User talk:WhatamIdoing/Archive 16

well done
I am not into barnstarts - but you need one for your judicious negotiating the conversation at Medicine project - keep it up ! JarrahTree 03:55, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewing

 * No, thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks!
I appreciate the info you’ve provided me, on the discussion about external links. And for being a rebuttal to people treating Wikipedia like a delicate flower rather than a platform to educate and inform. Tmbirkhead (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Tmbirkhead (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

THANK YOU for your help! Odd Höglund (SLU) (talk) 13:37, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. I like reading the messages on the "Talk" page for WikiProject Medicine.  It's a good way to find out what's going on.  (In fact, that's how I found out about your work.  :-)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Urinary frequency
I did a little improvement. All disorders and symptoms related to urination are defined differently as far as I know. I wasn't interested in the discussion on the med talk page for my own reasons but there seems to be a general lack of understanding of incontinence and urinary disorders. I expect that understanding will begin to improve as more editors enter their 50's. Experiencing all things urological will generate a keen interest in these topics. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ and Merry Christmas 23:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Barbara (WVS), what I stated in the WP:Med discussion has nothing to do with a lack of understanding. It has to do with this MedlinePlus article and other sources seamlessly covering the two topics (the ones I proposed be merged) together, and you and I having a different opinion on merging. I am almost always for merging when there is no need for two separate articles. You are not. And as noted in that discussion by others, the two topics I proposed be merged, are, as Doc James stated, "slightly different symptoms but often go together." If they did not, MedlinePlus would not have put them together. Furthermore, there are indeed urination terms that are defined similarly and/or are used interchangeably and some sources note this and/or caution against this. As for weighing in on the discussion, you are correct that there continues to be tension between us, and it has been made abundantly clear to you why that is. But you chose to weigh in on that aforementioned discussion anyway and edit the articles I highlighted. So that was your choice. And, for the record, I did not follow you to this talk page. WhatamIdoing's talk page has been on my watchlist for years. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:38, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * ? ...ummm. I just worked on an article that WAID had worked on. She invited other editors to improve it and I think other related ones. I don't mean to offend anyone. WIAD suggested improvement and I improved. I left a message here to let her know that had worked on it. If there are things you would like to discuss with me, please feel free to bring it to my talk page. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ and Merry Christmas 00:51, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Barbara (WVS), I didn't dispute that WhatamIdoing invited others to improve the article. Above, you implied that I started the merge discussion due to a lack of understanding. That's not the case. Above, you stated that you weren't "interested in the discussion on the med talk page for [your] own reasons." It's obvious you were referring to our issues with each other. If you don't mean to offend, then it's best not to refer to me in subtle ways. If you must talk about me, then do it off Wikipedia. Converse with WhatamIdoing via email if you must; I couldn't care less. Many people converse with me about editors via email all the time. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:57, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No, she didn't. She implied that the general public, which has nothing to do with you personally, doesn't understand much about this subject, and I happen to think that she is entirely correct on that point.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing, you can think what you must, but I have ample experience with Barbara's posts having much to do with me. And if the above had nothing at all to do with me, she would not have stated what she stated about not wanting to comment in that section for personal reasons. Not to mention...her commentary about terminology was in direct reference to mine. I already know you feel the need to protect her at every turn and disagree with me at every turn these days. This will mark yet another disagreement. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't defend anyone at every turn – not even myself. I would, however, appreciate it if you didn't attack people on my talk page, or keep insisting that "it's obvious" that comments not directed at you and not naming you are about you.  People will think you're either paranoid or astonishingly self-centered, and I don't want that.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm sure it's endearing to some that you think you have more knowledge than I do on the editing behavior of one my past stalkers, but you do not. There is no one who has thoroughly reviewed the history between Bfpage/Barbara (WVS) and I who would state that I am being paranoid or astonishingly self-centered. But it is certainly something my past stalkers have argued after stalking me, only to be admonished and sanctioned and/or blocked at WP:ANI. And, yep, that goes twice for Barbara (WVS). I suppose you would be the odd woman out claiming "I don't see it." But that is not surprising. Either way, calling a matter out for what it is does not fall under any definition of "attack." I stated that her initial above post is partially about me. You state that you don't see it. So, again, I disagree with you. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:03, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You are entitled to your opinion.
 * I'm telling you that it's my opinion that if you keep insisting that "it's obvious" that statements with no apparent connection to you are actually all about you, then you should expect people to take your stated beliefs into account when they form your opinions of you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, "no apparent connection to me" despite the thread in question being a thread I started, despite Barbara (WVS) being one of my past stalkers (one a number of editors expressed alarming concern about) and someone who is prone to making vague references to me (since 2015, mind you), and despite the fact that Barbara (WVS) and I still continue to be in heated disagreement with each other every now and then (including recently), which is why it is logical to conclude that this is the reason she was apparently hesitant to continue commenting in the aforementioned thread (even though she ended up commenting in it anyway)? Got it. If someone wants to form illogical opinions of me regarding this particular matter, I'll simply chalk it up to them not knowing any better. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:34, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Flyer, almost everyone has been in heated disagreement with you at some point. Getting people to disagree with you seems to be your super power.
 * I suggest that you stop posting comments on my talk page about whether I, or anyone else, should agree with your belief that you are entitled to feel aggrieved about Barbara's comments. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Seasons' Greetings
...to you and yours, from the Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:36, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

You've got mail

 * Nevermind, that may very well have been the dumbest question I've ever asked.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 08:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I liked it. Did you get my reply?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Nope. Figured you were just busy.   Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 18:34, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've just copied it to Special:EmailUser for [User:Seppi333|you]]. Please let me know if it still doesn't arrive.  I had fun writing it, so it'd be a shame to lose it.  :-)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Caution
While you are completely in the right to alert other related P&G talk pages about the RFC at NCORP, please be aware the message should be neutral per WP:CANVAS; some of your messages like the one to WT:V seem biased. --M asem (t) 06:40, 19 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I thought it was important for the regulars at WT:V to know which parts of that proposal were directly related to their area of interest. Most of the proposal (e.g., whether we should describe notability standards for sports organizations at WP:ORG vs WP:NSPORTS) is unrelated to the concept of verifiability, and I didn't want anyone to think that I was spamming that page for a proposal that had no specific connection to how we define and describe reliable sources.
 * From my POV, this proposal largely feels like a case of Policy writing is hard: Some editors have some ideas (some, but not all, of which are the same as some of the other editors' ideas), but what they're writing down isn't what they really want.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:19, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand your edit summary
I don't understand this summary. I not was contesting the IP's interest in the article. I was contesting the addition of what appear to be inappropriate Wikiproject banners to this and other articles by an IP who is not a member of the projects. If members of the projects in question think the articles are valid topics for their projects and want to take them on then that's up to them. That's why I linked to the articles from the projects. Meters (talk) 05:37, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Meters, I mean that the IP doesn't have any right to contest the WikiProject's interest in the subject. (But the thanks are due primarily to you, and I can see how that was confusing.)  BTW, I'm reverting your removals on two articles, because I think (having been a participant at WPMED for more than a decade) that the group is still interested in supporting those.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The IP didn't contest it. The IP added the banners. It's not appropriate for an IP who is not a member of a project to add those banners. If 'you are a member of both of those projects and want to justify to your other project members why you think these belong then that's up to you. Meters (talk) 05:45, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you read the official guideline on this point? It's perfectly fine for good-faith non-participants to add tags.  For many projects, that is a primary way for WikiProjects to learn about new articles that they are interested in.  It is not, however, okay to re-add – or re-remove them – if a project objects.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:48, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Given the responses, clearly some members do object. And I don't see your name on the list of members of WikiProject Law, so why are you restoring that one? I have no irons in this fire, so I'm done with this. If you want to defend what looks like an edit warring warring POV pushing IP to the members of the projects, have at it. You restored the banners, so  it's your responsible for them now. Meters (talk) 05:56, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So far, I see one participant objecting, and three supporting. I'm happy to take responsibility for those odds.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:17, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I add WikiProject tags to some articles too though I am not a member of any WikiProject. --Gryllida (talk) 04:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you!
WhatamIdoing, thank you very much for the barnstar. I am still wrestling with the topic. -SusanLesch (talk) 14:26, 21 March 2018 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. Good luck as you keep figuring it out.      WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Osmosis concerns
User talk:Jimbo Wales

I see that, for medical articles, Wikipedia is no longer primarily a collaboratively edited text & image encyclopaedia, but a platform for documentaries created by a private third party. Videos which Wikipedians have no ability to edit, nor our readers any ability to verify facts against sources. This is not Wikipedia. -- Colin°Talk 11:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi Colin,
 * I'm always happy to hear from you. I wonder whether it might be an exaggeration to say that we have no ability to edit these videos.  Surely the license is not -ND?  Or is your main concern that it'd be difficult to add material that matches (e.g., to re-phrase a sentence, because you'd have to get the original voice actor to read the new version)?
 * It feels like there are a lot of concerns getting mixed up together, so I'll give you an example: I understand that User:The Interior has an interest in, and more than just a little skill with, creating videos.  He's a long-time volunteer and an admin here.  What would it take, from your POV, for a video that he created and uploaded to be desirable in an article?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There are indeed multiple concerns. The paid-for editing. The proxying for a commercial organisation that sells medical videos. The edit warring to retain content under dispute. But even if we did not have these concerns, I think video for Wikipedia should largely be of a short-clip variety. It should concentrate on a single detail (or at most a related few) such as a person having a seizure, or an animation of a neuron firing. This level of content can be sourced, if requested/required, and replaced if challenged. Here we see extraordinary reluctance by Doc James (and other WP:MED) editors to remove "useful" content because it is an all-or-nothing. The video covers the whole article topic, and so for some readers will replace it. I see this as a content fork where an article topic is formatted as a video rather than text, and thus becomes owned by one person, and where none of our content or editing behaviour policies are being applied. Anyway, I don't want to have 10 discussions in 10 places. The main discussion is linked above. I'm rather shocked that anyone on Wikipedia might think that this was a good idea. It is "collaboratively edited" by "volunteers". -- Colin°Talk 18:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Wrt editing the videos. I am aware they are CC BY SA. But they are top and tailed by Osmosis credits. Anyone inserting new material would have problems. It would no longer be an "Osmosis" video. How would they indicate which parts were made by whom? We have no diff for webm. And of course I do not sound like the narrator, nor have access to their visual library to produce the same visual fee. Take "Epilepsy". How to I amend the outdated term "complex partial seizure". On a wiki, which this is, I can click Edit, replace the text and click Publish changes. How to I replace the "for doctors" language "patient" with "person with epilepsy"? I cannot collaboratively edit this material, which covers the whole article topic. It may be free educational content, suitable for Commons, but it isn't suitable for Wikipedia. Where's the WM:MEDRS sources, WhatamIdoing? What was the point in creating that guideline if any private organisation and embed unsourced medical content on Wikipedia. -- Colin°Talk 18:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Waid, as always I have found you to be both very knowledgeable and to have a lot of just plain old good common sense.  I have complained  about the breastfeeding video due to several egregious problems (as documented on the talk page).  Doc James has both brushed them aside and said that the video can be fixed - that was four months ago.  I can hardly say how thankful I am to Colin for bringing up this problem.  It just does not make any sense at all to be so strict about backing our information with acceptable sources--except for the videos.  Today I again deleted the video, hopefully thanks to the ongoing discussion it will stay deleted. Gandydancer (talk) 18:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Gandydancer, I would very much appreciate if you could join the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. I too agree with your assessment of WhatamIdoing. Another voice with concerns would be useful, as the current contributions by WP:MED members there have been defensive and non-constructive. -- Colin°Talk 18:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's another concern, WAID. While working to return to active medical editing, I have found myself spending excessive time on debacles like this to the extent that it is hard to get work done. When did we stop caring about our core content? What I have gone through on the talk page of DLB is ... not a good thing. Endlessly working through issues that are driven by off-en.wiki endeavors, while I am trying to do a much-needed major rewrite of a seriously outdated article. These videos are a big problem everywhere I see them, and they are a timesink, and our efforts at WP:MED need to somehow be redirected back to the big picture-- our content. This should not be an editor problem-- we should be able to delete them according to various policies and guidelines, without seeing edit warring from Doc James to keep in COI paid editor content. Every place I look, it seems that the project has lost its way-- a "way" established by Colin when he started MEDRS. Best, Sandy Georgia (Talk)  18:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Colin I see that user: Clayoquot has responded on Jimbo's page. I will add more if it seems appropriate.  It was your commentary on Jimbo's page that gave the the "courage" to delete the breastfeeding video.  I've worked with Doc James long enough to know that until now a delete would have been reversed in short order (and perhaps it will be shortly). He rules the roost when it comes to medical articles. Gandydancer (talk) 19:07, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

In the category of practical strategizing, I think that it would be good to make a list of all the problems, and then pick one that we want to solve (first). Here's a list that I've seen mentioned here so far:


 * Sourcing: We currently have no viable sourcing models for long/complex videos.  We barely have a viable one for static images.  IMO this problem can be significantly mitigated with Colin's suggestion of using only small/focused clips.
 * Collaboration: Something made by one person, and that (in practice), really can only be changed by that one person, isn't our model.  Long/complex video is obviously hard this way, but it's not unique, as some complex diagrams have the same problem.
 * Third-party: Osmosis doesn't feel like a regular contributor.  It feels like a completely separate entity, with a separate process.
 * Updates: Updates to any kind of audio is hard.  WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia is really no different in that regard.  c:Commons:Sequencer was limited and now seems to be dead.  Updates to most video (beyond "insert this new clip" or "delete those four seconds from the middle") is more difficult than making equivalent changes to a static image (which, in turn, is more complicated than changing words).  In many cases, updating the graphical part of a video is basically impossible for non-professionals and/or without original source files.
 * Few alternatives: We're not going to find a lot of people to re-create a long video, just to change a few words here and there.  I don't think that video is unique in this regard, but this problem means that the "hard to update the original" problem is a serious one.  In many cases, the realistic options are update the original – or live with its flaws.  We feel "stuck" with whatever we've got.
 * Internationalization: Anything with spoken words is hard to translate, and therefore not ideally suited for a global movement.  Even if you get a translation, and get a recording, you can't necessarily just stick in the new soundtrack and expect it to fit perfectly, especially on a long/complex video.  (OTOH, I know some folks who don't speak English natively, and they very much prefer spoken English to written English, so being able to do all things for all people might be ideal.)
 * Promotional feel: Spamming your name at the start and end of a video feels promotional.  (Of course, that's also solvable on our end:  We can trim those logos out of the videos.)
 * Proper credits: There's probably a workable system for this, but I don't know what it is.  Detailed notes on the File: page would probably work for most purposes.

Does that sound like a reasonably complete list of the problems? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1. Placement (who gave videos a place in the article leads and based on what?)
 * 2. And I am reading that the sources and text for each video are available somewhere ... ??  Where, how do I access?  I would love to see them, because there are errors in those videos that cannot possibly have come from MEDRS sources. Why aren't they posting a template to an article talk page, letting editors know they are working, and proposing sources?  Why aren't they posting the text of their videos, since those are available, to the article talk pages, so we don't have to sit through the thing to point out errors?
 * 3. Style; they don't have an encyclopedic tone.  All of this amounts to, editor consensus.  As with any image or EL.  Which leads to ...
 * 4. The problem pointed out by . We have one editor who reverts at will, and moves so fast that it is impossible to get him to slow down, listen, understand, recognize the damage this is causing.  Losing Colin to medical editing was no small thing.  I let the prostate situation go, and moved on to an article I should have been able to update in peace ... and hit the same wall.  Problems in the lead, one editor, driven by non-en.wikipedia interests, all pointing back to one place. When did an off-Wiki venture become something we were all expected to accept, with no consensus, and enforced by edit warring?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  06:04, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Placement: I'm not sure where else to put a "whole subject overview", if not in the lead.  (Well, I might put it in ==External links== – as a link – myself, but if you wanted a long, whole-subject video about Scary Disease, then you couldn't really stick it in a particular section, because it's not just about symptoms, or diagnosis, or prognosis, or whatever.  (This is another solid reason to favor Colin's suggestion of not using long, whole-subject videos.))
 * Sources and text: The narration in the video will be just as free as the video itself, so we could post the transcript, e.g, in the File: page.  Links to the scripts for this particular outfit's videos have been posted (in advance/for comments) at WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis in the past.  I doubt that most video contributors would do the same, but we could make a transcript.
 * Style: No matter how much we might agree, a guideline of "we don't like this company's style" isn't going to get us very far.  I've seen many complaints about images that were "too amateur"; presumably the problem here is "too slick"?  What would you recommend to would-be creators of video content in terms of style?  Speaking for myself, I don't know enough about videos to write even a basic advice page.
 * Individual editors: I think that the problem of video is separate from the problem of behavior.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * PLACEMENT: Different media fit different places (I would always put them in EL, but each one may differ).  Curiously, per the list posted at WT:MED, this whole project was predicated on them getting priority placement.  Odd.  Why does Doc James believe he has the power to grant that?
 * SOURCES/TEXT: This video contributor is using Wikipedia to make money, so I don't think it's too much to ask them to post a talk page template: a) announcing their plans, and that includes b) the text, and c) their sources.  We are not beholden to them; they are to us.  If we had a provision where the script is posted on article talk, it might not be so onerous to have to educate them in medical content.
 * STYLE: But, we cannot then be forced to put their ugly irritating video in the lead.  If the ugly is in External links, less jarring.  But then ... there's the rub ... since they get revenues from their placement, of course, the fight to keep the ugly critters in the lead.  Like any content, editor consensus-- who gave them preferential seating, and with what authority?
 * EDITOR BEHAVIOR: Well, since the Doc just accused me of falsehoods in a post at WT:V, at least I now know where the sources are (I have never been involved in any way with images), and my point is made.  Like any content issue on Wikipedia, give us the source, we can debate them, and then delete the inaccurate text with consensus.  Only in this case, the inaccuracies are imbedded in a video, we don't know which source supposedly sources which text, so we have to delete the whole video. The behavior problem is that one person seems to believe he can act without consensus.  And call people liars.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  07:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And yet you continue. You simple make stuff up as you go along "this whole project was predicated on them getting priority placement" is BS. But whatever. The number of different locations you are taking this up now numbers 5. Talk about moving fast... Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 07:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Doc, what do you mean by "the number of different places you are taking this"? Could you please calm down and use some logic? I have taken it exactly NOWHERE.  I have responded when I have seen it on talk pages I have watch listed for decades.  I woke up this morning intending to finish the DLB article, since I have to be at the clinic all day tomorrow (aggressive prostate cancer because of delayed diagnosis, remember), and this was the last thing I expected to occupy my time with today.  Please be more careful with your accusations. I have taken it nowhere, and the placement was from the working list posted by Ocaassi at WT:MED.  "James and other medical editors will place the videos in the first sections of articles (but below the infobox) as appropriate". Making stuff up? Five places? Me taking it?  Logic. Please calm down. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  08:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I very much like your list above. I knew there were still some rational level-headed people left on the project. In contrast I have received no end of personal attacks from Jtdog and Doc James. I have lost count of the number of times "bullshit" is mentioned, and there are some people who need to put a few coins in the swear jar and go sit on the naughty step for a while.

I am planning to start an essay to address the issue primary of long videos. As you say, some of these issues affect other media too. This can concentrate on areas where I hope there is a chance of progress, whereas the other concerns of content created by private foundations, of COI editing, proxy editing, paid editing, edit warring and bullying are ongoing and well known to many on Wikipedia who seem to be in no rush to do anything about it. The WP:MED deity-bully is a problem for others to recognise and solve.

I think the main emphasis should be that it is through text alone that Wikipedia is collaboratively edited. Text is also by far the primary means of delivering educational content. It is an encyclopaedia, after all, not a TV station or YouTube channel. It is only via text that we can provide in-text citations to sources. It is only through text that we can examine what changes each editor made. Text is the only content actually hosted on Wikipedia (with the exception of some non-free images, and whatever images have not yet been transferred to Commons). We only have editing and behavioural policies for text.

One big issue is that of watchlists. It is by watching articles (and examining the diffs of edits) that our content is cared for by long-term Wikipedians. This is simply not possible for AV media. The videos on Commons have a contribution history of one. Therefore they are (likely to be) on only one person's watchlist. A person who edits Commons infrequently, and not since 22 Feb, and who may change jobs and retire his account. We then have videos that could be modified by anyone at any time and without anyone on Wikipedia being aware. Unless you sit through all 8 minutes of each one.

Another issue is that even if it was practical to edit the videos -- let's say that someone developed an open set of graphic design tools and a text-to-speech narration, with full source-materials uploaded. Commons is not a collaboratively edited project. It is just a file repository. See Commons: Overwriting existing files. Unless you are making the most minor and non-controversial change, Commons does not permit you to overwrite an existing file. You must fork and create a new file. This file in turn has exactly one watchlister and the person watchlisting the previous file is left dangling, as their content is no longer used. Of course, the Commons guideline is frequently ignored and anyone with nefarious reasons to edit a video would not announce their edit by replacing the article link to a different file.

Commons hates when Wikipedia content disputes spill over into Commons. So dealing with edit behaviour issues is complicated. Commons is not concerned with the pillars of Wikipedia such as neutrality, verifiability, etc.

The CC licence requires that when an editor creates a derivative work, they document what changes were made and which content is produce by whom. It also requires all editors are given equal billing in any credits. On Wikipedia this is done via the file history and diffs to show what each editor did. For media, we have no diff. Unless editors wish to fill the file-description page with tedious "At 3m20s I changed the words "patient" to "person with epilepsy"" notes... not going to happen.

These are the problems. And I'm sure there are more. My mind boggles that anyone considered this suitable for Wikipedia. -- Colin°Talk 08:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOTYOUTUBE
I have created Wikipedia is not YouTube. It is a start. Constructive supporting edits are most welcome. Anyone with opposing views is of course welcome to create their own article, or rant on the talk page. -- Colin°Talk 12:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I had a look (too quick towards the end), and I think it's a great place to start. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I am thinking of taking another approach. It has struck me that the entire focus of WP:MED, relative to what it was in the days when we got MEDMOS and MEDRS up to guideline status, has switched from wikipedia-internal content and article improvement drives, to wikipedia-external applications, collaborations and approaches. Now, whether one stands on the side of either set of efforts or foci having been helpful or harmful, it is clear we aren't talking to each other or having any sense of what the others are up to, or so disturbed about. Specifically, I see no recognition from the proponents of external efforts of how much the proponents of internal article content creation and improvement drives believe that the medicine project, and medical content, have been damaged by the externally oriented efforts. They probably say the same about those who think like me (although most of us gave up and left). I know that most of them (not all, and this project should deal with its abusive members) are undeniably acting in good faith and mystified about why some others are so upset about guidelines we helped create being undermined, along with quality content we helped build. Doc James specifically said on my talk page that he has no interest in building what I consider to be featured content, and that got me thinking. I'd rather work 1,000 days to build 1 article like nothing else that can be found on the internet; he'd rather work on 1,000 articles in 1 day-- broadly sums up very different priorities. So, if I were to build the history of the medicine project, and explain it from that angle, would that be helpful, or just create further division? See my sandbox: how on earth did we get here from there? Can this approach be used to build understanding and bring some WP:MED project focus back on internal collaborations to build quality content? This is not it, and I'll take it to FAR if we get through the video business. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  20:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * He doesn't exactly say that, Sandy: "I would rather have 1,000s of decent understandable and accessible medical articles than one perfect and overly complicated one."  Many of us decide that improving a range of articles is more efficiently useful than concentrating on one FA at a time. Johnbod (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I realize I was overphrasing, for a reason. He believes quality leads=quality articles.  I don't.  Obviously we don't see eye to eye, and what I hoped with the post above was to find a way towards that.  I see now it is not likely to be possible; he is too invested.  I wonder if he might be able to feel this from a different skin if he had ever built a Featured article, and had to watch it be taken apart by outside interests.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  21:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, "perfect and overly complicated" isn't possible. If it's overly complicated, it's not perfect.
 * You have an interesting point about a shift in focus. The change that strikes me is the shift in attitudes about altmed and commercial interests.  If you think back to the homeopathy and Scientology wars, it doesn't really seem plausible to feel even more embattled, but I think that some folks actually do.  I'm no longer surprised when plain factual statements, such as "Chang Gung Memorial Hospital is the largest hospital in the world" (it is) get tagged as being "promotional".
 * We've also gone from thinking that evidence is good when it exists to sometimes writing articles as if evidence is the only thing that should be included. MastCell has said that under that enforcement model, many of his early contributions would have been rejected.  And given all the everything, "evidence only" often means writing for and about developed countries.  It doesn't matter if 100 million people use ____ for the common cold; all that matters is whether Science Says™ that it works.
 * I was involved in GA for a few years, but I don't feel like the FA process was necessarily as good a match for this subject area. FAC seems to be better suited to history than to topics whose information changes every few years.  I never recommend that anyone take a medicine-related article to FAC; if asked, I'd probably discourage them.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, so much for shift in focus. I am at clinic now (they have comfy chairs!), so wasted what time I had when I coulda been working on the DLB article. I was going to work that up before I had to leave (hour drive each way), and then try to smooth it to something ... peaceful.  And then I went over to WT:MED, and found an impetuous, poorly formed RFC.  I now recognize the arrogance that Graham speaks of.  So, I am very sad to see the destruction of MED.  I no longer go there for help-- instead, I just ask the world class experts at a top hospital in the US, where I now get to spend my time.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  23:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I wish you fewer medical experts in your life, and only undeniably happy news from them.
 * Ignoring WT:MED for a day or two is probably a good idea. These things usually have a way of working themselves out, and when they don't – well, sometimes we have to screw up before we can get things right, and cogent arguments don't usually change the course of a determined mob anyway.  Fixing up DLB will have long-term benefits.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you :) I'd like to get my seven more journal articles worked into DLB, go back and smooth out the prose (I chunk in factoids first, then go back and fix), and be done here.  I am enjoying the medical experts in our life, if not their conclusions :)  What a joy it is to be working with the people who are tops in their respective fields (too many different fields involved here :)  That I hit this video thing when only wanting to fix DLB is quite the bummer!  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:17, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Medical experts make fine neighbors, and people you run into in the grocery store, and that sort of thing. BTW, I've left a note for you on the talk page of your new article, about whether the umbrella term includes more than just the two conditions.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My med neighbor makes a strange neighbor, because of the privacy issues they have as a family ... apparently, they get knocks on the door in the middle of the night, from people wanting free or otherwise help, so they have extreme privacy issues (see the same in veterinarian friends). I couldn't answer the question, but it makes me think that, in the past I would have taken a question like that to WT:MED, and I no longer bother.  I can try to work on that, but it would be at most next trip to clinic, which is an hour drive ... awaiting MRI results now so we can proceed.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:08, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, out of my depth at corticobasal syndrome and corticobasal degeneration. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:10, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I pinged a few folks to the new stub; maybe we'll get a response.
 * BTW, have you ever seen the automated who-works-on-what reports, such as WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Neuroscience? If you start with the name of a relevant WikiProject, it's a quick way to see who is currently editing related articles.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That's cool! Being mostly away for three years, I am having to re-discover the old tools, but the new ones are awesome.  Thanks, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  03:32, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Re: Small thing
Thank you very much for your kindness explaining this to me! You're right, I want to know. I thought they improved the presentation, oops ... I have removed the blank lines of my messages here.

Best regards. --BallenaBlanca &#128051; ♂ (Talk)  19:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)


 * You are very welcome. It's just one of those awkward little details about MediaWiki.  Thank you for being gracious about it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Re. VE in wikt
(here phabricator/T169741.) Hi WhatamIdoing, and thanks for your interest in the matter. Your say: - "The system should stop dumping new editors into the visual mode."
 * OH YES PLEASE!!!

- "Any editor who wants two tabs can go to https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Spécial:Préférences#mw-prefsection-editing and choose "Show me both editor tabs"."
 * I got enthused reading that. But I can't see any such option "Show me both editor tabs", neither in fr nor en wikt. ???

- " Perhaps this information could be posted to the village pump"
 * New editors don't know about the village pump; + knowing about it does not mean they are likely to go there. I don't : I never managed to find any answers in the village pump unless someone pointed them out (but more often elsewhere than the pump).

- "or even added to https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Modèle:Bienvenue ?"
 * it's better than the village pump - but still only a one-off indicator/help. It's not even a help anyway, please see last paragraph here. In wikipedia it's already happened multiple times that for reasons unknown to me the editor switched back "on its own" to VE. The only way I'd feel reasonably (but not quite completely) safe from VE would be having to go to some remote place in Preferences in order to turn it on (not 'off'). I'd prefer not having any tab that offers it (since it's so unhelpful for wikt edit anyway), same as in fr wikipédia where I have only one tab called "Edit" so there can be no mistake (maybe there is a way to get that ?) ; or as second proposition having the 2-tabs choice.

- "...disregard a community recommendation if they believe the result will be worse for the target audience."
 * precisely. I can't believe that anyone in their right mind could think that VE as it is now (for fr wikt and in slightly lesser measure for fr wikipd) can do anything but impair and actually prevent editing. So the "misunderstanding about process", well who cares about process when it's so obvious? The obviousness of it is the reason why I thought Deskana was asking for some admin or similar process to be followed.
 * Better drop that one, I don't think I can understand.

What happened when I tried to use that VE is a long (and depressing) story. The summary of it is that try as may, I did not see anything transmitted from the edit boxes to the actual page. So to me there is nothing "visual" to it, this is specialist language and newcomers can't be expected to know what it means. I've had to put a sticker on my comp' that says "NO "Visual Ed"" because my natural tendency is to trust you guys and I must remind myself that that "visual" is not what it says it is. You just can't expect newcomers to understand what each corresponds to. That's why you are 100% right when you say 'stop dumping new editors into the visual mode', and I.T. being unpredictable for many of us it's also right to give a tab on the same screen to get back to the useful editor when the other one accidentally kicks in.

Thanks much for your attention. I hope it'll get sorted soon. Best wishes for the day :) Pueblopassingby (talk) 12:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello, Pueblopassingby, and thanks for your note. I know what you mean about village pumps not always being the way to get information to people, and especially to new editors.
 * Do you have the visual editor disabled in prefs? Un-check "Désactiver temporairement l'ÉditeurVisuel tant qu’il est en version bêta" to get the drop-down menu with the option for two tabs.  There is also an option for always and only giving you the wikitext editor, which some experienced editors prefer.  You can still use the pencil icon to switch, but every single time you click the Edit button, it's guaranteed to start in wikitext.
 * Switching to wikitext as the default is just a bandage, but I feel like we need some first aid right away. Do you remember the little glowing blue dots on the edge of the Cite and Link buttons, the first time you open the visual editor on a new Wikipedia?  (If not, try https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?uselang=fr and open the visual editor to see them.)  I'm wondering if Wiktionary needs a little glowing blue dot that highlights the pencil icon, so people can more easily find the "escape hatch" and switch back to the wikitext mode.  What do you think?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi Whatamidoing, thank you for your feedback, its always interesting to get some.
 * I opened your link of course: weird that the article is in russian but the rest (tabs and all around the article) is in french... Interesting - and useful, would it be only to know where the way out lays !
 * flashing blue dot/s
 * Ah, I see now what you meant about the flashing blue dots. I didn't understand it when you mentioned it in the devs page, Tried to get them but I really am no good at that sort of manip', so couldn't, so made no comment about it.
 * As a new editor I wouldn't know what it is that they underline, so it would scare me more than inform me (scare of making a mess of some unknown sort). I feel that a small popup on hovering over it would come handy, such as "Insert an external link" or "Cite your source" or similar - something short but explicit. I think it will be the same comment re. popup for a flashing dot by the "Edit in wikicode" tab. Providing which, and providing that there are only a few of these dots (lest one gets lost in their abundance), yes it would come handy, I think. I'd guess 4 dots may be a maximum tolerated by the eye (in the physiological sense of perception-cum-assimilation process).
 * "Edit with wikicode" vs. "Edit (with Visual Ed)", more clarity in presenting both
 * Continuing on what I said in the last paragraph of my first post, because I just had another example of it with that here linked page. In it there is the 2-tabs choice. One tab says "Modifier (Edit)", the other says "Modifier le wikicode (Edit with wikicode)". So I had to think again which was which, and had to look at my little note stuck on my comp' to make sure (yes of course my middle name is Dummy... so be it, I'm not alone). New editors won't have a little note, and the way it is presented clearly makes it look like "Edit" is simpler than "Edit with wikicode". Which it is not at all : one is mildly difficult for newbies and one is impossible for even non-newbies (of the people I've been in touch I don't know anyone who actually uses it, for that 'near-impossible' reason precisely). So the presentation of both tabs is really treacherous, and will be so for a long time yet because it'll take a few years (by the feel of things) before the VE is properly adapted to its purpose and really makes editing easier. Treacherous things do not carry a good feeling (= carry bad feelings) and I think bad feelings have no place here (well, you know what I mean). I think it would be much clearer if the "Edit" tab was called "Modifier avec VE (Edit with VE)". Thus it would not look like the normal and easy way to edit is there and nowhere else. It would sure save me from having to think about which is which - I'd probably even not need my little comp' reminder anymore :)
 * I feel that that would go longer towards making things clear, than the dot would. From what I understand, the dot is only there the first time. The tabs are there all the time. Just because one has made one edit or a few edits, does not make one proficient in specialist language - as my own experience demonstrates.
 * Thank you very much for your attention, much appreciated. I do hope that this will be resolved soon and am ever so surprised that such a minor point would meet so much resistance. Cdt, Pueblopassingby (talk) 15:12, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Another mess
Perhaps you would be able to recruit someone to sort the mess at Frontotemporal dementia? Sandy Georgia (Talk)  13:58, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * is from a kind of mediocre journal (=not bad, but not necessarily good, either). Are you satisfied that its contents are typical of other sources?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I haven't taken it any further ... I just needed to link to FTD from DLB, so needed a correct definition. On DLB, the articles published in that journal have been on par with everything else I've read. No time to sort FTD ... Bst, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  23:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

 * please help translate this message into your local language via meta

Thanks again :-) --  Doc James  along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 02:54, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * BTW, there's a script that would let you send multilingual messages across all wikis at once, and would manually strip the translate tags for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Perfect. Will try to figure that out for next year. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 21:25, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Radiologically Isolated Syndrome - clarification on the term "clinical event"
Hi WhatamIdoing, so the article I wrote was just about to appear on the DYK section of the front page (exciting!), but it got pulled back just before it went up as Gatoclass wanted some clarification of the hook. I believe I have addressed his concerns, both in the article, and in the DYK nomination page for the article, though if you think you can improve on my explanation of the term 'clinical event' in the article, feel free to improve on it, as it would be most helpful. Kind regards Calaka (talk) 00:44, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There was another issue with the term 'rare' and so I decided it was best to remove that from the hook and explained my reasoning for it. Always happy if you have any thoughts or suggestions to the DYK nomination process. Hopefully Gotoclass will be able to look through it soon.Calaka (talk) 00:27, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science
Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:16, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:41, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

There is a mop reserved in your name
I was flabbergasted, like never before, to learn that you are not an admin already. If it's not personal, would you mind telling your stalkers and me why you are not? I think you would easily succeed an RfA, and I'm certain you'd be an excellent administrator; just as you are a colleague extraordinaire! Sincerely.--John Cline (talk) 09:19, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the compliments. I'm not interested in considering RFA.  I find that being employed interferes with editing Wikipedia.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Examples
Good point, on. I think I would have done this in prose, though: "Examples are provided in the tables below", instead of redundantly using the same caption over and over. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:28, 2 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I have three browsers open today (*sigh*), and I was in the wrong one.
 * It'd probably be better to have unique captions on those tables. I understand that having actual captions is important, as the equivalent of "skimming" (skipping down to the next element) means that you would miss some descriptions in text.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Identifying reliable sources (history)
Don't know if you're still watching that essay, but there's some new desultory talk on its talk page about promoting it to a guideline. I just made this edit to address some of the things you and I raised back in 2012 the last time this came up. You'll recall that the effort to promote it died out back then, so there's not been any real need to address these issues since it's only been an essay since then. Frankly, I don't think that there's going to be any real effort to promote it this time, either, but just in case... There's other issues which also need to be addressed (conflicts between scholarly and popular sources being the main one), but this edit hits the worst ones, I think. Best regards, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 17:42, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Esterel
My point is that you are asserting that Esterel is an old, obscure language suitable only for simple things like traffic light controllers. That is what Gerard Berry would find humorous.

In fact, Esterel is a modern, actively used family of languages used for incredibly complex things such as the 120 million lines of code that run an Airbus 380.

Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbelknap (talk • contribs) 23:31, 13 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't think that I ever said that it was suitable only for traffic light controllers, or even that it was suitable only for simple things.
 * And, yes, it's an old programming language, just like Microsoft Word is old, and it is not a common language, just like any number of other computer programming languages. There are an order of magnitude more universities (still) teaching Pascal than Esterel, and you go up another order of magnitude for those teaching Java.  There are more schools teaching COBOL and Fortran than teaching Esterel.  That makes Esterel "uncommon".  None of these are derogatory terms.  If anything, people interested in well-paying careers should consider learning uncommon programming languages, because "uncommon" translates to better pay and better job security.
 * That said, if you've got a decent source for Esterel being used in the A380, then please add that fact to the article. That would help people understand what it's useful for.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:24, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

... and six --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Your edit at VPM
Re Special:Diff/852742770, not sure if you noticed, but that discussion was closed. Did you want to move your comment to the active discussion at Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators? I said the same thing there, so your reply as worded will still make sense. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  02:15, 31 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I discovered that it had been closed after I posted. Having an auto-resolving edit conflict skip you past subsequent changes is one of the risks of forgetting to click the big blue button in a tab for a couple of hours.
 * I will probably post some thoughts there, but not until I've finished reading all of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science
Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 17:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * This nomination needs a new hook proposed if you wish to pursue it; please stop by as soon as possible. Thank you. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Jeffrey Drebin
Thanks for the feedback over at WP:Medicine. I'm not sure if you saw my reply there, but I removed the link to the search results and replaced it with the authority control template. Do you have another minute to review my proposed draft to see if it's in a publishable state?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not interested in supporting articles about people like him. I believe that if people like him understood that An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing, then they wouldn't want one.
 * BTW, have you heard of the Voice intro project? Helping people make a good recording might be a useful value-added contribution.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

The source's audience must also be considered
Hello WAID,

It's been a while. I miss our conversations.

RE: "The source's audience must also be considered"?

I dislike the wording and tried to improve it. User:TonyBallioni quickly disagreed (I am guessing thinking of this discussion).

To my surprise, WikiBlame blames you for these words. Your edit was to make a quite differently structured paragraph. I note that you introduced the tricky semicolon, which I find confuses unfamiliar readers.

Can you comment on my thoughts, that passive "must"s are a poor way to write guidance? It reminds me of an old professor espousing opinions on how things must be done, disconnected to what people doing things are actually doing. When the doers meet the rule espouser, they communicate inefficiently, because the passive "must" doesn't speak to modifying a behaviour. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:04, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I like must because it is stronger, and in this area, stronger words in guidelines are needed lest they be read as not really having any weight. That this line in particular has been stable for a decade I consider a good thing (I didn’t realize it was pre-rewrite) I also generally find the passive voice clearer in these situations and find obsession with eliminating it in writing to be bad writing myself, but that’s a personal tick from my academic background TonyBallioni (talk) 06:10, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the passive voice is usually easier. However, from academic/adult educator experience, I found that a passive tense assertion "This must be done" (and compare Passive-aggressive behavior) is much more likely to intimidate, and for the recipient to go silent, and walk away.  In contrast, "You must do this" is much easier to question, and is more likely to lead to discussion, which is more likely to lead to understanding.  But compare "Do this" with "You must do this"?
 * (1) "The source's audience must also be considered" vs
 * (2) "You must consider the source's audience" vs
 * (3) "Consider the source's audience"
 * I find "must" to lends itself to bullying language. I find that (1) inspires the dismissive response "I did".  (2) inspires the defensive question "Why", and (3) inspires the question "how".  With the third choice of language, I find it leaves question begging, "how do you assess the source's audience, and I think that is a very good question for WP:AUD.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello again, SmokeyJoe. I do miss our conversations, and I'm so glad you brought this one to me.  Perhaps you remember how much I love a discussion on this sort of subject.
 * I think your three options cover the territory. Although I have a small bias towards re-writing policy sentences into the active voice, your (2) feels a bit strong.  Perhaps it truly is necessary (e.g., at AFD) for someone to consider the source's audience, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you personally have to be the person doing it.  I'm therefore leaning towards your (3), which provides the instruction, albeit in a less forceful way, which might not satisfy TonyBallioni.  And perhaps he is right to be dissatisfied.
 * So thus I ask: Exactly how necessary is it to consider the audience?  Consider the case of a rather biggish small business (e.g., a small regional pizza chain with 300 employees).  Imagine that a new editor is a fan and wants to figure out whether the company could have a Wikipedia article.  Is it absolutely critical for this newbie to consider the audience, or just a good idea?   How often do we think good-faith non-paid editors would make the wrong choice if they don't do this?  Are good-faith volunteers even the correct people to write this advice for?  What do you think?  (P.S.  No fair telling the newbie to list the company at Wikivoyage instead, even if that's what I might do in practice.    )  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Non-science
Hello! Your submission of Non-science at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Boud (talk) 01:04, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

JDRF Edit
Hi! Friendly reminder to check out my updated edit on the JDRF talk page! I pinged you, but am uncertain if you saw it. Your suggestions were greatly appreciated and I included them in the update. Let me know if you have any further thoughts, or if you find it is good as is, feel free to put it up! Thanks again for your time, patience, and assistance. ElisabethF (talk) 15:01, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Talkback
Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 15:31, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

A goat for you!
Thanks for helping me make my first brand-spankin-new page <3

Iamjessklein (talk) 17:51, 19 October 2018 (UTC) 

October 2018
--Bsherr (talk) 00:51, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

User scripts
I haven't done a whole lot of editing since August and I just noticed my user scripts are no longer loading. Was there a change to the software/interface in the intervening period? If so, would you happen to know how I might restore the functionality of my user scripts?

I don't really know who else to ask; I figured you might know since you informed me (technically, WT:MED) a while back about changes to the software that necessitated changing lines of code like to  in one's common.js page.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 05:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I just removed a line of code that was borking my common.js page and prevented my scripts from loading. Sorry for bothering you.   Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 05:51, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Congratulations on finding the solution.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

PMID problem with visual editor cite tool?
Thank you again for your comments and feedback on the WP:MED talk page. Today I have noticed that the PMID tool is not working all the time. Twice in a row, using different PMIDs on different WP articles, I have got a warning "We couldn't make a citation for you. You can create one manually using the "Manual" tab above." I tried a second time, got the same warning, and then I am able to add it with the DOI. Have you heard this feedback before? I have never noticed this problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assisted_zona_hatching&type=revision&diff=868497805&oldid=866753080&diffmode=source Thanks again, JenOttawa (talk) 15:56, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems to be working now. Thanks! JenOttawa (talk) 18:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)



Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Hello,

I wanted to share a follow-up to an RfC you participated in from late 2016/early 2017. It was regarding making certain warning templates visible on mobile. The Readers web team has been working to improve how these templates appear on the mobile website. I shared an announcement with communities today that covers what is happening. If you have any interest, I encourage your support in giving feedback on the project page or helping update templates of this nature with some of our recommendations.

Thank you, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 13 November 2018 (UTC)



ArbCom 2018 election voter message


Discussion at Talk:Passengers of the RMS Titanic
I'd like to invite editors who participated in the deletion discussion to give their input at article talk. There was considerable interest in cleaning up this article in one way or another, but there have been few responses to my proposal to trim the passenger lists. Alternative proposals are certainly welcome as well; I'm hoping that we can build some sort of consensus for the scope and direction of the article moving forward. Thanks –dlthewave ☎ 22:01, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas
  "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,  I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Luke 2:10-11 (King James Version) Ozzie10aaaa (talk) is wishing you a  Merry Christmas. This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove. Spread the cheer by adding to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Skeptic from Britain
I am an inactive editor and I came across User:Skeptic from Britain because of a series of deletions focusing on LCHF dieting. It is pretty clear based on his/her edit history that (s)he considers LCHF to be quackery, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (this spreadsheet lists 70+ studies on the efficacy of LCHF diets, it's NOT pseudoscience). In particular, see this controlled study which demonstrated dramatic improvements in T2D management, including elimination of medications and blood glucose correction to non-diabetic ranges, using a ketogenic (low carb) dieting strategy. It is one of the only lifestyle approaches clinically shown to have such a dramatic effect, and it has received reliable mainstream press coverage. Perhaps some neutral editors should get involved because it's not at all clear that Skeptic can be objective in this domain. ATren (talk) 19:26, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As an example, on the [Tim Noakes] page, (s)he refs a primary source for criticism (a letter to the editor) here, while admonishing another editor for adding what (s)he considers to be unreliable sources a few edits later. This kind of inconsistency indicates [WP:POV] issues with this editor on this topic. ATren (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Evidence that he has a very strong POV in this area: "cult...quackery".
 * I am interested in solving problems. I am not really interested in hearing about editors' views of other editors' alleged beliefs.  Please Comment on content, not on the contributor.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The point was, the editing is problematic. But whatever. Typical. Back to my exile. Wikipedia remains the same mess it was when I left years ago. ATren (talk) 05:44, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Resolving some of Jytdog's unresolved work
Hello, Last month Jytdog put out a request on WT:MED to resolve a request I had made to revert an incorrect edit. You helpfully weighed in, but nothing happened. As you know, Jytdog is now gone. Would you be able to take up the mantle? If the original merge can be reverted (i.e. if the multisystem proteinopathy content can be pulled back out into its own page rather than being merged into "hereditary inclusion body myopathy" -- a merge that I argue should not have been made) I can make any additional edits to the MSP page that are deemed appropriate. Thanks. 192.55.208.10 (talk) 16:39, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Twinkle on XFD pages
You might consider making a template for the content you added in. --Izno (talk) 21:56, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note. I'm not sure that it will ever be used on so many pages that we really need yet another template for it.  There are only six XFD pages, and so far, this content is on two of them (with one word different between them).  Another already has information about Twinkle, and the FFD process isn't as obviously scary looking.  So my inclination at the moment is to keep it a manual process.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

No seriously
What are u doing?

How did u come up with the name.  Immortal  Wizard  (chat) 21:31, 21 January 2019 (UTC)


 * It's something that I think about frequently: What am I doing, and is this actually what I want to be doing?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't even know what to do with my life.  Immortal  Wizard  (chat)  21:43, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know what to do with your life, either. ;-)
 * In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to read Existential therapy and see whether those decade-old tags at the top have any meaningful relationship to the current version. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Talking about existence, what are your thoughts on Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia? Which side are you more inclined to?  Immortal  Wizard  (chat) 22:08, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm a mergeist, which sidesteps a lot of that debate. Most things can be included, but not on their own separate pages.
 * That said, I think that we should have (and enforce) higher standards for living people and everything covered by the Notability (organizations and companies) guideline. Having fewer articles about individual people/organizations/companies/products, but more mentions of those same subjects as examples in broader subjects would suit me just fine.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

re: Draft:David M. Posner
If he is DM Posner on Google Scholar, I don't think he passes WP:PROF. A quick google search shows coverage limited to a) obits and b) press releases. So at this point I concur with the deletion of the draft. If there is more substantial coverage, the article's creator should find it and add it to this not particularly impressive stub. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:24, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Lisa Littman for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Lisa Littman is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Lisa Littman until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Safrolic (talk) 09:17, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

BRD
Please do not keep restoring your changes to WP:BRD. Go to talk if you want to discuss. SarahSV (talk) 17:32, 22 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'd been hoping that with two editors who had as much experience as you and I do, that we could actually work this out the old-fashioned wiki way. You probably remember that:  one person makes an edit, and the next improves it, and the first improves on that.  But I can do talk pages, if you can't find a single thing worth keeping in my edits.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Beware of beans
This is all true, but does it help to say it out loud? Beware of beans NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:25, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, I think so. The two possible benefits are (1) that someone will read it, and remember it during some future dispute, and decide that they don't want to look that stupid and manipulative by declaring that if they don't get their way, then they'll take their ball and go home, so they spare us the drama, and (2) that someone will click the link to GoodBye, and learn how to respond when they encounter this sort of emotional abuse.  Studiously ignoring a resignation manifesto is a very sound response, or saying good-bye.  What doesn't work is professions of undying admiration and declarations that Wikipedia will fail if that person doesn't come back.  (And if you haven't seen any of those – well, you're lucky.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

WP:Verifiability - does a website that requires log in meets the verifiability criteria
Hello WhatamIdoing,

I've just posted a question on the HelpDesk that I believe you are qualified to answer. Do you care to take a look at it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#WP:Verifiability_-_does_a_website_that_requires_log_in_meets_the_verifiability_criteria?

Best regards, Coel Jo (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing help needed
Hi there Waid, I hope all is well with you. I've a sourcing question. Our WP:MEDRS guideline says:
 * Broadly speaking, reviews may be narrative or systematic (and sometimes both). Narrative reviews often set out to provide a general summary of a topic based on a survey of the literature, which can be useful when outlining a topic.

I left everything Monsanto a few years back when it seemed to be a waste of my time but have recently returned to attempt a few edits. Glyphosate has not been reviewed since 2000 and I'm trying to add something more recent. I used this edit which was rejected with this edit summary: [] Because BMJ calls it an essay I don't know how to translate that to anything that we list in our guidelines for med stuff. What do you think, would this be a narrative review? Gandydancer (talk) 15:47, 11 May 2019 (UTC)


 * There are a lot of recent review articles about glyphosate, such as . One of them happens to be  (click on the part that says "Publication types, MeSH terms, Substances, Grant support" to see where it says that it's a review).  It might look familiar.
 * The edit summary suggests that the main problem is that some editors think the authors are somehow inappropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * That does indeed seem to be the main problem. But does WP consider them to be inappropriate?  How do I figure that out?  Also, what about the "essay" question--does WP consider essays a form of narrative review?  As for the sites you offer, yes indeed I am aware of them but it is good to see you point them out as well.  Gandydancer (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Oh! Followed up on your suggestions. Never mind my questions for now. { Gandydancer (talk) 18:08, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Allopathic medicine
Just in case you don't know this clip - Homeopathic A&E. Narky Blert (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!
Thank you. What a nice way to start my day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:57, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank You
Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it! NPTruth (talk) 19:13, 23 May 2019 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. I hope that you stick with us.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 23 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't know where to post thanks for you, so let me join this subsection to thank you very much for your careful assistance and help in regards to Rusalov's test! I see that some Admins collect scores on deleted pages and they are eager to have more "victims" to increase their numbers. In these situations, pages of narrow expertise have minimal public support and are not very protected if there is no public discussion. I am so happy that at least there are some fair Admins who do the search and reason first. Thank you, thank you again, and surely I will be contributing to other pages. I am not super skilled editor - if there is a place where I could add my thanks to you - please let me know. Yours very truly, iratrofimov. Iratrofimov (talk) 02:34, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Partisan sources
Template:Partisan sources has been nominated for merging with Template:Third-party. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. w umbolo  ^^^  23:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:CEN is now open!
To all interested parties: Now that it has a proper shortcut, the current events noticeboard has now officially opened for discussion!

WP:CEN came about as an idea I explored through a request for comment that closed last March. Recent research has re-opened the debate on Wikipedia's role in a changing faster-paced internet. Questions of WP:NOTNEWS and WP:Recentism are still floating around. That being said, there are still plenty of articles to write and hopefully this noticeboard can positively contribute to that critical process.

Thank you for your participation in the RFC, and I hope to see you at WP:CEN soon! &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 19:10, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 19:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)

WP:INHERITORG and WP:INHERITWEB
Hi,

You added these to the notability guidelines several years ago. Were these additions approved by the community? I've looked through the talk pages archives of the guidelines and WP:VPP and haven't yet found any evidence of that. Is there something I'm missing? The reason I ask is that WP:NOTINHERITED (an essay that predates INHERITORG and INHERITWEB) now makes it clear that it is not a guideline or policy, which could be taken as a contradiction to the notion that the concept is (right?) (In fact, I think I actually described it as a de-facto guideline, but was contradicted). Adam9007 (talk) 17:38, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Adam9007, for your recent updates to ATA. Perhaps that will help some people who are unfamiliar with the page.  Of course, the page itself has been marked as an essay since the second edit, back in 2006, but Nobody reads the directions, even if they're at the top of the same page.
 * As for those specific changes, I don't remember. I've done quite a lot policy work over the years, including writing what's now called WP:PGBOLD, which tells you how to change policies and guidelines.     Usually, for me, major changes like that are either tightly associated with a specific discussion, or they were preceded by multiple discussions, spread over many months and sometimes over multiple pages.  For example, I merged WP:3PARTY and WP:INDY a while ago, and I think that more than a year elapsed between announcing my intention to do so and actually doing it (and I was talking about the possibility on other pages well before that, including WT:V).  It is therefore not always easy to find which discussion(s) precipitated an edit, even when those discussions happened.
 * Far more relevantly than my personal style for policy work, though, is the fact that those edits did reflect, and to the best of my knowledge, still do reflect, the view of the broader community. If they didn't, they would have been reverted some time during the last eight and nine years.  There are three basic concepts in those edits, and all three are still sound:
 * Notability requires sources. Editors can't just claim that in a just world, there would be lots of great sources for the subject.  If a subject is challenged on notability grounds, you have to produce independent sources.  If you don't, then the content needs to be merged or removed, because no independent sources means no neutral point of view.
 * There's no such thing as an inherently notable subject. "Inherently notable" means that the subject would be exempt from the verifiability rules, which is impossible.  Notability is conferred through independent sources, and no independent sources means no notability, no matter what the subject is (although there are some groups of subjects, such as US presidents and planets in our solar system, for which every single subject happens to be notable in practice, because nobody expects a US president to get elected without any sources mentioning it).
 * And it's no good saying that some run-of-the-mill business deserves a separate article merely because its website says that George Washington once ate there, or because a celebrity owns it, or the business is otherwise trying to ride someone else's coattails to notability. If you're trying to establish notability for a restaurant (for example), you need proof that of "attention from the world at large" for that restaurant, not attention for someone who once gave it some money.
 * While I'm on this general subject, I hope you won't mind me ranting at you for a minute. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I was looking at the Fallacy fallacy problem earlier (for something completely unrelated), and I think we see this around NOTINHERITED.  Just because the restaurant in my example above can't inherit notability from its famous visitor doesn't prove that the restaurant isn't notable.  It could be exactly the kind of place that we really want to encourage articles on.  "George Washington slept there (and he's notable, so every place he slept is notable, too" is what NOTINHERITED is dealing with.  But if you've got independent sources talking about this place, then it still can be a notable place, regardless of whether Washington slept there.  It's even okay if those sources are talking about it precisely because George Washington slept there (who knows?  Maybe the next tourist fad will be to visit all the places George Washington slept).  What matters is the "independent sources are talking about it" part, not the "Washington slept there" part.  I think that part is sometimes unclear to people who are trying to quickly look up The Answer™ rather than trying to understand the underlying logic.  As with all fallacy fallacies, rejecting the idea that the restaurant could inherit notability from a one-time guest doesn't result in us knowing that it's non-notable.  It results in us just not knowing, full stop.  The answer about its notability has to come from something else.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Lol, a while ago, I did an analysis of NOTINHERITED and its supposed connexion to A7, and that's basically the point I was trying to make with regards to claims of significance. I made those edits to ATA because, in my experience, NOTINHERITED is notoriously misapplied to speedy deletion and its lower standard of significance/importance too (I thought it needed to be made clear that there's not only a potential for sources, the misapplication ignores WP:ATD too). I've received an awful lot of cack over it, and I think it would be highly ironic (considering that there are a lot of editors who've had a go at me over it) if the 'Notability is not inherited' concept turned out to not be a community-approved guideline after all (much like how WP:Office Actions, despite being labelled as policy since 2006, recently turned out to not be a community-approved policy at all). That's why I really do need to know if there's proper consensus for it (speaking of which, many editors have either implied or outright claimed consensus for NOTINHERITED's application to A7 and significance/importance, but no-one's been able to provide any links... ). Adam9007 (talk) 20:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a problem that will be best solved at WT:CSD. Maybe an explanatory footnote in A7?  It'd have to be just one or two sentences, since the regulars at CSD almost never support the additions of lengthy text.    WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, it's something I thought was solved here, but apparently not... Adam9007 (talk) 02:22, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Getting it into the CSD policy will ultimately be more effective. Nobody reads the directions.  If it's in the policy, in a couple of years, enough people will have noticed to make a difference.  If it's in an explanatory essay, it takes longer.  And if it's in the archives of the talk page of the essay...  Well, I'm sure that a few of the people who participated in that discussion will remember it, but I wouldn't count on much beyond that.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:02, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You mean I should start another RfC on it (its relationship with A7)? That one has actually been considered a local consensus. Adam9007 (talk) 22:35, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't start with an RfC. I'd start with a plain old talk-page discussion that basically says, "Hey, anyone mind if I add a footnote that says something like 'A claim of significance could be something like ' is owned by ' or ' is the only in '?" (or whatever brief bit of content you think would be appropriate).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing conflict
Hi, I would be grateful for some of your involvement regarding a long-running dispute on the article Alexander the Great in the Quran.

The version of the lede that I (and at least too) support is this one. However, this version is being repeatedly reverted for this. The reverters while completely ignoring WP:EXCEPTIONAL, WP:NPOV and WP:ASSERT concerns, only argue against using Muslim scholars as reliable sources for the representation of Muslim opinions.

Can you kindly weigh-in on whether widely famous and respected Muslim scholars such as Syed Abul Ala Maududi and Mufti Muhammad Shafi with widely read and accepted published works should be considered reliable enough for their understanding of the views of their own demography? For, maybe a little too detailed, discussion regarding this, see Talk:Alexander the Great in the Quran.

Additionally, given the overall POV and weight issues obvious in the lede proposed by the reverters, kindly also give an opinion regarding the overall lede.

-- AhmadF.Cheema (talk) 03:54, 23 July 2019 (UTC)


 * You should probably take this to WP:RSN, rather than to individual users. It might also help if you explained that your sources are 20th-century people, since the IP is calling them "traditional".  An author from centuries ago, no matter how famous, isn't generally ideal.
 * I wouldn't be surprised if you are running into a cultural problem. A writer who is "famous" in one place can be "unknown" in the next, and when an "unknown" source says something that is unfamiliar or unexpected, then people often assume that the source is wrong or unreliable.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 23 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your time. -- AhmadF.Cheema (talk) 15:59, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Train Station Notability
Your comment of 16 July sums up the confusion. Does anything now happen in coming to a consensus or is the matter left indefinitely on the back burner? Taking for example the stub page for a rarely used flag stop (comprising only a pole for infrastructure on a line having 3 trains per week each way), what criteria would administrators consider in determining if the page should be eliminated? Is it best just to ignore these stubs, and reluctantly accept that they poorly inform or sometimes blatantly misinform readers? DMBanks1 (talk) 17:41, 25 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello, DMBanks1. Staff don't make content policies, so you want to talk to volunteer-me, not work-me.
 * If we are lucky, everyone will go back to their normal wiki editing, and the "all train stations are always notable" people will keep in mind that the actual rule is just a bit weaker than that.
 * If we are not lucky, then we will have to have this fight all over again.
 * And if your normal wiki philosophy is mergism, then I suggest that you consider whether some of the doomed Permastubs could be merged up into bigger subjects (e.g., "List of stops on Example Line"). Someone quietly improving things doesn't usually get much opposition.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Chronic Lyme
"Welcome to Wikipedia. Sometimes article titles are confusing, so I just wanted to make sure that you knew that the Chronic Lyme disease article isn't the same subject as Post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. The "CLD" article's subject is people who never had a verifiable Lyme infection and probably have fibromyalgia. PTLDS is for people with ongoing problems after treatment for a proven Lyme infection. I know it's confusing, but it's likely that your contribution would have been more appropriate for PTLDS than for the page it ended up on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2019 (UTC)"


 * I could be misunderstanding your aim here, but this comes off as extremely patronizing and rude. No, I didn't accidentally post to the wrong page.  I guess I was foolish in thinking people like you hadn't locked down the two pages already with your outdated and close minded opinion on the subject.
 * Fauxreal9999 (talk) 02:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello, Fauxreal9999,
 * My point isn't that you don't know what you're talking about. It's that it's not always obvious from the page title what editors have decided to talk about on that page, and it's not really fair to have new editors just guess and then tell them that they're wrong, without explaining why it's not what they're expecting.  I'm only assuming that you're not a mind reader.  That the English Wikipedia is an over-complicated place and often not friendly to newcomers is something I'm certain about, so there's no assumption there.     WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

World oil market chronology from 2003
You responded to a question I had about the main template (specifically, I didn't know where to ask it) but you said what I should do about the article. Here is the discussion. If you don't know what to do about the article, I understand, and I'm no expert on how to write about oil, but I somehow ended up with the responsibility and I've done too much work to simply delete my additions. A summary might be nice if I can figure out how, but all the coverage I used as sources was short-term rather than something I can use to summarize an entire year, and it was mostly what appeared to be major events. Looking back, some may not have been that major, but the reasons behind price changes are important and need to go somewhere. For eight years no one told me I was doing anything wrong, after someone said I was doing a good job. Few people made other contributions.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:30, 31 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Vchimpanzee,
 * I think writing about recent history is hard, because it's hard to find those whole-year type of sources that would make it easy for you. I'm reminded of the general business principle about not making a decision before you need to.  Do you need to re-write the article right now?  If not, then maybe wait a couple of years, and hope that someone will start publishing more about what happened.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * If you look at how long it is, that's what's got to happen. I can keep on adding major short-term developments in the shorter articles, which is what was suggested. I'm working on how it might look with shorter summaries, but it's still not looking right.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:55, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow, 2013 looks a lot better than some of the other years.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:44, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Help finding breastfeeding paper needed
Hi there Waid, I need a little help with obtaining a paper that is listed in the recent Signpost. I tried to find help from an editor that I know is sympathetic to women's issues, but so far have not found any help...so I turn to you because I know you will not fail me (and I just love you for that {). Rather than explain it allover again I will copy my note at Drmies page:


 * I need some advise or help. The latest Signpost issue has a section on woman stuff.  It contains this study "Breastfeeding, Authority, and Genre: Women's Ethos in Wikipedia and Blogs."  I tried to get a copy as it is available on the web and got as far as a note that my request had been sent to the authors, but I never heard back from them (which did not at all surprise me...).  I'm the leading editor on our breastfeeding article and I have been for some years, most likely during the time that they did their study, and I'd like to see our work from their eyes.  I'm guessing that I will be critical of their findings, but I think I may learn a thing or two as well that may help us to better present women's issues. Any advise on how to get a copy of this study?

Suggestions? Gandydancer (talk) 17:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Did you ask User:HaeB about this? There's a link to the chapter on Google Books, but it only shows a few pages.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You are mentioned on page 336, in the context of you preferring information from reliable sources over your own experience. It sounds like the authors believe that this is a failing.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes I read the pages that were not excluded - and that was enough to piss me off a tad, that is for sure. Why they assume that someone that was interested in gandy dancers and yodeling could not possibly be very knowledgeable about nursing is beyond me.  Waid, I have a master's degree in nursing and I worked for many years as a nurse manager at a large hospital.  Plus, they ignored the fact that I was the leading or one of the principal editors of several other medical articles for example the   New England Compounding Center meningitis outbreak article, several flu articles, childbirth, and perhaps a few others.
 * And then they get into a discussion that ends with my post about my experience about a decreased desire for sex while I was nursing - and it would not surprise me one bit to find that it is a biological fact to protect the newborn and someone should do a study on it, but until then it is just my experience.  Who knows, maybe another woman wanted more sex.  Good for a blog, not good for Wikipedia - even though they call it "troubling."  Any thoughts on that?
 * Then they get into the nursing fashions bit. I tried to look that up on the talk page but the click for the old pages is missing.  How can I find them?   For now, Gandy  Gandydancer (talk) 16:26, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, but who actually wants statistically significant information, or even the views of experienced healthcare professionals? It's obviously far more important to them that you're just a random female with your own individual experiences, and they are apparently untroubled by the idea that any individual's experiences could be anomalous and misrepresented as common, or even that people might tell outright lies.  (We have some kind of magical software that can stop dishonest edits, right?)  I think that they don't see Wikipedia as an encyclopedia.  I think they see it as a sort of societal conversation, not very different from Twitter or chatting with fellow members of the women's musical club before the lady president introduces this month's performer.
 * The "fashion" discussion appears to have been a quite brief exchange, assuming that they're talking about Talk:Breastfeeding/Archive 3. Add   to the end of whatever you typed in the search box, and it'll search only pages whose titles begin with Talk:Breastfeeding (including all of the Talk:Breastfeeding/Archive pages).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Incredible how they show that poor Fabiola's ethea (one of their favorite words) was "silenced."  If they would have carefully read our sourcing guidelines they would have realized that Parents would work just fine to discuss nursing fashions.  IMO the only thing that silenced Fabiola is that she realized that it's easy to ask that something be added to an article, but doing it yourself takes quite a bit of time and energy.
 * Waid, reading this article adds to my suspicion that a lot of research is just plain crap.  I think that a lot of research starts with a preconceived idea and then does "research" to prove they're right.
 * PS - Reading the talk page, gosh it's been six years! I wonder how the   little jerks are doing?  {  Gandydancer (talk) 18:03, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I thought it was common knowledge that a nursing woman's desire for sex was lowered? Anyway, my little "jerks"--what can I say. Jerk #2 just had her second period--in second period! We had a good laugh over that. Jerk #3 is 7 and a huge nerf gun fan, so I have to be on my toes ALL THE TIME. (I keep one under my pillow--for the insiders, the Triad is really small and handy, but not accurate.) Drmies (talk) 23:07, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * User:SummerPhDv2.0 was involved in the fashion "discussion". I don't know what the authors of that paper (chapter?) thought should be done.  Summer provided practical advice about how not to get reverted.  Perhaps they wanted more cheerleading to go with it?
 * Drmies, we're not after "common" knowledge. We're supposed to be "constructing" it, and the common stuff already exists.  Only maybe you're not supposed to be constructing it at all, since this is all lady stuff?
 * And that reminds me that I'm in the market for a new toolbox. Any advice?  The goal is to replace an old-fashioned metal one that weighs about a million pounds, which I'm tired of lifting up and down from a shelf that's slightly above shoulder height.  Plastic, fabric, something else?  It's for small woodworking-ish tools that I don't use very often, if that affects the recommendations.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * (Stray comment) The study concludes:


 * It seems not to realise that avoiding this sort of thing is the part of the reason for the Wikipedia policies it decries.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:21, 23 September 2019 (UTC).

Hello
Hello WhatamIdoing — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kugihot (talk • contribs) 19:42, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

efn versus the malignant tangles of cite books in body text, why?
You said on Iridescent's talk that the tech people have no interest in making efn viable for WikiVisual or whatever it's called. They love the 'impenetrable mass created by that tool, whatever it's called, the one that drops cite books into body text like pimples on a teenager's face. So my question is..........why? Are they trying to say that 1) in the future only WikiVisual will be available, and 2) WikiVisual will completely hide the ugly-assed, massively confusing details from the tender gaze of editors? Thank you for your reply ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Lingzhi2,
 * Apparently there's an actual, real-live technical problem with processing the sfn-type templates. I can't tell you what it is.  I can tell you that the devs sincerely and genuinely believe that this problem exists, and that I have asked for an full explanation at least twice, and then my eyes glazed over both times, and I realized that I don't actually understand any of it.  The individual sentences made sense up to a certain point, and then I got lost in a tangle of technical tentacles.  So it's not going to happen because the costs (e.g., dev time, performance degradation, ongoing maintenance complexity, etc.) exceed the benefits (e.g., several hundred editors could use the visual editor more easily if they wanted to, which apparently they don't really want to anyway).  I'm glad that I can report that the visual editor and the sfn-class templates have developed a sort of mutual live-and-let-live status.  You can edit the articles in the visual editor without creating a huge mess, which was not the case in 2013.  You just won't see full function.  For example, I would expect the ref numbers to all be wrong (e.g., perhaps all of them will be, and none of them would display as  in the visual editor).
 * The visual editor does hide quite a number of wikitext messes. That's why a lot of us prefer it for straight copyediting.  It's easier to spot the problem if you don't have to mentally parse templates and markup syntax while you're trying to figure out whether this subject matches the predicate, which is w-a-a-a-y over there in wikitext terms.
 * As for the future: I cannot make predictions about what will happen "always" or in the distant future, and I automatically distrust all such claims.  If we say that a reasonable lifespan in software might be on the order of 15 years long, then I don't think that anyone is going to be able to predict what "next generation" Wikipedia will look like, much less the one after that.  But I think we can make some reasonable predictions about the current generation:  For the foreseeable future, the visual editor will continue to exist, and at least one of the current wikitext editors will continue to exist.  For the foreseeable future, there will continue to be a way to edit without running Javascript in your browser/device, which, in practice, means that there will be a way to edit wikitext.  (Using the visual editor requires Javascript.  So does having any buttons at the top of all of the existing wikitext editors.  But there's a button-less plain window that doesn't.)
 * I do think you should try out the visual editor. Feel free to play in User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/sandbox whenever you want.  It's got most types of content already on the page.  Try merging a couple of cells in the table.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this long reply. I sincerely appreciate it... I have no idea about the future, but I know very clearly that in the present everyone is too damn lazy to do anything other than use a piece of crap tool that drops long cite book templates in body text, creating a helluva, helluva ugly, tangled mess. It's precisely analogous to littering. (Hey, the litter doesn't bother me! Screw everyone else!) And so on. It is in fact littering. But hey. It doesn't bother the ones doing it! ...That's all. You can go back to your pre-rant life now. Apologies for the imposition. ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 15:31, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There are multiple tools to generate citation templates. I saw a discussion at WP:VPT indicating that one of them didn't keep up with the latest changes to WP:CS1, so it's work to make it, work to edit around it, and work to update it later.  But despite the costs, the citation template do seem to be popular, and it's not just us.  The Australian library system seems to provide the wikitext for most (all?) of their records – 100% citation templates.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Academic Research about Creative Commons-Peer Production-P2P
Hello,

I posted about my academic research a while ago and I thank you very much for taking the time to reply to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=peer+production&prefix=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns0=1

I am very new at Wikipedia and i am struggling to find my way and to understand the dynamics.

I was hoping to be able to discuss with you the terms of agreement you sent me so I could understand them more. Also hopefully be able to share with you a bit more about my research and why it is important if it possible to do live interviews with people who take part in Wikipedia (no matter the role/position).

I would gladly share the main topic and my methodology since you mentioned that in your kind reply.

Thank you very much again — Preceding unsigned comment added by MayssamD (talk • contribs) 15:43, 13 October 2019 (UTC)


 * User:MayssamD, have you read the pages that I suggested at Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 62 yet? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello and thank you again for your reply. My research requires data from live interviews of people who volunteer their time. I need to record, transcribe, code and analyze them. My aim is to try to post my research somewhere and hopefully see who is willing to give me 20 min for a short interview. Also, I am unable to understand why I am taken to the "conflict of interest" page. I would kindly ask you to maybe clarify for me if I am doing something wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MayssamD (talk • contribs) 16:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, you are not breaking any of Wikipedia's rules.
 * I recommend reading previous discussions at WP:COIN because you want to find out whether being paid to do something vs doing it as a hobby changes people's ethical behavior. The COIN archives are one place where you can find information about both volunteers and paid contractors on Wikipedia.  For example, you might expect that an unpaid person would be more more ethical, and then you would discover that some volunteers get blocked for doing unethical things like stalking paid contractors in the real world, or that they are rude because they think they should be allowed to behave at a lower standard for their leisure-time activities.  Or you might think that a paid person would do anything to get the job done, and then you would read messages from paid contractors that are extremely polite and live up to the highest ethical ideals.  You might want to look at what User:Essayist1, a paid contractor, does as an example of a paid contractor who works within ethical boundaries such as disclosing that he's being paid, not trying to deceive people, and accepting that not all clients will get what they want.  And, of course, the opposite is also true:  you will find that some volunteers are extraordinarily ethical, and that some paid contractors are willing to engage in illegal activities, so long as they get paid before they get caught.
 * If your research methods don't allow you to look at existing "natural experiments" and gather background information (which will help you ask better questions in the interviews), then you should talk to your university about the advantages of multiple research modalities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I totally understand and I am already looking at the links you sent me and I thank you for that. Yet I, please, must still ask. Is there a place where I can post about my research and see if anyone is interested in a short interview? Especially that I still have to do it as my main methodology anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MayssamD (talk • contribs) 23:17, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * MayssamD, there aren't any good ways to recruit people. Editors at the English Wikipedia get a lot of requests for interviews, and many of us (including me) refuse them automatically.  If you speak another language fluently, then I suggest that you go to a non-English Wikipedia and look for potential interview subjects there.
 * If, for some reason, you really need English Wikipedia editors, then you might consider leaving messages on these pages:
 * Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard – invite the editors who deal with conflict-of-interest (and therefore ethical) complaints to talk to you
 * WikiProject Philosophy – invite people who are interested in ethics as a concept
 * Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories/Noticeboard – invite people who focus on removing bad content from the English Wikipedia
 * And finally, I suggest that you identify individual people who might be suitable, and leave personal messages on their user talk pages. A clear message ("I'm doing this, I request that, please contact me this way") will help.  But I really do think that your research would be more interesting and probably easier if you looked outside the highly active editors at the English Wikipedia.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply and thank you for all your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MayssamD (talk • contribs) 15:13, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

I tried ...
... to resist posting this, and I apologize for my lack of self-control. But I have to ask: (and I know it was long ago) .. still: Is this edit, in particular We need well-writing articles... deliberate wording? It really made me smile. And I apologize, I'm honestly not trying to "make fun", but it's just too good to pass up. — Ched (talk) 12:39, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that this morning, Ched. I laughed until I almost couldn't breathe.  I regret to say that I can't honestly claim to have done it deliberately.  I've just disqualified myself from doing any of that, haven't it?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:36, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I am relieved that you laughed. I had noticed other places that you had a pretty good sense of humor, so I figured I was pretty safe. — Ched (talk) 15:43, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I've decided that it's good to be old. I may not have a purple dress and a red hat yet, but if I couldn't laugh at myself over unimportant things, I'd be miserable.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:13, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

What are you doing?
It's bad enough having to engage with editors who are ignorant of how things work here. But when you side with them advocating content rooted in your own questionable pronouncements about the real world ("the tiny fraction of UK folks that practice circumcision as a religions thing") that just about takes the bloody biscuit - especially when it's delivered with a swipe about my supposed "personal beliefs". We need to stick to content that can be verified, especially in tricky areas like circumcision. Alexbrn (talk) 20:50, 20 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Alexbrn, 95% of the UK is not Jewish and not Muslim. If absolutely every one of them was excluded from this count (unlikely) and absolutely every one of them was circumcised (even less likely), it still wouldn't give a circumcision rate of 10%.  You haven't put forward any sources to contradict the number.  What we seem to have right now is an editor putting forward a plausible source, and you saying "Well, I believe that source is wrong".  We can't reject a source just because someone believes it's wrong.  That way lies madness, and the homeopathy people rejecting all decent sources because "Well, I believe that source is wrong".  If you don't want that number used, then you need to produce sources of at least equal quality that provide a different number.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
 * ~5.5% of the UK is Jewish or Muslim, and circumcision in the communities is routine, and generally will not be recorded in records of hospital admissions for therapeutic circumcision. I don't believe the source is "wrong" for what it is, but using it as a proxy is going to give us a daft pair of data saying the UK has 3% circumcision at 0-15 and 8.5% over 15. Comparable EU countries have identical or near identical figures for both age groups so this would be very surprising too. You are standing WP:V on its head by reversing the burden of evidence. Alexbrn (talk) 07:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Alex, accepting what the sources say, even if one editor thinks the numbers are wrong, is not daft. You can't counter an apparently reliable source with "well, I don't believe it".  You have to produce an apparently reliable source.
 * I don't think that having a higher circumcision rate among older men is surprising at all. That's what exactly you would expect when the popularity has recently declined.  Maybe the popularity declined in the rest of Europe before it declined in the UK.  These are cohorts moving through time, not boys getting circumcised on their 15th birthday.  Circumcision was nearly universal among the Greatest Generation.  It was common among the Boomers.  It dropped during Gen X (especially towards the end of that cohort), and it's much lower with the Millennials and now Gen Z.  Those older folks, circumcised during the Great Depression and WWII years, are all still part of the "over 15" statistics.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Obviously, and that complicates it even further. I have never said I don't believe the source. But I don't believe those who say a source for one thing can be stretched to be a source for another thing because of ${their beliefs}. In particular, your contention that this is okay because of your belief there is only a "tiny fraction of UK folks that practice circumcision as a religions thing" is at odds with reality. The fact you are at the same time complaining about other people's beliefs show a lack of self-awareness. Alexbrn (talk) 17:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, we have one source that gives a 3% circumcision rate for ~kids and 8% for ~adults.
 * You reject this on the grounds that you believe that these numbers are factually inaccurate. Where's your source?  What numbers are in your source?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * We don't have the sources like you say. We have a source for total circumcision for adults, and we have a source for therapeutic hospital admissions for kids. You are reversing the burden of evidence again. If you want to put your implausible figures into Wikipedia, based on your obviously wrong beliefs about "tiny fractions", find a source for them. Unless you have them, you are just wasting everybody's time. If in doubt, a quick check at WP:NOR/N might help clarify matters. Alexbrn (talk) 20:11, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You can't get rid of a reliable source based on a gut feeling that it's wrong. It should be presented with suitable caveats (e.g., it doesn't include circumcisions performed in private homes, which isn't most of them), but we can't just exclude all the existing reliable sources entirely on the grounds that they don't happen to measure what you wish they measure.
 * And I want you to think, in terms of that map, about what a small number you're talking about. Let's pretend that absolutely no Jew or Muslim managed to get their son's circumcision done at a healthcare facility (although that's quite normal, as I understand it) and that absolutely none of them were counted as "therapeutic", even though there's nothing magical about being born to a religious family that could protect you from phimosis and other problems.  And let's assume that absolutely every Jewish or Muslim boy actually gets circumcised (although that's actually optional in Islam, as I understand it).  So by your numbers, we'd be taking the 3.1% of hospital circumcisions and adding the 5.5% of Jews and Muslims, and we'd get a whopping 8.6% of boys getting circumcised, which means that if we trust the reliable source, the UK should be colored yellow on that map, and if we prefer our own calculation, then it would still be colored yellow on that map.  I therefore don't think that this is a distinction that makes any difference.
 * Again: We have to follow the reliable sources.  This one gives these numbers.  If the problem is just you don't like the numbers from the reliable source being presented without context, then add an explanatory note.  But do please stop telling other people to shut up when they're the ones offering reliable sources, and your problem is just that you decided that the reliable source is wrong.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. Much to their surprise and annoyance, the Jewish couple with the baby in the next cot at a large & well-known London hospital maternity ward were told the hospital did not allow circumcision to be done on the premises, whether NHS or private (unless for medical reasons). That was 28 years ago. The NHS page, which avoids discussing religious ones suggests that may be the general position. For Muslims, male circumcision may be optional in theory, but in practice it isn't, in the great majority of circles. Johnbod (talk) 22:02, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about the table, not the map. We don't engage in original research for the purposes of inserting it into articles and – yes – editors who persist in taking that line do need to "shut up" because it wastes everybody's time. Alexbrn (talk) 02:51, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I still don't see why that table can't contain "3.1% for therapeutic reasons, plus unknown rate for religious reasons". It is not a waste of anybody's time to get reasonably complete country-by-country information into an article.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

ANI Thread
Hey there. I notice you edited in a discussion I closed at ANI. I would ask that you revert this - discussions should not be added to after closing and I would ask you to consider self-reverting. You could of course, and I would not try to reinstate it, undo my close and then add your comment. Or you could add your comment beneath the close, or you could continue the conversation on Blue Raspberry's user talk page. However, adding to a closed discussion creates confusion and effectively uncloses the discussion anyway in which case it should be unclosed for everyone. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:04, 25 October 2019 (UTC)


 * That probably explains the warning I got about an edit conflict, except then it auto-resolved. I'd typed my comment earlier in the day, but didn't save until hours later.  In keeping with WP:NOTBURO, I think that this kind of policing isn't actually important.  ANI is not going to break if one or two comments appear after someone has boxed up a discussion.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:36, 25 October 2019 (UTC)