User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2022/November

Talk:Ghouta_chemical_attack
Hi Mikeblas, another editor and myself seem to be at an impasse on the Talk:Ghouta_chemical_attack and on revisions of the main article. I and others believe the article could use additional references in the lead as per WP:V, specifically in the first sentence as it deals with material whose verifiability has been challenged and contentious matter about living persons, while another experienced editor is against it and has reverted the citation additions. Would it be possible for you to look at the situation as an outside source and may be suggest or undertaken the change that would be best for the article? KeepItGoingForward (talk) 21:34, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

October 2022
Thanks for filling in the abbreviated citations in the Invasion article this morning. References in the article now look up to date. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:58, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Glad I got the fixes right. Thanks for checking them over! -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:34, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
 * From your User page, I've noticed that you are fairly knowledgeable about citation formats at Wikipedia. I've been editing the GA for James Madison for the past several months, and I've noticed that over the years it has accumulated a large number of sfn format citations from one group of editors, and Harvard citation formats from another group of editors. Is there a rumor at Wikipedia that there exists an app on Wikipedia for converting all the citations in an article into either sfn or Harvard. Could you help in changing the article over into a format which uses only one preference. I'm editing from a small 13-inch laptop screen which makes it difficult for detailed edits of citations and if you can think of a way to get this done, then the article could be nominated for FAC. Any thoughts? ErnestKrause (talk) 15:11, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Happy to help, if I can. (The referencing templates and their problems are familiar to me, but I've never participated in a GA or FA push.) I guess the first thing to do is build concensus about which referencing style the article should use. I skimmed the talk page, so maybe I missed it, but that conversation doesn't seem to have taken place. There was a comment about making sure an individual reference didn't use both styles (for Feldman), and that seems to have been fixed. As far as I know, it's acceptable for an article to use harv-style footnotes and full citations. Are there other references that concern you? Got any examples? -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
 * This is HF's comment from the Talk page for Madison from 5 October where he states: "Gonna be obnoxious, but for the FA standard (which is much higher than GA), you'll probably want to format all of the books in the sfn in text/long citation at bottom format. See 'Chernow, Ron. (2004). Alexander Hamilton. Penguin. pp. 571–74. ISBN 978-0-14-303475-9. Retrieved February 16, 2017' as one that probably needs moved over)." I'm assuming that as he is a co-oridinator at the FAC page that he would prefer all of Madison to be in sfn format consistently. Is there an app for doing the entire article consistently into sfn? ErnestKrause (talk) 16:38, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't know of a tool that does such conversions. But I'd challenge the requirement. History of Burnley F.C. is a recent FA, and it mixes sfn and long citations. Maybe they're saying that references to books must all use sfn, and other referenced resources can use long format references? Is there a copy of the "FA standard" somewhere ... or must you strictly rely on someone else's personal and subjective validation of the artice? The only guideline I know of is Featured article criteria, and it says the opposite: that "consistent" referencing should be used, which seems the opposite of some sfn, some long-style.
 * Either way, if you'd like, I can manually convert that reference for you. -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:35, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a nice offer. has done the peer review for the Madison article and might be able to explain better why there were requests for being consistent about citations and not to combine formats for Wikipedia articles nominated at FAC. From what I recall, there was a preference for changing everything over to sfn and to have no citations remaining in Harvard format, though Vana might be able to explain better. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:00, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The principle I have seen applied consistently is that sources of the same form should be cited the same way (ie books should all use the same format, news sources the same format, etc). You also need to ensure completeness and lack of redundancy; so when you're citing book sources that use multiple page ranges, you need to find a format that allows you to specify multiple page ranges without copying all the bibiographic information. sfn is the format I use for this, but there's alternatives. You could convert all refs to sfn, but the argument against that is 1) CITEVAR, and 2) for web sources, long citations are arguably preferable, as there's fewer clicks to and from the source. If you don't have a strong preference as to format, I would suggest you pick the most common shortened format currently in use, and switch all book sources to that, while sticking to long citations for everything else. I know of no gadget that will do this, but the syntax is actually very similar, so searching and copy-pasting isn't that bad. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! That makes sense, so I've converted all the inline cite books to sfn. -- Mikeblas (talk) 01:27, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That was really nicely done, and within 25 minutes I think. The article is mostly ready to be nominated for FAC at this time, and I'm wondering if you might be interested in co-nominating this article. I've done one or two successful FACs and it might be another feather in your cap at Wikipedia to do one of these. What do you think? ErnestKrause (talk) 14:15, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you like the changes. This morning, I've edited the article to consistently use sfn over harvnb, plus removed all the unlinked inline references. I can't imagine a way to make the referencing style more consistent, at this point. While I've never before been involved in an FA push, I'd be happy to help you nominate the article if you'd like. -- Mikeblas (talk) 13:22, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Nice going on those changes. I've gone forward with the nomination and added your name as co-nominator this morning; you can add your signature to the nomination at any time its convenient for you. Nikkimaria has also asked if it might be possible to look at some of the other formatting issues when writing to me she stated: "Make sure the image licensing is complete and supported by the information provided in the image description. For example, the tag currently on File:Battle_of_New_Orleans,_Jean_Hyacinthe_de_Laclotte.jpg states that "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States" - such a tag needs to be added. Another issue is File:Nat-bap-windows.png: the uploader may have taken the photo, but the artwork pictured is almost certainly not their own work." Possibly you can look at this and decide if those images can be adjusted or should be deleted from the article; there seem to be many images in the article which are ok in their current format. See you on the review page. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:47, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There's another version of the Battle of New Orleans image that is already marked as PD, so I've switched the article to use that one. I've not a clue about what to do for the window image. There are plenty of picutres of copyrighted art installations on wikipedia, so I'm not sure what copyright rules attach. (For example, see this image at Chartres: File:Chartres RosetteNord 121 DSC08241.jpg -- or the whole stained-glass article.) I'm not sure how that would be resolved, even if a legitimate concern. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:22, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * User:Display appears to be making a dispute about your citation upgrade edits on the Madison FAC review page. Could you look at this? ErnestKrause (talk) 18:39, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I've just a done a few edits to add links for author names in their references. I'm probably not going to contribute much more, since I find the review process overly contentious. It's just not any fun. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2022 (UTC)


 * It seems like you made good progress with edits from on the Madison article yesterday and I think its worth mentioning the main FAC pillars. These pillars require that the article to go through a Sources check and have someone sign up as Supporting the Sources; that's what I thought you would be best at accomplishing. As a matter of fact, if you could invite some editor that you feel is competent to do the source review for the article, then you could interact with that editor to get their Support. The editor currently causing the problems at the FAC talk page (User:Display) appears to be upset about a page block made against him by  and is taking it rather badly; that should not reflect on your doing a good effort and possibly inviting an experienced editor like Girth who could perhaps do the Source review for the Madison article. ErnestKrause (talk) 17:56, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * You're right, I could contribute more and I shouldn't let people like that reflect on me. But just now, I don't have that much grit. I'm sure you'll find people who are able to help you out and presevere though the adversity. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:52, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Dismissal (cricket)
Hello. I have thanked you for fixing this error, but I was surprised you thought it was something I might have done because it is unusual and seems to have been deliberate. My errors tend to be missing words and tags which I usually spot myself. In the interests of accuracy, I checked the article's history and have found that the offending edit was this one by an IP over a year ago. No one else had spotted it until you did today. BcJvs &#124;  talk  UTC 16:07, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi! For sure, there was some pre-existing problem here. caused the error to be visible because the extra text was previously ignored. Your change added it to the actual reference name, which changed that reference name and added the article to Category:Pages with broken reference names. I monitor that category, and that's where I noticed it.  today which seems to have reintroduced the error, so maybe some tool that you're using is making a change you don't expect. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:27, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello again. Sorry, the second one was me. I had the previous version up and added the Cn tag to that. We'll get there in the end. Thanks again. BcJvs  &#124;  talk  UTC 16:37, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
 * No worries at all. That happens to me all the time, too! -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:11, 15 November 2022 (UTC)