User talk:Xover/Archive 16

Short Description
Hello Xover,

You said "The field on Wikidata has an entirely different purpose, different policies, and different quality control mechanisms."

For what I read in Short_description, it seems to be exactly the same thing than the wikidata short description, except that overwrites the wikidata one for quality control purpose.

Did I miss anything else?

Regards, --Daehan (talk) 08:57, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, can you confirm something, please?
 * "At some point, the Wikidata fallback will be removed." -> Does it mean that the short description element in wikidata will be suppressed, or juste that it won't be used again in Wikipedia? Thank you, --Daehan (talk) 10:22, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikidata treats it as a short descriptive text for the Wikidata item. The short description on enwiki is a description for the english Wikipedia article. These superficially sound the same since the Wikidata item contains data about the same concept as the Wikipedia article, but these are actually completely orthogonal things in much the same way that Wikidata and Wikipedia are different things. However, the main reasons for the conclusion in the RFC were actually the risk of backdoor vandalism, the ability for the enwiki community to control (both in terms of quality and in terms of policy) what is displayed against their articles, and the general problem that all article content should be directly visible and editable for the editors on enwiki.
 * The "wikidata fallback" that will be removed refers to the behaviour of the Mediawiki software's behaviour on mobile: at the point referred to the software will stop displaying the description from Wikidata as a fallback when there is no short description provided in the enwiki article directly. The description on Wikidata will not be affected at all. Except that I, personally, think it likely that Wikidata will eventually batch import all the enwiki short descriptions to populate Wikidata items that lack a description, but that's a separate matter. --Xover (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I would very much not want that discussion again
I agree with what you said. It was one of the most hurtful experiences in my career here. You may remember that my friend was desysopped just for protecting the article. Anyway, please get your facts right: it's wrong that the article had no infobox from 2010, - I grabbed an arbitrary example. Without looking closer (no time), I suspect the article had an infobox for a long time until it was taken to higher quality by editors who don't like one. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:46, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

ps: no time, but easy to find, from to. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:03, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I feel I need to note that I personally don't really care one way or another about infoboxes; I just don't want that kind of "discussion" to repeat itself. The wounds of those involved are too raw, and the current climate too confrontational on that issue. Better if that dog gets to nap another half a decade or so before being bearded.Anyways, I went back to check properly since I'd clearly done a poor job of recalling the history. The article had an infobox until this edit on 14 january 2015, which is, of course, a sandbox rewrite (cf. recent discussions at WT:FAC). No matter… Thanks for correcting me! I've amended the message on the article's talk page to reflect this revised timeline. I'm sticking by my point, even though the argument is significantly weakened, but more for the above mentioned reasons than because I am particularly happy with how the status quo came about. --Xover (talk) 19:15, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. "Happy" and that dscussion don't go together, sadly. Sandbox rewrite, no discussion with the community, that's what I see, and every time someone dares to ask they are infobox warriors ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:21, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I took heart and looked at the discussion again, look for my name ;) - 3 comments, and I stand by every one, and was taken to AE because I was then allowed only 2. We are such a loving community. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:30, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * We're at a point now where I would actually prefer if ArbCom (not that they have the mandate) simply imposed a policy one way or another. Infoboxes is a stupid thing to be fighting over, and yet look at all the disruption and conflict the issue has caused. And the worst part is, in a couple of years the whole thing will be moot: the WMF will implement something which subsumes the purpose of infoboxes in Mediawiki and which pulls the details from Wikidata. Every article will get an infobox baked into the Mediawiki skin of the day, and the best we can hope for is that enwp editors will be able to control what details appear and how they're formatted. Compare WP:SHORTDESC.Then again, infoboxes are probably just a symptom of some underlying systemic problem (possibly partly overlapping the causes of the gender gap). I, for cultural reasons, notice that using curse words tends to get much harsher remedies than confrontational and aggressive behaviour with a veneer of polite language; but it is the latter that in itself is destructive to cooperation and community. Until we manage to start enforcing collaborative and respectful behaviour, and remedying deviations from such, this kind of internecine warfare will just get worse. --Xover (talk) 14:24, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for some food for thought. Arbcom has not managed, and I guess will not manage. And manage what? Have you seen a single fight about an infobox recently? I think the topic is moot already. Those interested just do articles their way (that's what I do) or left altogether (and I wonder why). It would be so easy if those who want to see an infobox would see one, and those who hate it could just see an image, which should be possible, technically. I am improving an article with, - please watch it ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Precious
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:47, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You are, quite literally, too kind; mine was a mere supporting role (well, except I do take some credit for the kids). But I will happily and gratefully take the accolade none the less. :) --Xover (talk) 16:00, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I much prefer to be called "too kind" to "infobox warrior" and the other niceties ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:03, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Macbeth
What is the reason behind that - I haven't noticed anything wrong. Iggy (Swan) 19:53, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Your "harmonization" of whitespace in citation templates messed up the citations I had very carefully formatted for maintainability and for no good purpose (there is never a reason for automated tools to change whitespace). In addition to being pointless (and, to be frank, quite rude, though not, I'm sure, intentionally) and disruptive, automated tools should not be used to make "cosmetic" edits (changing whitespace is the specific target of that general rule). Automated tools are good tools, but you are still responsible for the edits made using them: and that implies both thinking before clicking and checking the diffs before saving. --Xover (talk) 20:04, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Sometimes it is bad luck that these tools is not what other editors are expecting. Also it took a bit of time for you to notice what went wrong with the careful formatting. Iggy (Swan) 20:36, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * "what other editors are expecting" is called community consensus and is the basis for all decision making processes on Wikipedia. If you are unable to conform your tool use to "what other editors are expecting" it's not a matter of "bad luck" so much as disruptive editing. I've made you aware of this issue and the community expectations regarding it, and asked you politely to refrain from making further such edits. What you choose to do with that information is up to you. --Xover (talk) 20:52, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The Merchant of Venice plot
"(as a side note, there is a common misconception that Portia disguised herself as Balthazar, when she actually named herself Balthasar)"

Is this "true"/worth keeping in the article? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:13, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * It's trivial / nonsense. Elizabethan orthography was not even remotely fixed (see e.g. Spelling of Shakespeare's name) so "Balthasar" and "Balthazar" are effectively identical. Portia has a servant called Balthasar (bit role) and when she disguises herself as a young doctor of law (something between a legal scolar and a lawyer) she happens to use the same name as an alias. But I'm not really aware that anyone ever confuses the two (in the plot they are obviously distinct); except maybe Shakespeare himself, in the sense that he probably forgot that he'd already used the name for the servant when coming up with an alias for the supposed law doctor. There are a couple of such instances in the canon. Caveat: It's been a while since I last looked at this, so I may be fuzzy on details. --Xover (talk) 18:23, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, great value for money as always. More questions: would it be fair to call Christopher Plummer a Shakespearean actor, is there a definition/line somewhere? Also, would you happen to now some sort of database where i can search an actors name and get a list of all Shakespeare-roles they've done? Some sort of Shakespeare imdb. I have an idea for an article you may find positively evil. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:38, 19 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello to you both. IMO this section Christopher Plummer alone qualifies CP as a Shakespearean actor. A couple days ago I found that the David Tennant/Katherine Tate production of Much Ado About Nothing has been downloaded to YouTube. Here is a quick glimpse for your perusal. I know what I'll be watching this weekend. Best regards to you both. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 18:58, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much Marnette, and have a nice weekend! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:02, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * OMFG that was great! Reminds me of this:. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * That link is a treat . Makes me wonder if all of Gilbert and Sullivan has been set to Star Trek somewhere :-) MarnetteD&#124;Talk 19:18, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * One of the many charming things in Raiders of the Lost Ark is that Sallah is a G&S fan. See also . Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I may have found what I was looking for:. I don't know how good it is, but it did know that Pacino did Shylock. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:25, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Good job finding that website . BTW the Pacino Shylock was also adapted into this film The Merchant of Venice (2004 film). Cheers. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 14:03, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , now you lost me a little, are you saying that Pacino did Shylock outside that film as well? If so, I didn't know that, and neither does internetshakespeare. Question though, do these lists seem short to you? Maybe it's a membership thing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:38, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Pacino is my favorite Shylock (the theatrical production). I count it better even than Olivier and Welles (also, Stewart illustrates the approaches well).For your "IMDB" needs I would also suggest the British Universities Film & Video Council's Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio. Shakespearean actors is hard, but it boils down to a judgement as to whether the sources describe them as known for playing Shakespearean parts versus having once or twice appeared in something by Shakespeare. Olivier is probably the epitome of the former; Anne Hathaway possibly of the latter. --Xover (talk) 16:44, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links X! Those lists are definitely incomplete . I suspect it is a "work in progress" thing rather than asking you to pay to see more. BTW the third season of Shakespeare Uncovered is airing over here and it is as wonderful and informative as the first two. Henry Goodman's insights about playing Shylock are particularly interesting. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 17:07, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * (ec) Thanks, Xover. I actually sought out that Pacino-clip a few days ago while editing The Merchant of Venice, it was scaringly good, I have to see that film. You may want to see Steve Speirs take on Shylock in a certain sitcom, he drinks the blood of christian babies.


 * Oh, that Anne Hathaway. To quote Mike Myers/Wayne Campbell, "Anne hath a way of giving me a bone." Sorry, but I can not unhear that quote. The database seems quite inclusive, I found this masterpiece (?): Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:20, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks MarnetteD, I thought there should be more. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:23, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You mean this masterpiece? :) --Xover (talk) 17:35, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Not really Al Pacino, is it? I assume you've seen Blackadder hit Shakespeare in the mouth explaining "That's for every schoolboy and schoolgirl in the next 400 years!" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:56, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Short description override
A couple days ago you kindly stepped in to explain some facts about short descriptions, but I'm still worried about the interaction, in practice, between a local SD and one inherited from an infobox.

In general terms, as I said, a user might write an incorrect (or ungrammatical etc) SD, then later some subject matter experts add the magic to an infobox. Various other complications arise when (a) the editor isn't using one of the show-me-the-SD techniques, and may be unaware that the infobox has done the work (b) the infobox hasn't been instrumented yet (c) the infobox is wrong.

Consider Italian towns, say Ostuni. Before Infobox settlement (called by Infobox Italian comune) started generating SD's, I might have added "City in Apulia, Italy", or "City in southern Italy" or any such phrase that came to mind. But suppose there is no local SD, the infobox has now been instrumented, and I (assuming I am a helpful but not very sophisticated editor) have arranged to make the SD's visible; I see that there is a bug somewhere because it reads, as I look at it today "in Apulia, Italy". So because debugging infoboxes is hard, I specifically add "Town in Apulia, Italy". But, clearly, the Italian geographers want it to read "Comune in Apulia, Italy". Bottom line: I suspect that there will be more local SD's written by English-speakers that don't use the word comune, and/or don't wikilink it. It ends up inconsistent, and I'm one who doesn't like unintentional inconsistency.

I recognize the reverse: there may be cases where an Italian town does reasonably get a custom description, e.g. "Comune in Umbria, Italy, home of St Francis". But, as a general case, should the Italian experts fix the infobox, and then go through all the linked articles editing descriptions that seem unintentionally inconsistent? Or, maybe, should there be a three-level priority set: local SD, infobox SD that overrides local, local SD with explicit flags to override any infobox? Of course, this applies way beyond Italian comune. Also, generalize infobox in my examples to any template that provides a SD as collateral?

The reason I haven't brought these issues up is that I was sure that the maintainers of the SD feature must have thought of these prioritization-vs-consistency issues, but given our recent interaction I wanted to check. Thanks for plowing through my pedantry. David Brooks (talk) 02:10, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the slow response. I've been travelling.Your description of the potential problems is (almost) entirely correct. But what you're failing to take into account is that there are a large number of such problems already extant (consider the article lede, for example), and they are inavoidable, so they must be managed regardless. Local short descriptions do not in any meaningful way impact the overall problem scope. I also think you overestimate the precision and quality of the mythical italianate experts that create infoboxes. That is, it's possible the Italian comunes have infoboxes that hit 100% on every article, but the same will not be the case for the vast majority of articles: some areas will be apt for such automatically generated descriptions but will still have a significant percentage of misses and problems, and other areas will be generally unsuited to automatic generation. In short, it's an imperfect system, because it deals with the ultimate imperfect system: the real world.In terms of advice for how to handle the articles on Italian comunes: the reason for automatically generating a short description is that it's faster and requires less (human) effort. (note well: it is not so that a small group of experts can dictate the contents of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of articles!) In other words, start with what you can get "free" through the infobox and then handle any exceptions as needed. It's entirely possible no manual effort is required (apart from spot checks) in this particular area. If spot checks suggest the exceptions are numerous, it will need to be handled like any other large scale cleanup task: round up interested editors and start going through them systematically.PS. short descriptions should not contain formatting or wikilinks: they are intended to show up in search results as annotations on the article name. Think of them as the bit after the article name on a disambiguation page: each entry should have only one link, and that's the article title. --Xover (talk) 14:01, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the detailed response, and especially for gently pointing out that I'm ignoring mountains in favor of molehills. I do believe there is still a generic imperfection: that many (most?) editors won't turn on one of the tools for showing the short description, and won't be aware that there is already a free one through an infobox (turning a blind eye for now to the separate free ones from wikidata). But that would only result in minor unnecessary effort, and I don't think that's much to fuss about.Specifically on this example, I understand that short descriptions should be plain text. I meant to point out that the Italian infobox template, when calling the settlement infobox template, sets the settlement_type parameter to, but that default fails to show up as the first word of the description. However, it just occurred to me that the lang template is in fact the culprit, not the link. Maybe in this instance it should just be replaced by simple italic marks. I'll try to get it fixed. David Brooks (talk) 15:36, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Editors who do not display the short description are also very unlikely to insert one, or even realize it exists. I'm sure there'll be issues that crop up surrounding short descriptions, but I feel confident they'll be relatively minor in the big picture and over the time spans that are relevant (I've been around here more than ten years, and the stuff that were major controversies back then nobody cares one whit about today).As for comune, in the infobox it's correct using the template, it's just when it gets reused in the short description it causes problems; and there even simple italics will potentially cause problems. I would suggest the proper approach to dealing with this is for the settlement infobox to detect and strip this from the call to  (or its invocation of the underlying magic word as the case may be). --Xover (talk) 16:59, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Shaky changes
Hello: The edits were not arbitrary at all. The Citation bot gives us full 13 digit ISBNs, which are preferred. The auto ed bot gives us uniform layout fixes. The other changes dealt with page ranges. Some were full-page, and some were shortened. (pp=123-45 v. pp=123-145 or pp=12-3 v. pp=12-13.) Because there were mixes in the presentation I edited carefully and in accordance with WP:CITEVAR. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 15:15, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The ISBN fixes were fine (I'll assume you have verified that the new ISBNs still refer to the same edition: anything in there that was using an ISBN-10 did so because I was unable to find an ISBN-13 when I manually verified every single ref in the article a few years back). But the page ranges were specifically chosen (the abbreviated form) so arbitrarily altering them to another form (full page ranges) is inappropriate. In addition, some of your changes were nonsensical like changing "100–2" to "100–02" (the correct form would be "100–102"), and inconsistent (in the body, short refs were changed from abbreviated to full, but in the References section you changed from full to abbreviated). Your edits also removed several publisher parameters, unlinked others, and removed chapter names. And, as mentioned in the edit summary, insering a spae character for every list item pretty much only serves to make the diff unwieldy. And while I'm nitpicking, I believe there was an instance of altering a cite web to a cite journal, where the article in question was in a magazine rather than a academic journal. Doing this kind of stuff with a script / automated is perilous because there's just so many niggling details like this that can go wrong.Note, of course, that articles decay over time, so if you observed some inconsistent page ranges that is the likely reason. I usually do a run through these articles every couple of years to fix such inconsistenencies that have crept in since last time. --Xover (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Man, that's subtle
Xover and, look here at 4:00. According to, you are looking at a Hamlet reference. Quite delightful. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thnaks GGS. I couldn't access the book but I'm guessing it is a "alas poor C3PO - I knew him Horatio" reference :-) Fun stuff. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 20:34, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. But given the way it's always just claimed with no particular source, I'm going to call bovine excrement. No way is "Wookie" a functioning language that can be "translated" into English, and the reversed gibbon shrieks in that scene bear no discernible similarity to Hamlet's speech, rhytmically or otherwise. It might merit inclusion as a meme that has evolved after the fact, but I don't buy it as a deliberate allusion by the filmmakers absent a direct statement to that effect. Pity, it would have been fun to connect the two in that way. --Xover (talk) 11:28, 13 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Would you take the directors word on it? . Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:03, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow! I stand corrected. Extremely nice find, that! --Xover (talk) 15:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Hypothesis: As the years passed, he became so annoyed that noone noticed it, he felt he had to start telling people. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Heh heh. Yeah, I can easily picture that. --Xover (talk) 12:58, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Samuel Johnson image
The new image is obviously clearer, and yes, I obviously prefer it, for that reason. How about we have a reasoned conversation before you mass revert everything on impulse. (Hohum @ ) 19:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * We appear to have cross-posted on each other's talk pages. Let's continue the discussion on yours. But for the record, I've asked you to "mass revert" your own edits, rather than do it myself, as that would be the reasonable thing to do in this situation. I have only reverted the change on articles I regularly edit (are on my watchlist). --Xover (talk) 19:57, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, just to be perfectly clear: I have not reverted on all the affected articles that are on my watchlist; but the articles I have reverted you on have all been on my watchlist. --Xover (talk) 20:21, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I feel happy! I feel happy!
Hi, Xover. I see you've pinged me a couple of times in the past months. So I'm just stopping by to say I'm not dead yet, but only waking from an unexpectedly long wikislumber. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 04:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Good to hear you're ok! I do sometimes worry about people on here, since we've lost some wonderful collaborators over the years, so I very much appreciate the notice. Welcome back. --Xover (talk) 06:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)