User talk:Paulscrawl/Archive 1

Dispersit
I strenuously object to deletion of a long morning's work without any discussion on my talk page or article discussion page and am appealing - if you paid any attention to the linked to Deepwater Horizon oil spill you would clearly see the context, as this alternative dispersant has been prominently featured in Congressional hearings. I was about to add Toxicity and Effectiveness sections, to match Corexit structure. Please restore the article at once. Thank you. Paulscrawl (talk) 19:28, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

13:15, 21 May 2010 JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "Dispersit" ‎ (A1: Not enough context to identify article's subject)


 * That's what speedy deletion does, I'm afraid. The article did not establish why the product is significant - we don't have a article on the fire suppressants used in fighting a specific large fire, after all. I don't mind copying it to your user space so you can make something better of it if you like. Guy (Help!) 19:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It should have been labeled stub, not summarily deleted. Take a look at it on my talk page and tell me that it didn't establish context. Paulscrawl (talk) 20:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It could use some work, but it's definitely not Speedy Deletion criteria. Silver  seren C 20:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm just the janitor. I did not look a lot further than $GENERICPRODUCT plus $LINKTOBIGNEWSSTORY, which does not make a whole lot of difference IMO. Guy (Help!) 21:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)




 * 1) It is not a generic product, as laboriously cited US patent makes plain.
 * 2) While it is linked to a big news story, it is unique in being only EPA-reviewed dispersant rated as 100% effective against Louisiana crude oil, in addition to its favorable toxicity rating compared to industry-dominant Corexit, again cited in news story and EPA source. http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/content/ncp/tox_tables.htm#dispersants

May I restore, or would you prefer to do so that I may avoid unwelcome Wiki war? Thank you Paulscrawl (talk) 21:22, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The "references" are mainly directory entries, not non-trivial sources primarily about the product. I pointed that out a minute or two back on your talk. "X is unique, raf. Patent for X" is also not helpful.
 * Incidentally:
 * v. Dispersit, dedit pauperibus.
 * r. Iustitia eius manet in saeculum saeculi.
 * Just saying. Guy (Help!) 21:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

'''
 * Right: see the Latin Vulgate, Luke 1:51, for another example: fecit potentiam in brachio suo dispersit superbos mente cordis sui -- "He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts" RSV.   Meanwhile, I added credible third-party source to lede and further enhanced refs. Reposted: Dispersit -- Thanks Paulscrawl (talk) 23:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)'''

Too good to pass up
"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced." -- President Barack Obama, April 2, 2010

True, but when they do ... Paulscrawl (talk) 16:33, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

AI@50
Hi, I was very surprised to see AI@50 deleted with nothing on my Talk page. I've been adding references to it as presented papers come online for four years now. The reason was "Nominated for seven days with no objection: Concern was: Non-notable conference)". It is indeed a notable conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of artificial intelligence in the presence of several of its founders, with dozens of DARPA funded presenters assessing the past and the future prospects of AI. Importantly, I've found a couple of highly authoritative references to the conference that falsify that reason and if you will kindly restore the article I will add them at once. See my my sandbox for details. Thanks! Paulscrawl (talk) 06:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Atama#AI.4050

Tried again:

Please restore deleted article so I may quickly add two needed academic references to establish notability of this important conference, cited in journal & currently leading history of the field. No response yet from another editor. Please see my Talk for details and link to my sandbox, with my rationale & fixes ready to plug in pronto. Thanks! Paulscrawl (talk) 17:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cgingold#AI.4050


 * Hi, I was just taking a quick look on my way out the door and saw your note, so I only have time for a very quick reply. I will get back to you later in more detail, but for now just try to relax (I know, easy for me to say). It is routine to at the very least get a deleted article restored to your sandbox, so don't worry about that - just request from any admin. Okay, gotta go - sorry! Cgingold (talk) 21:21, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fine, I'll try to relax. Please do it, so I can resume ASAP wikifying at least three times the work on Deepwater Horizon Investigations you may see in my sandbox.  Thanks.  Paulscrawl (talk) 23:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I just found time for a quick look at the deletion log for the article. Since it was Prodded, your first move is very simple: Requests for undeletion. You might want to look over some of the other cases before you submit your request - and do mention that you weren't noticed about the Prod. My guess is that you'll be able to get it restored. Cgingold (talk) 14:44, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey, wha'd I tell ya?! Cgingold (talk) 08:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I was on an unintended Wikibreak when you left a message about the deletion of this article, sorry about that. I see it has been restored already, which is good. At the time I deleted the page, the proposed deletion period had expired with nobody objecting to the article's deletion, and I do recall doing a quick search for independent sources to establish notability of the conference (which weren't present in the article at the time) and couldn't do so. Expired prods are generally a delete-on-sight thing but I try to do a little homework before any deletion and couldn't see a reason to not delete the article then. I'm actually a bit of a fan of Kurzweil, I've read The Age of Spiritual Machines and some of his other writings, so if anything I'm a bit biased toward the article subject, but procedurally I saw no reason not to delete. I'm glad you've improved the article since it was restored, well done and good luck on it in the future.

Oh, by the way, I added an oldprodfull template to the talk page, this lets future editors know that the article has already been through the proposed deletion process once and is no longer eligible for deletion without a proper discussion or other reason. Thank you. --  At am a  頭 00:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, a similar template exists for the AfD process. I agree that the template is a bit terse, for example the template for an article that survived AfD states that the article survived a deletion discussion, which is more obviously a positive thing. The proposed deletion template is meant to imply that since the article was proposed for deletion, yet the article still exists, then someone objected to the deletion. Any article that was proposed for deletion in the past cannot be deleted that same way in the future, and any administrator performing such deletions should definitely be aware of that rule (if they aren't, they shouldn't be doing article deletions), but it's easy to miss previous proposed deletions in the article history, especially if they aren't accompanied by proper edit summaries. (Yet another reason why proper edit summaries are important.) The template on the talk page is meant to be an unambiguous reminder to future administrators and editors that you can't propose it for deletion again, and placing such a template is standard procedure.


 * Thanks for the tip on the book, I think I'll have to look for it sometime soon! --  At am a  頭 20:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Nokomis 3
Hi! Article with no unrelated references and ambiguous title needs work to avoid nomination for speedy deletion for lack of Notability. I've been through that. I see you are working on it. See article discussion page for specific suggestions. Happy to help: if desired, use my Talk page; see archive for how I fixed one such. Would love to link to it when repaired. Regards. Paulscrawl (talk) 00:57, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Clarabearasarah#Nokomis_3

Reference cite templates vs inline refs without templates
Hi, Tom. I agree with you that editors new and old, but esp. new editors, can certainly use the help of citation templates Wikipedia_talk:Referencing_for_beginners_with_citation_templates. I'm not so new but I use cite news and cite web templates all the time for consistency and am a recent convert to Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0 (cf. your suggestion on the sadly neglected Areas_for_Reform] article, "Pop-up form enabling easy input of reference info"). A well-formatted reference has a longer lifetime, in my experience. I also think the metadata, or tagged fields, preserved by use of cite templates can be very usefully extracted by other tools -- the awesome [Webchecklinks], for example, or a tool to intelligently export such field-tagged Wikipedia reference data to the proper fields in Zotero's citation manager (still looking for that holy grail).

An established editor of Deepwater Horizon oil spill is considering going to inline citation only for load speed. I think the loss to/of new editors, as well as useful reference metadata, would outweigh the advantages, but would like some hard data. I was intrigued with your cited experiment: "my sandbox page with single lines of text, with 1000 references. First, I did it with the template method. Second, I did it with the non-template method. Then I compared how long each page loaded. With the template method, it took 3 to 4 seconds to load. With the non-template method, it was about 3 seconds to load, maybe a TAD quicker. But what I noticed was this: the template page had 345K bytes; the non-template page had 245K bytes" Do those pages still exist, or can you easily retrieve them? If not, I can recreate them, I suppose. Thanks, I resonate with your POV expressed on both pages cited above. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 15:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comment. Thanks for letting me know about the toolbar. I've become used to a method of cut-and-paste so I'm fairly adept with my current method using a text processor, so I don't know if I'll begin using the toolbar. But if you feel the toolbar will speed things up for most users, perhaps consider putting a link to the toolbar article on the "Wikipedia:Citation Templates etc" articles?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I used to be a heavy contributor here, but now, my contributions will be minimal, perhaps a line here, or a reference there, on non-controversial subjects; I'm working on other projects. I don't know which direction the people in control here at WP want to go in, in terms of reference styles. If the community likes citation templates, or non-template methods, then I'll use whatever becomes accepted. I don't know how important the issue of referencing formats is, or whether factors like "load time" or "page length" are important. But my experiment from a while back suggested to me that the load times for template vs non-template were not substantially different, but that the non-template method used less room in terms of byte size.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:18, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for response. Citation templates are definitely the way to go for 4 reasons I cited at at link below. For further efficiencies with copy and paste (short of ultimate efficiencies and customizations possible with   Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0, but with zero install) check out Citation generator.


 * I can well understand scaling back your commitment to non-controversial articles: meta-talk on developing articles takes too much time and causes needless frustration.


 * As to load time with or without cite templates, it appears cite templates are cached on save, so should not affect load time for readers. From Talk:Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill:


 * The citation templates only cause the article to load slowly when you are editing and saving the article. This means that for most readers, the article does not load slowly. Gary King (talk) 16:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't all templates get parsed at page render time? Are citation templates an exception? Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Pages are cached. After submitting an edit, you essentially recreate that cache since you are redirected back to the page. Therefore, templates should only slow down the page rendering time for the person who edits the page. Gary King (talk) 17:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll try to work these recent discoveries (for me, at least) into appropriate article(s) for new or old editors not afraid to learn a new thing or two.


 * I strongly encourage your continued participation in Wikipedia -- your voice and veteran's empathic insight into the new editors' experience is sorely needed here. Let me know anytime if and where I can add my voice to yours. Regards, Paulscrawl (talk) 19:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Are all those Citation Templates to blame...
...for the unbelievably long time it takes to load the article??

This likely connection was just pointed out in an edit summary by User:SlimVirgin. I rarely use a template when I create a citation, so I hadn't given it any thought - but it does make sense. If this is in fact what is responsible for the appallingly long load time, then I think we need to give serious consideration to converting all of the templates back to standard inline citation format. Cgingold (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The references section currently accounts for 277K of the generated HTML, out of a total of 459K. That's 60% and over 1K per reference.  So yes there is a cost.  But the other info in citation templates is valuable.  Thundermaker (talk) 15:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, without templates there would be chaos! Also, the article loads ok on my computer...  TastyCakes (talk) 15:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The citation templates only cause the article to load slowly when you are editing and saving the article. This means that for most readers, the article does not load slowly. Gary King  ( talk ) 16:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't all templates get parsed at page render time? Are citation templates an exception? Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Pages are cached. After submitting an edit, you essentially recreate that cache since you are redirected back to the page. Therefore, templates should only slow down the page rendering time for the person who edits the page. Gary King  ( talk ) 17:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There are better ways to render a leaner, faster page: split & summarize. References are absolutely key to making lasting contributions and citation templates serve several useful functions well worth their marginal cost: 1) friendliness, 2) uniformity, 3) maintainability, and 4) re-usability of captured metadata.


 * 1) Editors new and old, but esp. new editors, can certainly use the help of citation templates: Citation generator makes it easy. I'm not so new but I use cite news and cite web templates all the time for consistency and (usually ;) getting it right the first time.  I am a recent convert to the user-friendly RefToolbar 2.0, which adds these templates to my edit box for super ease of use. Inline ref style creates instant headaches for new editors and are very often re-formatted, if not deleted, by subsequent editors, a waste of time and brainpower all around. Refs are a bar of entry to Wikipedia -- let's lower the bar for humans and raise it for computers.
 * 2) A well-formatted and complete reference has a longer lifetime, in my experience: nothing could be more discouraging to a new or less experienced editor than to see a series of their edits deleted for improper or missing reference.  This is quite a common experience.  Formatting inline references is indeed "chaotic" with no consensus on style possible in a multinational, multi-disciplinary world -- let citation templates and related tools' defaults and overrides help automate a tedious job that computers do best.
 * 3) I also think the metadata, or tagged fields, preserved by use of cite templates can be very usefully extracted by other tools helpful in maintaining references -- the awesome Webchecklinks tool, for example, uses tagged fields to help identify, search, and replace broken or missing links and other reference data, which sure beats the alternative of free-form Googling -- or simply deleting both cite and referring sentence.
 * 4) A soon-to-be announced tool to intelligently export such field-tagged Wikipedia reference metadata to the corresponding fields in Zotero's citation manager will leverage such well-formatted Wikipedia references many fold, allowing conversion to any of hundreds of standard scholarly citation formats. No such tool can possibly be designed for mapping freeform reference text to discrete fields.


 * Finally, I seriously doubt if replacing a few hundred citation templates with a few hundred inline citations would trim the load speed noticeably. This is an empirical question, easily tested in two sandbox articles, with a cleared cache, one with, say, 300 citation templates and one with the same realistic number of inline refs. Judicious splitting of article can do more, at far less cost to editors' contributions, reference display, maintenance, and re-use. Paulscrawl (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ooh, first I've heard of the ref toolbar, it seems great. Thanks for pointing it out.  TastyCakes (talk) 18:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

You are good, my friend...
Damn good. Now don't go getting a big head just because I said that :D MichaelWestbrook (talk) 19:32, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Paul, Paul, he's our man! If he can't do it, Michael can!!! (Old sports cheer from highschool)  Opps sorry guys, getting a little carried away here...  But you are both very good and Wikipedia needs people like you.  Paul I left a reply for you on my talk page re refs. Gandydancer (talk) 13:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Gandy, you are now Princess Leia Organa... and Paul, you are now Han Solo in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill editing universe... Me, I am Luke. May the blowout preventer be with both of you, my friends. :D MichaelWestbrook (talk) 12:21, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Oil spill prevention and response article
Awesome outline in your sandbox!! Now, we just need to squeeze it all into one article. I've written a section on the blowout preventer in User:Macquigg/Sandbox/Offshore_oil_spill_prevention, and also some suggestions for improving the existing Blowout article at User:Macquigg/Sandbox/Blowout_preventer. I think this should take the place of the section you have titled "Shear ram", since that topic is included in "blowout preventer". What I've tried to do is put here just the parts that tie in with your larger scope, and move to the Blowout preventer article anything else that will be of general interest there.

The part i'm suggesting for this article zooms in pretty quickly on the critical issue of BOP reliability, and human-factors failure. We could add one more paragraph to make the human factor clear, but that is where we have to be careful not to editorialize. Yes it was a technical failure, but one so simple that the technical explanation alone is not satisfactory. The technical problem was reported clearly in 2002, and hammered again in 2004. The deeper cause of the failure relates to lots of human and even political factors - the tendency to forget what can happen, when nothing really bad has happened in decades, the tendency to overshoot when making a political change from too much regulation to not enough, I could go on.

I guess we should wait for the verdict on this article before continuing our edits. --Dave (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI
I was born and raised in New Orleans. My family... dad, uncles, etc., are fishermen. FYI. MichaelWestbrook (talk) 02:30, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer
Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Considerations of using explosives
I've answered you here. Fabius byle (talk) 11:47, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer
Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

For the guideline on reviewing, see Reviewing. Being granted reviewer rights doesn't change how you can edit articles even with pending changes. The general help page on pending changes can be found here, and the general policy for the trial can be found here.

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Investigations: US Coast Guard/MMS Joint Investigation & summary edits
After massive and wildly premature "summary style" edits, I am rapidly losing interest in updating this article with the emerging facts from the Joint Investigation. I don't need lectures on Wikipedia style, I need fellow editors to discuss such cleaver-sized cuts, not scalpel-sized copy edits, here, and beforehand.

This is not yet history, this is news, like it or not. This article will be newsy for awhile yet. It will not resemble an article on WWI battles for a long time. Telling quotes and contextual explanation of technical terms used in testimony are highly appropriate at this time, if Wikipedia as a source for this ever-expanding news story is to be relevant. I suggest a sub-section for US Coast Guard/MMS Joint Investigation, which I can then flesh out as I have attempted to do, eventually to split into its own article, if need be. This is exactly what we see with the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which has a separate article for the Rogers Commission Report.

Don't kill history with premature summary edits.

Paulscrawl (talk) 14:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Re "summary style" edits, I strongly agree. Twice I have added quotes from lawmakers from the testimony going on in congressional hearings and they have been deleted. At present there is no mention in the article that congress has even been hearing testimony - perhaps because it has come down to the general public in the form of quotes from angry congressional representatives. I am not sure why some editors are so reluctant to use quotes and I hope that is because they fear that they sound tabloid-like and not because they have been so harsh of BP. Gandydancer (talk) 15:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just because another editor removed something doesn't mean you should necessarily give up on it and say to yourself, "Oh, well - I guess that's settled then." You are free to restore deleted passages if you feel that you can make a good case for them. And any editor who deletes passages should likewise be able to make a good case for doing so. When necessary, issues are brought to the Talk Page for discussion, and to see what other editors think. Cgingold (talk) 20:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)



I don't doubt their good intentions or neutral point of view; I believe these summary style deletions are the results of their justifiable concern with the article size (see so-named Discussion section above) and Wikipedia's encyclopedic summary style. I've read it, I get it. But splitting articles is the way to address the former concern (let's start with Atlantis Oil Field safety practices and the explosion sections, and make provision via sub-sections for sub articles on the several independent investigations). Time will take care of the latter, when historical perspective is called for. Not yet: we are still living this news; it is not yet history, alas.

Today, it is all news and newsworthy quotes are apropos. There are many Wikipedia articles concerned with current events that will, in this very now, appropriately have telling, pithy, pertinent and even damning quotes which may eventually, with the hindsight of history, be deleted for summary style. Then again, good writers and readers and editors might agree that it is wise to retain or even highlight some quotes, as in the article linked above or to your right, for their historic interest and pithy summary. That's right, quotes themselves can be a summative assessment! At present, deleting really apt quotes would be premature here. This is like the Watergate hearings -- history in the making. Some quotes matter mightily. How about this one?

Paulscrawl (talk) 16:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. -- I could work on a suitably detailed draft in my user space, if preferred, before creating a separate article for U.S. Coast Guard / Mineral Management Service Joint Investigation, summarized and linked to from here. What I can't do is waste my time and yours. Paulscrawl (talk) 19:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Regarding the issue of large, "summary style" edits: as far as I am aware, these are all the work of a single editor. Please take a look at the colloquy I entered into above. Cgingold (talk) 20:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As for splitting off articles, I believe it will undoubtedly make sense very soon to have a separate article dealing with all of the ongoing investigations, with separate sections for each. Cgingold (talk) 20:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * So I see. A good historian, and well respected, but this ain't yet history. I'll be working on my vision for this section -- and soon to be article -- this weekend, in my sandbox.  Input welcomed.   Paulscrawl (talk) 20:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm puzzling over these words: "A good historian, and well respected". Am I missing something? Cgingold (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps. Respect.  He has a few well-deserved Barnstars for some WWI articles.  Paulscrawl (talk) 03:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Agreed, one article for all investigations, with separate sections for each, more useful and manageable than separate articles for each.  Also avoids massive article-naming headaches. Paulscrawl (talk) 20:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * My use of summary style edits is largely out of necessity, due to the article size. At 120K+, this article is large and I have noticed rendering delays and difficultly in making quick edits due to loading time. I couldn't only imagine what a slower connection is dealing with. For an article that is getting this level of coverage, accessibility is key. The article doesn't always have room for lengthy quotes, where a sub-article might. I am entirely supportive of splitting, I think we are fast approaching that point. Given the number of investigations, inquires and commissions examining the matter, I suspect the Investigation section would be a good candidate for an article split.--Labattblueboy (talk) 21:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I did not doubt your intentions, only their effect on my contributions and the article's relevance. Good to know you entirely support splitting, and I can only hope you now entirely support discussing such major changes as section moves and your not-so well documented summary style edits on the aptly-named Discussion page before making such changes in the future, as this seems to have been an issue for you, one you have acknowledged and vowed to correct.  I mean this with all due respect to you as an experienced editor (I've only been posting under my Username since ~2001): I especially appreciate your energy and diligence in removing unneeded external links.


 * May I suggest we leave your summaries of investigations in place  while I work on what I consider to be needed details -- human names and technical terms -- for Deepwater Horizons oil spill Investigations sub-article this weekend? In the meantime, I leave it to more experienced editors such as yourself and esp. Cgingold to prune sections immediately prunable from an article entitled Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- 1) the explosion itself, 2) U.S. and Canadian offshore drilling policy, & 3)  Atlantis Oil Field safety practices

. One sentence summary and link should do it for latter two.


 * As Cgingold acknowledged in previous discussion just cited, summary edits are a difficult and a thankless task. Thank you, but please slow down.  They are certainly needed here, but not until we have the infrastructure in place to preserve the details that matter.  We learned a lot of new personal names of consequence and weird uses of familiar words (to me at least, thank God ;) like deep throat, as well as unfamiliar words from the Watergate hearings.  We will certainly learn more personal names and technical terms in the next few days and months ahead.  This is not an attack on a valuable editor, only a plea for collaboration, so that I, too,  may become a more valuable editor.  Thank you.   Paulscrawl (talk) 23:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks ...
... for the Aussie poster. I now wear it with pride. Cheers. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:27, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

This is a new feeling
Cited in Wikipedia. OMG. :) The Interior  (Talk) 03:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Prehistoric warfare
Thanks for the improvements! Basically all my archaeological reading is restricted to heritage-designated sites here in the USA (especially in the Midwest region), and I don't have a theoretical background at all; I wouldn't have had a clue where to look for general resources on a broad topic such as prehistoric warfare. That's why I just gave counterexamples of individual sites; they're the only way that I knew to disprove the broad statements that were being given. Nyttend (talk) 02:04, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Prehistoric warfare
Hi. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithic 1Halpo1 (talk) 07:31, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!
Thank you for the extensive reference material you added to the Kenneth Craik article. I never thought there would be that much available on him so it was a very welcome surprise to see it there. Your edits are a great example of what makes Wikipedia work so well, so thanks again! Spalding (talk) 13:56, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Zotero
Hello.

I've received a wiki newsletter about Zotero that I thought you should read. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2016-February/084840.html --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 23:28, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

You've got mail!
Please introduce yourself to the other GLAM Boot Camp attendees tonight! Dominic·t 19:20, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject New Orleans
Hello Paul, we met at GLAM Boot Camp a few weeks ago. I believe you brought up WikiProject New Orleans and your interest in revitalizing it. Would you still be interested in taking on that project? If so, let me know if there is anything in particular you would be interested in. WikiProject X can offer, in addition to the new WikiProject interface, tools to help with assessing articles and recommending articles in need of improvement. Let me know what you would be interested in, and I can prepare a draft and we can recommend it to the current participants at WikiProject New Orleans for adoption. Harej (talk) 21:53, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you
I used to contribute a lot more to the RefDesks. Some of the behaviour of some of the regulars put me off. Now I've come back to it, a little. One thing hasn't changed: how rarely the querents return to say thank you, that was exactly what I needed to know. So your kind words re the Quran translations gave me heart. These little courtesies go a long way. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, an open access peer reviewed journal with no charges, invites you to participate
Hi

Did you know about Wikiversity Journal of Medicine? It is an open access, peer reviewed medical journal, with no publication charges. We welcome you to have a look. Feel free to participate.

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 D ip ta ns hu Talk 10:39, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Quack at Teahouse
Thanks for a good laugh. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:45, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

How did you find an artist in 'British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers' marks'?
You swiftly found the painter John James Wilson in this resource for me on May 2. It was much appreciated. Could you tell me the method used as I would like to use it to locate other painters? BFP1BFP1 (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi, I answered on your Talk page at How to find sources; some tips and links. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 17:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #315
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week. 
 * Events
 * Past: Wikidata IRC office hour, May 29th
 * Past: slides of "Wikidata in GLAM, how and why" by Jason Evans during EuropeanaTech conference
 * Figsharefest: "(Personal) use-cases for Figshare in a Wikidata narrative", June 4th, Brussels (slides)


 * Press, articles, blog posts
 * Using the Hive Mind: WikiData Integration and Artist Pages on the blog of the National Galleries of Scotland
 * Tools for Wikipedians: Keeping track of what’s going on on Wikidata from Wikipedia by Jens Ohlig (also available in German)
 * Wikidata and Scholia as a hub linking chemical knowledge poster presented at 11th International Conference on Chemical Structures (PDF)
 * A complete video walkthrough to learn how to use OpenRefine: how to match, clean up and import data into Wikidata
 * Lexicographical data: number of existing lemmas per language


 * Other Noteworthy Stuff
 * You can now search for values of a statement in Special:Search (P31, external-ids and strings)
 * You can now use global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki.
 * Country geoshape data have been added to Commons and linked to the corresponding Wikidata items. These geoshapes can be used to visualise query results e.g. [https://query.wikidata.org/embed.html#%23defaultView%3AMap%7B%22hide%22%3A%5B%22%3Fgeo%22%2C%20%22%3Flayer%22%5D%7D%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fgeo%20%3FxLabel%20%28SAMPLE%28%3Fx%29%20AS%20%3Fx%29%20%28MAX%28%3Fpopulation%29%20AS%20%3Fpopulation%29%20%28SAMPLE%28%3Flayer%29%20AS%20%3Flayer%29%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fx%20wdt%3AP31%2Fwdt%3AP279%2a%20wd%3AQ6256%20%3B%0A%20%20%23%20%20%20wdt%3AP30%20wd%3AQ46%20%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP3896%20%3Fgeo%20%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP1082%20%3Fpopulation.%0A%20%20BIND%28%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%20100000%2C%20%22%3C100%2C000%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%20500000%2C%20%22100%2C000-500%2C000%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%201000000%2C%20%22500%2C000-1M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%202000000%2C%20%221M-2M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%205000000%2C%20%222M-5M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%2010000000%2C%20%225M-10M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%2020000000%2C%20%2210M-20M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%2040000000%2C%20%2220M-40M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%2060000000%2C%20%2240M-60M%22%2C%20%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%2080000000%2C%20%2260M-80M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%20100000000%2C%20%2280M-100M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%20200000000%2C%20%22100M-200M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%20500000000%2C%20%22200M-500M%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3C%201000000000%2C%20%22500M-1B%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20IF%28%3Fpopulation%20%3E%201000000000%2C%20%221B%2B%22%2C%20%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20%22%22%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%29%0A%20%20%20%20AS%20%3Flayer%29.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D%0AGROUP%20BY%20%3Fgeo%20%3FxLabel%0AORDER%20BY%20%3Fpopulation%20%20 World map showing population of each country].
 * Concordances: mappings between Wikidata and other knowledge organization systems


 * Did you know?


 * Newest properties:
 * General datatypes: chromosome count, prime factor, pronunciation variety, compound of
 * External identifiers: ISO 3950 code, National Gallery of Armenia work ID, GONIAT author ID, Armenian National Academy of Sciences ID, Armenian Parliamentary ID, GONIAT paper ID, GONIAT place ID, GONIAT taxon ID, Spyur ID, Armenian Cinema ID, BMRB ID, ICSC ID, Tree of Life Web Project ID, NWSL player ID, Information Center for Israeli Art artwork ID, OlimpBase Women's Chess Olympiad player ID, Argentine biography deputy ID, B.R.A.H.M.S. ID, Carnegie Hall event ID, Carnegie Hall work ID, Chromosome numbers of the Flora of Germany database ID, D&B Hoovers company profile, Filmow ID, SpectraBase Compound ID, Cité de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris work ID, Artists in Canada record number, RollDaBeats artist ID, Songfacts song ID


 * New property proposals to review:
 * General datatypes: grammatical category, IAB code, title number, chữ Nôm, noun, gender inflection, winter view, of, alternative form, lexical category, spelling variant, hyphenation
 * External identifiers: myschool ID, IPTC subject code, Canal-U person ID, FilmTv.it movie ID, FilmTv.it TV series ID, FilmTv.it person ID, Corago ID, Les Enfoirés participant ID, Les Enfoirés song ID, iTunes App Store developer ID, NDOP taxon ID, BirdLife International ID, Relationship Science person ID, Czech Geomorphological Unit Code, Swedish Gravestone ID, OED Online ID, Dordrechts Museum, Finnish national bibliography corporate name ID, SJP Online ID, Contemporary Music Portal ID, Web umenia work ID, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales Work ID, Cdmc ID, Monarch Disease Ontology ID, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art ID, Saint Louis Art Museum ID, Strava ID of a professional sport person, StadiumDB identifier, Songfacts artist ID, World Stadium Database identifier, Douban Movie Celebrity ID, Firmenbuchnummer


 * Properties waiting to be used, created >3 months:
 * Program Component Score (P4826), deductions (in figure skating) (P4825), Swimrankings meet ID (P4827), Sailboatdata ID (P4833), World Sailing regatta ID (P4832), Landslagsdatabasen ID (P4830), Irish Rugby Football Union women's player ID (P4836), Wolfram Language entity code (P4839), Directory of Czech publishers ID (P4840), development of anatomical structure (P4843)
 * Query examples:
 * List of Danish female athletes (source)
 * Battles within 100km of Edinburgh (source)
 * [https://query.wikidata.org/#%23defaultView%3AGraph%0ASELECT%20%3Fchild%20%3FchildLabel%20%3Fparent%20%3FparentLabel%20%0AWITH%20%7B%0A%20%20SELECT%20%3Ffeature%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20VALUES%20%3Ffeature%20%7B%20%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1817208%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ2054517%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ102047%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ6581072%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929403%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ108709%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ324982%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ21470140%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ47088290%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929290%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ18012653%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ47088293%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ501405%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ4348304%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929049%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ623734%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51927507%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ110022%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ54152717%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1230649%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1233197%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ202142%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53608953%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ16527322%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53999547%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ131105%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ24577575%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53997851%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ156986%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ319822%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ192613%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ2105891%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ192997%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ324305%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ2898727%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ146078%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ694268%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ655020%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1775461%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929074%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ15737187%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929218%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ146786%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ179230%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1923028%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ953129%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ148465%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ47088292%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929154%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ21714344%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ52431955%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ10509119%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929131%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ5483481%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53609593%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ2888577%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ24133704%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ54176537%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929517%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ604984%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ2114906%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ332734%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ3150154%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ146233%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ282031%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1450795%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ474668%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ110786%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ14169499%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ499327%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ747019%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ145599%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1763348%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929369%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1182686%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ3910936%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ950170%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ22716%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51927539%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ838581%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ442485%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ47088295%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1994301%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53998049%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ394253%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ11078%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ576271%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ857325%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ185077%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ27918551%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1305037%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1562262%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ281954%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ53997857%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ682111%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1317831%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1392475%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ51929447%0A%20%20%20%20wd%3AQ1775415%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%7D%0A%7D%20AS%20%25features%0AWITH%20%7B%0A%20%20SELECT%20DISTINCT%20%28%3Ffeature%20AS%20%3Fchild%29%20%3Fparent%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20INCLUDE%20%25features%0A%20%20%20%20%3Ffeature%20wdt%3AP279%20%3Fparent%20.%0A%20%20%7D%0A%7D%20AS%20%25results1%0AWITH%20%7B%0A%20%20SELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fchild%20%3Fparent%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20INCLUDE%20%25features%0A%20%20%20%20%3Ffeature%20wdt%3AP279%20%3Fchild%20.%0A%20%20%20%20%3Fchild%20wdt%3AP279%20%3Fparent%20.%0A%20%20%7D%0A%7D%20AS%20%25results2%20%20%20%0AWHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%7B%20INCLUDE%20%25results1%20%7D%20UNION%20%7B%20INCLUDE%20%25results2%20%7D%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D Grammatical features graph] (source)
 * 10 items having the biggest number of sitelinks (source)
 * Writers and their signatures (source)
 * Newest WikiProjects: Eurovision
 * Newest database reports: verb categories

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
 * Development
 * The API respond for maxlag will in the future also include the dispach lag (T194950)
 * Add Elastic and CirrusSearch in the Wikibase Docker image (T192813)
 * Add OAuth extension to wikibase bundle container (TT192364)
 * Work on showing constraints in the QueryService (T194762)
 * Make the PropertySuggester use CirrusSearch (T195490)
 * Add integer constraint in the constraint checks (T167989)
 * Add “citation needed” constraint type (T195052)
 * Make Special:EntityData should handle form IDs (T192149)
 * Fix encoding problems for labels displayed in Lexemes (T195359)
 * Improve the text in the grammatical feature field (T193604)
 * Work on showing Lemma on Special:AllPages and other pages (T195382)
 * Work on better handling use of statements linking to Lexemes on client (T195615)
 * Fix a bug that breaks Lexeme when language or lexical category items don't have a label


 * Monthly Tasks
 * Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
 * Comment on property proposals: all open proposals
 * Suggested and open tasks!
 * Contribute to a Showcase item.
 * Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
 * Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
 * Help write the next summary!

Read the full report &middot; Unsubscribe &middot; Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 14:57, 4 June 2018 (UTC)