse racing)
 * Li (length)
 * Line (length)
 * Lot (mass)
 * Mark (mass)
 * Masu (Japanese)
 * Minim (volume)
 * Minot (volume)
 * Nat (information)
 * Nine (purity)
 * Oka (mass)
 * Pace (length)
 * Packet (information technology)
 * Palm (length)
 * Peg (unit of measurement)
 * Pes (length)
 * Pound-foot (torque)
 * Pound (mass)
 * Quad (energy)
 * Rod (length)
 * Rood (measurement)
 * Seah (volume)
 * Shake (time)
 * Slug (mass)
 * Span (length)
 * Squirrel (unit of length)
 * Stadion (unit of length)
 * Stilb (luminance)
 * Stone (mass)
 * Talbot (photometry)
 * Talent (measurement)
 * Term (time)
 * Thou (length)
 * Tun (volume)
 * Uncia (length)
 * Word (computing)

Regards Lightmouse (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that you can reasonably start with moving back, over the next couple of days, those articles that you yourself moved from "(unit)" to "(quantity)" in 2007 and 2008. (Remember to update the relevant dab page entries as well.) Then let's see what's left. Hqb (talk) 17:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Cut & paste moves
Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you recently tried to give Line_(length) a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into Line (unit). This is known as a "cut and paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is needed for attribution and various other purposes. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.

In most cases, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page. This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Cut and paste move repair holding pen. Thank you. Hqb (talk) 17:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't understand. My account is more than four days old and has ten edits. Your own comment explicitly refers to that. Did you make this comment on my talk page by using a template? Lightmouse (talk) 17:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for using a template; please ignore that part and read the rest of the explanation. Hqb (talk) 17:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Aha. I get it now. How do we move pages if the target already exists? Lightmouse (talk) 18:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

As the template says, list the move at WP:RM, or if the target page history only contains redirect entries, tag it for deletion with db-move Hqb (talk) 18:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 18:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

horse racing lengths
Folks, I don't give a hoot if it's (measurement), (length), or (unit) but please don't call it length (horse racing). It's a measurement. A weird measurement primarily used with horses, but for one thing, it is not only used in racing (we also use it in other horse disciplines at times), and for another, it should be lumped in with all the other odd measurements like cubits, ells, etc... Many thanks for moving it back to wherever it was. Montanabw (talk) 21:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Talk:Length (horse racing). Hqb (talk) 21:51, 27 July 2010 (UTC)