User talk:RexxS/Archive 27

Re RfC Infoboxes at Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven
(copied from Kraxler's talk page) Please don't edit-war. Your closure of the debate was so far off as to be ludicrous. Once your edit has been reverted, you should discuss the edit, not attempt to force a "fait accompli". --RexxS (talk) 19:14, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If you disagree with my closure, please take it to WP:AN, the appropriate place for RfC closure review. Please do not edit the closed thread. Kraxler (talk) 19:06, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It was a talk-page debate, not an RfC. You're edit-warring to close a debate impartially. I've requested a neutral admin examine the debate. --RexxS (talk) 19:16, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Re-opening the thread doesn't make any difference, the discussion was stale for weeks, and no infobox was added. There is no "fait accompli". Take it to AN for closure review. Kraxler (talk) 19:19, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll take it to AN myself. See you at Administrators' noticeboard. Kraxler (talk) 19:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * (copied from Kraxler's talk page) Yes I dispute your concept of the "status quo". When the debate started on 24 December 2014, the article had had a stable infobox since the previous month. Show me the policy that gives any priority to the version of an article that has existed the longest. --RexxS (talk) 21:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Status quo is not "my" concept. It is a very well defined concept with an article here. Please consult the article before you continue to discuss it. The phrase means in Latin "that what exists now". At the time of my closure there was no infobox. Period. You are confusing status quo with "stable version", they are two different things. The stable version is the one that remained stable for more than 6 years, not the one created by one user without discussion, as required by WP:INFOBOXUSE: "Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article." Please give me a link to a discussion before the addition of the infobox. The guideline does not say "whether to exclude an added infobox", it says "whether to include". Do you dispute the guideline? See also WP:NOCONSENSUS: "In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." That seems clear to me. The infobox was boldly added and thus proposed to remain, was questioned, and the lack of consensus required the box to be removed until such consensus might be established. That was done, and remains the status quo. Just following the guidelines, so far. I also emphasize again that I'm not biased for or against infoboxes on principle. I have created articles with infoboxes and articles without infoboxes. Here, I just wanted to be helpful, closing a discussion, since I'm working on the Request for closures backlog. Nobody yet questioned any of my closures in other fields. (Please answer here, to keep discussion together, I'll watchlist it) Kraxler (talk) 11:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * (watching). We can't expect editors to know about a certain arbcom guideline. When an infobox is added in good faith by an editor who may not even know of some conflict, we need to find a better way to react. The infobox stayed for a while without being questioned, that would tell me that it was no longer a bold edit, to be reverted and discussed, but a new status quo, no? Compare Handel. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:04, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * We don't expect everybody to know all the guidelines, that's what discussion is for. During discussions guidelines are pointed out, and should then be considered by the debaters. The infobox stayed for 26 days, then it was questioned, and it was removed two days later. At the time, for 28 day, the Status quo was "with an infobox", that's correct. But it has not proved to have support to become a "stable version". I can't say why, I've never edited that article, never. "Compare Handel" is an argument discouraged at WP:OTHERSTUFF. Certainly there are millions of articles with infoboxes, but millions without them too. Many composers have infoboxes, apparently not so many classic composers though. The pertaining WikiProject discourages the addition of infoboxes, but can not prohibit them, that's certain. The infobox at Handel is the status quo, and has been stable for some time, so it must not be removed until consensus is established to remove it. Unfortunately, under the existing guidelines, every single article is a case apart. That causes an enormous waste of time, but I'll leave it to other people to waste their time, in the future. Kraxler (talk) 12:37, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree completely with "waste of time" which has been my first reply for the last attempts of arbitration enforcement and "clarification". I hope this my third comment in the matter doesn't cause another round. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:49, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. If somebody yells, I'll defend you. Actually, I created a few articles on composers, mostly at a time when infoboxes were not heard of yet, Gialdino Gialdini, Florimond Van Duyse and Julius Bechgaard got a box added later, and I have no objections. I also never edit-warred in my wiki-life. Have a nice week-end, Gerda. By the way, as a child I climbed up many times here: 24 Bachdenkmal Eisenach.jpg Kraxler (talk) 13:05, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Raufgekraxelt? So we have several things in common. I also never edit-warred. I also don't care if Beethoven has an infobox or not. (I suggested one for him during the workshop phase of the infoboxes case back in 2013, which links to his list of works, sadly missing in the lead, - but I never proposed it on the talk.) I get active when I see good faith edits under attack. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:43, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Ganz genau! Raufgekraxelt! Kraxler (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There is, of course, no requirement for "discussion before the addition of the infobox". Consensus is often effected by bold edits. Furthermore, there is not one "pertaining" project for the article in question, but (at least) six. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Being bold is ok with me, Andy, it's supported by a guideline, WP:BOLD, and it says "Don't get upset if your bold edits get reverted." As I said, I never edited the article, and I wouldn't dare to remove the infobox at Handel. Fact is that somebody took exception, and removed it, and set the whole infobox-timesink-proceedings in motion. A discussion before the addition, reaching consensus, would have prevented that. Kraxler (talk) 13:30, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I was responding to your apparently rhetorical request: "Please give me a link to a discussion before the addition of the infobox.". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * "Most of the !voters ... voted support or oppose because they always appear at any infobox discussion and vote there according to their preferences, without considering the actual article." You were practically begging to be reverted. Also, with regard to, "The internet has already several billions of bits of info on Beethoven, I severely doubt that any microformats are necessary here.", please see WP:SUPERVOTE. Alakzi (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, Alakzi, I appreciate your willingness to debate the actual issue. It is within the remit of the closer to weigh the arguments. One !voter said "The infobox emits microformats." We all know that. But WP:INFOBOXUSE says "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article" Since all infoboxes emit microformats, it follows that emitting microformats is neither required nor prohibited. Could we agree on that? To satisfy the second part of the guideline, it would be necessary to discuss the merits of microformats emitted from the Beethoven article. Nobody said anything about it. For further discussion, if you're interested, I suggest to continue on your or my talk page. Kraxler (talk) 11:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

That's missing the point. Why do you think it might be part of your job to rule on the appropriateness of metadata? If you've got an opinion on microformats, you should participate in the discussion and leave the closure to somebody else. Alakzi (talk) 12:31, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, it's water under the bridge now, discussion is open again, more !votes are coming, and we'll see what comes of it. I'll keep your criticism in mind for future closures (not infobox-related, though). Kraxler (talk) 13:05, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Further to Alakzi's good point, your claim "since all infoboxes emit microformats, it follows that emitting microformats is neither required nor prohibited" is logically flawed: there are other templates than infoboxes which emit microformats. (Incidentally, not all infoboxes do.) What was actually said was " (1) Persondata does not provide the microformats that an infobox does; (2) Infoboxes are standardised to a set of label-value pairs and are exceptionally good at providing the information for a database - in fact Wikidata has been mainly constructed by bots reading the data from infoboxes", and it was said in response the the tired canard, refuted many times previously, that "t infoboxes are not standardized at all - they are not designed as database entry forms and are generally not at all good in that role, if only because of a complete lack of standard vocabularies". I also note that you withdrew the AN case mentioned above, in the face of unanimous condemnation of your actions.) Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You should add a detailed explanation of the microformat question at the infobox discussion. Withdrawal is a unilateral decision, by definition, and closure of the AN thread was expressly asked for by admin Spartaz. Besides, it doesn't make much sense to have a decision reviewed by the voters, a review should be conducted by uninvolved users, or is that notion also logically flawed? Kraxler (talk) 13:30, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The majority of those conedming your biased closure - including me - had not commented in the discususion. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not a question of numbers, but a question of principle. I think the count was 2 who had voted, 2 who had not voted and 1 who did not condemn (Guy) but made a statement of procedure which I accepted. But let's drop the rhetorics. You better comment at the actual infobox discussion, perhaps you can make an argument which is accepted by the admin-closer-to-come of the discussion. This discussion will lead nowhere, and you should not cast any aspersions, for well-known reasons. I suggest you tread lightly, and focus on what really matters. Please note that I did not and I shall not vote either way on Beethoven's infobox. It's up to you. And now I bow out of this discussion. Please do not expect me to post anymore here. Kraxler (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The argument (factual, not rhetorical) is that your closure was partisan and inappropriate; and it has already been accepted by everyone who has commented - except, it seems, you. I'm not impressed by your lightly-veiled threats. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:08, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Ping
Hi RexxS,

I wonder if you have seen this: Village pump (proposals)  I've looked at it, and it sounds okay to me, but I was thinking that you might understand it than I do (based on your comments about authority control at WPMED). Anyway, I hope that this is interesting instead of spam. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for thinking of me, WAID. I have been following that proposal for a while, but I don't have any strong feelings on the matter. Persondata is now past its sell-by date and is no longer adding anything of value to articles, so I wouldn't object to seeing it removed. But if there are some people who are still making use of it, then there's no rush to get of it just yet, as it does no harm. --RexxS (talk) 16:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

reflist
Rex, it's annoying. You know the way footnotes on talkpages will travel downwards and be increasingly irrelevant and distracting at the bottom of the page? To move them up to the post they were connected with on User talk:AnnalesSchool, I put a template under that post. So now they appear in the right position. Good. But they also still appear at the bottom of the page, being annoying! I don't understand it! And Darwinbish just laughs at me, she won't fix it! Bishonen &#124; talk 15:27, 20 May 2015 (UTC).
 * They appear at the bottom because they are repeated again in the following section; I've added a second Reflist-talk. Talk page stalker at your service. Alakzi (talk) 15:31, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The guy referred to them twice? What an odd duck. Thank you very much, kind talkpage stalker. Bishonen &#124; talk 15:59, 20 May 2015 (UTC).

Eurovision
Hi, I have nominated Måns win at Eurovision for a mention at ITN. Take a look. In the news/Candidates.--BabbaQ (talk) 08:27, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi BabbaQ. That looks like an excellent nomination, and you have lots of strong support now. I'm sorry I wasn't around to look sooner, but I've been at the Liverpool Wiki-meetup all day. Cheers,
 * ...and to prove it, here's RexxS performing at the Liverpool meet up.   Cassianto Talk   21:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
 * [[File:Wikimania 2014 - RexxS and Learn to edit Wikipedia session 3.jpg|thumb| Wikimania 2014 - RexxS and Learn to edit Wikipedia session 3 →
 * ...and to prove it, here's RexxS performing at the Liverpool meet up.   Cassianto Talk   21:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
 * [[File:Wikimania 2014 - RexxS and Learn to edit Wikipedia session 3.jpg|thumb| Wikimania 2014 - RexxS and Learn to edit Wikipedia session 3 →

"Is it a heater, is it an air vent....NO, it's an infobox!"  Cassianto Talk   23:22, 24 May 2015 (UTC)]]
 * ROFL, Cass! For comparison, here's one of my earlier performances - at Wikimania 2014. Have fun changing the caption. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
 * (watching:) my infoboxes show with rounded corners, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Lua
In Bot requests you wrote "We need not concern ourselves on Wikipedia with the vagaries of JSON conventions. 15 May 44 BC is stored on Wikidata as '-0044-03-15T00:00:00Z' - that's all we need to know. If I call from Julius Caesar I get 15 March 44 BCE . When I'm writing Lua modules I'll remember that the snak value uses -1 for 1 BC - it's convenient because I can use mw.language:formatDate with the negative value and just stick a 'BC' or 'BCE' on the end. That's all that is going to concern anybody wanting to use Wikidata in Wikipedia."

One caution with this idea is that dates, unless well-known, should be cited to a reliable source, and Wikidata is not a reliable source. But I'm more concerned with the idea of trying to use the functions you mention for dates in Wikipedia, since Wikipedia contains many Julian calendar dates. mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual says that " The format string and supported values for timestamp are identical to those for the #time parser function from Extension:ParserFunctions." mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions in turn states that "This parser function takes a date and/or time (in the Gregorian calendar) and formats it according to the syntax given." I would not use these functions except for times that are known to be computer timestamps, URL access dates, or similar events that are known to have occurred in or after 1924. Jc3s5h (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, part of the problem we're all struggling with is that editors are creating or changing claims in Wikidata without adding the reference that supports them. That will remain a problem with Wikidata for some time. Nevertheless, if a date appears in an infobox, I expect it be verifiable against another mention somewhere in the text (in much the same way as we treat information in the lead WP:LEADCITE). From that perspective, I don't expect a date fetched from Wikidata to be any less reliable than any other date quoted in an infobox.
 * Sadly JSON does not specify a format for dates, so developers are free to define their own standards for serialising dates, although I do think they have an obligation to make those standards clear to any users of their data. The developers of wikibase have at least eventually provided a library of functions that should insulate users from changes to the internal format of objects. (When I wrote Module:Wikidata, we didn't have those functions, so I originally had to extract date information by taking substrings of the returned timestamp. That fell over recently when the format changed, and so the returned string formatting was upgraded to use the currently supplied functions.)
 * I agree that mw.language:formatDate appears to rely on a definition which only supports Gregorian dates, but I'm unaware of any implicit difference in interpretation of ISO8601-like timestamps between the two calendar models. The function doesn't accept negative dates, but as far as I've been able to test, it copes with any allowed positive timestamp, producing a date string that accurately reflects the value in that timestamp, with the precision stored in the object. It is simple enough to read the calendarmodel value from the claim object, so we could return (Gregorian) or (Julian) or (Old Style), etc. for a date if required. I'm not sure what else might be required in handling Julian dates when retrieving them from Wikidata, or am I missing something? --RexxS (talk) 14:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The word "internal" needs to be used carefully with Wikidata. As I understand it, there is an internal date storage format which is not documented, subject to frequent change, and cannot be obtained by using the API. The official format for API query results is JSON (and the currently provided API query results does not match the documentation for negative years, or said another way, a round trip where one takes the JSON from an API query, interprets it according to ISO 8601 (ignoring the ISO 8601 Gregorian requirement) and edits the date using the Wikidata user interface will result in a date changed by one year. I believe the internal format can be obtained from dumps, but I haven't tried this. So it would be interesting to know what mechanism your module uses to extract the date from Wikidata.
 * As for the date formatting, since I'm not prepared to reverse-engineer the module at this time, I will suppose it acts like the #time magic word. I have put some test cases at User:Jc3s5h/sandbox. Notice that years < 100 are interpreted as 2nd or 3rd millennium years. Notice that whenever #time believes a year is a Gregorian common year, it transforms February 29 to March 1. So we can that if it is fed February 29, 1900, Julian, it will produce an erroneous result, March 1, 1900, which is neither the correct Julian date nor the correct Gregorian date. It does the same for February 29, 1500, even though the Gregorian calendar didn't exist then and whenever that date appears in Wikipedia or nearly any source, it is a Julian calendar date. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:01, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you may find you're misinformed about a couple of minor issues:
 * The internal storage format is documented. But not explicitly. See https://git.wikimedia.org/raw/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FWikibase/master/docs%2Fjson.wiki : "The internal format is what is used in MediaWiki's XML dumps and returned by Special:Export and the by some API modules that return raw revision text. The internal format is designed to be terse, and may frequently change. External tools should use the canonical JSON format whenever possible, and should not rely on the internal format." The XML dump shows that every single "time" that I've examined looks like this 2015-06-06T02:03:07Z.
 * When the API is called from Lua, it generally returns a Lua object, which may indeed correspond 1-to-1 with a JSON object, but it isn't JSON. Nor does JSON specify a date type, so there's no point in trying to look for an "official format". There isn't one. We have the format that the developers have decided to use. It uses strings that resemble ISO8601-style strings for the timestamp value, but nowhere does it claim to be ISO8601; and in fact, it isn't (as you've demonstrated).
 * We can see the format of the object returned to Lua by mw.wikibase.getEntityObject by calling a function in Module:Wikidata. If you paste  into the Augustus Caesar article, for example, when you preview, you can see that his date of death (P570) looks like this:
 * I think you may find you're misinformed about a couple of minor issues:
 * The internal storage format is documented. But not explicitly. See https://git.wikimedia.org/raw/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FWikibase/master/docs%2Fjson.wiki : "The internal format is what is used in MediaWiki's XML dumps and returned by Special:Export and the by some API modules that return raw revision text. The internal format is designed to be terse, and may frequently change. External tools should use the canonical JSON format whenever possible, and should not rely on the internal format." The XML dump shows that every single "time" that I've examined looks like this 2015-06-06T02:03:07Z.
 * When the API is called from Lua, it generally returns a Lua object, which may indeed correspond 1-to-1 with a JSON object, but it isn't JSON. Nor does JSON specify a date type, so there's no point in trying to look for an "official format". There isn't one. We have the format that the developers have decided to use. It uses strings that resemble ISO8601-style strings for the timestamp value, but nowhere does it claim to be ISO8601; and in fact, it isn't (as you've demonstrated).
 * We can see the format of the object returned to Lua by mw.wikibase.getEntityObject by calling a function in Module:Wikidata. If you paste  into the Augustus Caesar article, for example, when you preview, you can see that his date of death (P570) looks like this:

["P570"] = table#403 { table#404 { ["id"] = "Q1405$0C1CF3E7-8848-4E24-87AE-A8371146E378", ["mainsnak"] = table#405 { ["datatype"] = "time", ["datavalue"] = table#406 { ["type"] = "time", ["value"] = table#407 { ["after"] = 0, ["before"] = 0, ["calendarmodel"] = "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985786", ["precision"] = 11, ["time"] = "+0014-08-19T00:00:00Z", ["timezone"] = 0, },         },          ["property"] = "P570", ["snaktype"] = "value", },
 * You can see that the string at P570.mainsnak.datavalue.value.time is "+0014-08-19T00:00:00Z"; the calendarmodel is Q1985786; and the precision is 11. We can interpret that as the day 19 August 14 AD on the Proleptic Julian calendar. Sure enough, our article agrees, as does the Wikidata interface at Q1405. You can even bring up the edit interface there and see the current value "will be displayed as 19 August 14". The advanced adjustments show the precision is "day" and the Calendar is "Julian". So entering 19 August 14 into Wikidata would give us that result.
 * Now if I paste  into Augustus Caesar, I get 19 August 0014, so it seems - unlike the #time function - the Wikidata module doesn't encounter a problem with dates almost back to the year dot, although I ought to supress those leading zeros when I get a chance.   returns 19 August 14 as well.
 * The issues that are worrying you turn up when we look at Augustus' date of birth (P569). In Wikidata it says "23 September 63 BCE" and if we look back at the data dump for P569, we get something very similar to P570, but the value of P569.mainsnak.datavalue.value.time is "-0063-09-23T00:00:00Z" (precision and calendar are the same). That's not how ISO8601 would store it, but as long as I know that that the developers intended that string to represent that date, I have no problem in writing the Lua code to return "23 September 63 BCE" to Wikipedia (in fact I can just replace the '-' with '+', call mw.language:formatDate and append 'BCE' or 'BC', selectable by parameter). For what it's worth,  returns 23 September 63 BCE as expected. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Consider the case of John Penn ("the American"), born 29 February 1700 in Pennsylvania, which at the time was using the Julian calendar. His birth date ought to be recorded in Wikidata as that date, but due to the faulty user interface I was forced to record it as 11 March 1700 Gregorian. So if it were recorded properly in the database, how would your module render it? Jc3s5h (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, you can't store 29 February 1700 in Wikidata, so I can't actually use the module to fetch that date from Wikidata. However, I can demonstrate how module:Wikidata would use the mw.language formatDate function to render a timestamp by using a utility I've created in Module:Sandbox/RexxS/DateData. If I call, I get the first of March as expected:  - the function that returns formatted dates from the database would only be expected to cope with possible values - and of course "+1700-02-29T00:00:00" isn't one of them. I think it's a failing that Wikidata can't store 29 Feb (Julian) in century years, but that excludes 1 day every 100 years; the other 36523 days are unaffected. As for the Wikidata module, it seems to be able to cope with any date from 1 AD onwards that can be stored in the Wikidata database, so I still don't see why you would want to stop editors from using it if they wanted to incorporate Wikidata dates into Wikipedia infoboxes. --RexxS (talk) 00:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with "Unfortunately, you can't store 29 February 1700 in Wikidata." Here's a bug report indicating that it is possible to use the API to add dates that do not follow Gregorian rules (the edits vilified in the bug report don't follow Julian rules either). Also, a bug report exists for the inability to enter or display Julian dates through the user interface. When the bug is fixed, we can expect to see more February 29, XX00 dates in the database. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised that the API allows invalid dates to be written into the database; no end-user should have to deal with 31 September 1949. However, I'm not sure that many editors will be using wbsetclaimvalue to import information into Wikidata, although bots will be doing that. Presumably the sanity-checking has to be delegated to the bot in those cases. As you might expect the mw.language library function returns . Personally, I wouldn't cavil at that; given that the data is obviously tainted, that's probably as good an estimate of the real value as any. Would it be better if I wrote checking code in the module that returned an error message instead? I'm just weighing up the effort involved relative to the likely number of invalid dates amongst the 14,000,000 items on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 02:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with "Unfortunately, you can't store 29 February 1700 in Wikidata." Here's a bug report indicating that it is possible to use the API to add dates that do not follow Gregorian rules (the edits vilified in the bug report don't follow Julian rules either). Also, a bug report exists for the inability to enter or display Julian dates through the user interface. When the bug is fixed, we can expect to see more February 29, XX00 dates in the database. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised that the API allows invalid dates to be written into the database; no end-user should have to deal with 31 September 1949. However, I'm not sure that many editors will be using wbsetclaimvalue to import information into Wikidata, although bots will be doing that. Presumably the sanity-checking has to be delegated to the bot in those cases. As you might expect the mw.language library function returns . Personally, I wouldn't cavil at that; given that the data is obviously tainted, that's probably as good an estimate of the real value as any. Would it be better if I wrote checking code in the module that returned an error message instead? I'm just weighing up the effort involved relative to the likely number of invalid dates amongst the 14,000,000 items on Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 02:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the point to be taken from the bugs (and there's a bunch more date-related bugs) from the point of view of a data-consumer is that the Wikidata date code was not well-thought-out. Quite a few changes will have to be made to put dates on a sound footing. You should assume the output from the database will change, and you will have to make corresponding changes to your code. There are also plans to make a massive scrub of the data; we'll see if anyone actually turns out to do that, or if it's wishful thinking.

It turns out that trusting bot writers to understand calendars was a Bad Idea. I've looked at a pile of bot additions to Wikidata. In my experience, every bot writer was clueless about calendars. But they're no worse than the rest of the programming community. Every date and time package from the standard library that comes with every programming language gets something significantly wrong. They're OK for theater tickets and hotel reservations, but they're useless for history at one extreme and split-second timekeeping at the other extreme. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:22, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What is the depth of the problem? Does Wikidata actually store dates in quasi-ISO, or are they being converted for machine consumption by the API? There always ought to be a very good reason to deviate from the standard, and I wonder if this was meant to be duct tape for date libraries - to account for their being unable to convert between Gregorian and Julian. All in all, I've got to agree that this is a bit of a mess. Alakzi (talk) 17:08, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * As you can see Wikidata actually stores dates as XML objects. Wikidata date timestamps strongly resemble ISO 8601 datestrings, but ISO 8601 is only strictly defined for Gregorian dates after 20 May 1875, although it's compatible with dates back to 15 October 1582. As our article states, "Earlier dates, in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, may be used by mutual agreement of the partners exchanging information." (ISO 8601 is not compatible with Julian dates.) However, the Wikidata developers decided to support Julian dates (imperfectly), and also decided to store 1 BC as the year -1, (timestamp: "-0001-00-00T00:00:00Z"), rather than extending ISO 8601, which would then require the year 1 BC to be stored as the year 0. As a result, applying an ISO-compatible parser to Wikidata's datestamps would give dates one year different from the date that was stored for dates BC. So we don't use an ISO-compatible parser when we read data from Wikidata into Wikipedia. For me, that's no big deal (replace '-' with '+' and stick 'BC' on the end); others may find it more problematical. --RexxS (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

So, back to persondata removal
Rexx and JC, have you resolved your issues here? If not, can the problems under discussion be identified and articles with date problems segregated? I believe Rexx's major point is he doesn't want to sanction "a cynical attempt to do an end-run around community consensus here" by indefinitely delaying the removal of persondata. I want to encourage the transfer of as much accurate persondata to Wikidata as possible. We both want a defined time limit in which to do that. To be remotely effective, we need to provide wide-ranging notice to editors and how-to instructions on discussion boards and user talk pages. Right now, that discussion has been sidetracked by this somewhat esoteric discussion about Julian calendar dates. Can we either resolve this, or segregate the Julian dates issue, so we can proceed with what needs to be done otherwise? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, as I said a few weeks ago in a section above, "... I don't have any strong feelings on the matter. Persondata is now past its sell-by date and is no longer adding anything of value to articles, so I wouldn't object to seeing it removed. But if there are some people who are still making use of it, then there's no rush to get of it just yet, as it does no harm." That was before the RfC closed and I certainly wouldn't want to see a consensus decision pushed off into the dim and distant future, but I applaud your efforts to transfer information that you know to be accurate into Wikidata, and I don't see why removal of Persondata can't wait a little while until editors like yourself have done what they can to salvage anything still usable in Persondata. Personally, I don't think the Julian date problems will affect you and I would recommend you go ahead, but of course I can't presume to speak for JC on that issue. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'm not concerned with removal of persondata, if we can identify a cutoff date so editors can go back in the article history just before the cutoff date and retrieve the persondata if it turns out to be useful in some cases. I was more worried about putting in warnings in articles telling all and sundry editors that the article was about to be deleted, and they should transfer any useful data over to Wikidata. The problem with such encouragement is the average editor is not capable of recognizing whether a pre-1924 date is Gregorian or Julian, and so is likely to make mistakes in transferring these dates. For certain dates, like February 29 in most centurial years, the Julian dates cannot be entered in Wikidata with the user interface, and what to do about 0 and negative years is undecided on the part of Wikipedia developers.


 * So don't encourage editors to transfer old dates to Wikidata. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

TFA
 
 * 9 June 2015
 * Carl Nielsen made
 * Main Page history
 * and you were part of
 * working for his works!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Stallerhof
Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:35, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for helping a red link of years ago! It's featured also on Portal:Germany, - if you have other DYK related to Germany, please feel free to add there yourself, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Convert precision
I had no idea precision could be specified for conversions. Thanks for showing me how! (diff)

Out of curiosity, in the article I referenced for Altitude sickness, the author specified the altitude in feet (70,000') first then meters (21,350' in praenthesis) with meters being roughly converted. Do you think it would be proper to maintain his numbers even though meters are prefered in the Wikipedia article, and his precision and rounding are different? Cartographile (talk) 23:50, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the kind words. Almost invariably, we stick to one convention within an article, so we display "x metres (y ft)" throughout - or vice versa. When the source quotes an approximate distance in the "wrong" units for our article, we can use a feature of convert that inverts the display; so  displays as 70000 ft . The output precision is then estimated from the input units (i.e. 2 sig fig for 70,000). You probably ought to make that change in Altitude sickness as it might help another editor see how it can be done in future. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Religion in infoboxes of nations
There is an RfC that you may be interested in at Template talk:Infobox country. Please join us and help us to determine consensus on this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Guy. I've commented there. --RexxS (talk) 17:06, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled
Thanks for asking for allowing me to be autopatrolled too for the English Wikipedia.

Best regards, --Réginald alias Meneerke bloem (To reply) 20:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You're welcome - was grumbling  enthusing about having to keep marking your work as patrolled :). Might as well make life easier for New Page Patrol as well if we can. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:38, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting that you say grumbling where I said trusting ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:47, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * We call it "reading between the lines". I should have known better and I've corrected my statement now. Mea maxima culpa. --RexxS (talk) 21:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * de nada ;) - a lot of moonlight and info in the latest Bruckner compositions, such as Um Mitternacht --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This reminded me to ask for the right on behalf of another valuable contributor. Thanks. Alakzi (talk) 21:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

WCAG colour compliance in Template:Infobox bibliography
Could you take a look at Infobox bibliography when you've got time? I think many of those colour combinations aren't accessible. Alakzi (talk) 22:47, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Userbox
Hello little dino. 'shonen add new userbox to 'zilla page. (She pretty interfering.) Fine sentiment, but page look like been pulled through hedge backwards. :-( Also, approve of caps for ROARR, but could caps be emsmallened please? Not meant roaring overwhelm noads! bishzilla   ROA R R! ! 22:56, 2 July 2015 (UTC).
 * Attempt to de-hedge and unbiggen made. Hope teaching edits adaptable to fine-tune sizes. Dino-hugs: --T-RexxS ( rawr )
 * Dino small but very helpful! Thank you also amusing edit summary! [Bishzilla's laugh, fortunately rarely heard, rumbles through Wikipedia and sends the little users tumbling arse over tip.] bishzilla   ROA R R! !</i> 10:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC).

Biographies of LIVING persons
Rex, the message you left on my TALK page is mistaken (or as John McLaughlin would say, WRAWNG!). Karl Ridderbusch is not a living person. He died in 1997. HandsomeMrToad (talk) 00:53, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction. Feel free to scrap my note from your page. You understand, I guess, that we have very strict policies about living people because of the potential for harm to them if we write anything contentious on Wikipedia. Although we no longer face quite the same problem for people who have been dead more than a few years, we still have an obligation to treat them with some sensitivity; and I'd suggest that we will always be better to find respectable sources first before making allegations of the kind you were suggesting. His family, in particular, might find those quite upsetting. --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Science Conference
Hi, this is another update on the Wikipedia Science Conference taking place in London on Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd of September. I hope you’re excited as I am about this event. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 18:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Booking has opened at just 29 pounds, including lunch on both days.
 * Take a look at the (pretty much final) programme if you haven’t seen it yet. With 18 plenary speakers - three from overseas - as well as the large unconference section, there’s a lot going on, and the Royal Society of Chemistry is sponsoring a wine reception in the evening.
 * We are also in the full swing of publicity. Emails have been, and are, going out to funders, scholarly societies, and university departments, but any additional promotion is appreciated. Please share a link, or tell colleagues in relevant fora. All publicity material for the conference is, of course, freely licenced for you to adapt.
 * After the conference there will be two hackathons: one Cambridge on the Friday, the other hosted by Wikimedia UK in London on the Saturday. These are being led by Daniel Mietchen and Stefan Kasberger. Follow the link for more details.

Wikipedia:Colour contrast
You may find Colour contrast useful. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:50, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Can we have an external link to Snook's Colour Contrast Check? I know it's buried on WP:COLOUR, but having it upfront would be nice so anyone can point folks to it. --RexxS (talk) 20:17, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Be my guest. This is a wiki, and you know my views on WP:OWN... ;-)
 * In a similar vein, I've tweaked your two new pages; please check I've not misunderstood anything. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Alt is set to null
In your "Alt is set to null" example, I see the expected  - can you check, please? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:10, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Using Chrome you get a slightly different html ( img alt src="..." or img alt="" src="..." ) depending on whether you use "Inspect element" or "View source". It's not important and doesn't alter the recommendations. Thanks for all the tweaking you and have done on it today. --RexxS (talk) 23:42, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Odd. Also, I was using Firefox ;-) Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:39, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Nitrox
Hi RexxS, I would like to get Nitrox ready for GAN. Would you take a look and see if there is anything missing that should be there? There are several uncited points in the history section which are proving recalcitrant. If you know of sources for any of them I would appreciate a link or two. Cheers, &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Been reading my mind, have you? Thanks, &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:36, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Dispute resolution noticeboard
You are listed as a party to the above dispute at the dispute resolution noticeboard. If you would like to participate, please provide a statement in the space allocated to you at that page. Thanks, North of Eden (talk) 00:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you
For your assistance in refuting their silly claims of plagiarism. I don't do barnstars, so you're just gonna have to imagine there being one. Alakzi (talk) 12:33, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You're always welcome - and no barnstars, imaginary or otherwise, are necessary. --RexxS (talk) 13:30, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * LOL, maybe. I like how he's pretending to have never accused me of plagiarism now. Oh well. Alakzi (talk) 13:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been advised by a wiser person to disengage, so in the spirit of cooperation, I'll remove my comment above. --RexxS (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been advised by a wiser person to disengage, so in the spirit of cooperation, I'll remove my comment above. --RexxS (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2015 (UTC)