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Revision as of 16:35, 2 February 2018

Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 23, 2018. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Misplaced Pages:Today's featured article/January 23, 2018, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1100 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:19, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Jimfbleak, I've trimmed the blurb to below the recommended length, to allow for a larger image. Normally with a painting like this I'd crop it down to a detail to give readers a fighting chance of figuring out what it actually shows at 100px width, but in this case we need to show the whole thing as the description makes no sense if you can't see all three characters. Because the title is so long—and because I really want to keep it was condemned as an immoral piece of the type one would expect from a foreign, not a British, artist as it sums both Etty and 19th-century English attitudes up so well—there's a severe limit to how much it can be trimmed. To pre-empt a likely complaint on the day, that we're deliberately choosing an unwieldy title for comic effect, here's the thing's entry in the Tate catalogue to demonstrate that the 102-character title, using the archaic shew rather than "show", genuinely is the WP:COMMONNAME. ‑ Iridescent 14:33, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ping Dank on this, since he normally polishes the blurb and needs to see your comments regarding the image Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:07, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks all. Iri, I think this is perfect for TFA. - Dank (push to talk) 16:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Although you do realise this presumably knocks The Dawn of Love out of contention for Valentine's Day and you must be running low on love-themed potential TFA… I believe you know my opinions on the "if this is Halloween, it must be a horror film" liturgical calendar approach to TFA, but it looks like it's here to stay. Although all credit to whoever scheduled Jinnah for 25 December this year despite knowing the whininess from assorted alt-right types "you're not running something Christian!" will generate. ‑ Iridescent 16:40, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Alt righters are such a significant demographic that they can not be ignored on Misplaced Pages? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:47, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

The extremists (on both the left and the right) catalyze more mainstream people, so when alt-righters, Justice Democrats, UKIPpers, Momentum, and insert race here supremacists canvass their followers to wade into any given debate, it emboldens non-crazies who happen to sympathize with whatever point's being made to pile in as well when ordinarily they'd have remained silent. Search Misplaced Pages:Requests for undeletion and its archives for "China's Four Most Handsome Men" to see a current example of the phenomenon in action. ‑ Iridescent 16:57, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

And there was I hoping to see Etty's visualisation of the Ring of Gyges. I suppose it is the wrong account of the events, but it is probably the one thing for which Gyges is most remembered (if at all). Not even a "see also"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.194.198 (talk) 20:48, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Not even a see also; there are lots of different and contradictory legends regarding how Gyges usurped Candaules, but Etty was working from Herodotus (Clio 8–13) which doesn't include any mention of magic (other than the Oracle). There's no need for a see also section, as there are already prominent links to Gyges of Lydia which acts as a de facto dab page to Herodotus's, Plato's, Nicolaus's and Plutarch's versions of the story; besides, owing to The English Patient Herodotus's version is now overwhelmingly going to be the commonly accepted version of the Gyges/Candaules story inasmuch as something so obscure can be 'common'. (Candaules itself could do with some serious attention, but that's not a topic on which I have the knowledge or the sources to clean up so it's someone else's problem.)

In my opinion, if an article includes a "See also" section at all, it's generally an indication that the article is incomplete. Either something's directly relevant and thus should be mentioned in the text, or it's not directly relevant and it's giving undue weight to feature a stand-alone link to it. IMO in the two examples MOS:SEEALSO gives of FAs that nonetheless still have a "See also" section (1740 Batavia massacre#See also and Mary, Queen of Scots#See also), none of the entries are actually appropriate. I suppose Candaulism could theoretically go into a "See also" section, but that article is absolutely fucking awful and I don't want to be drawing attention to it—anyone who's really interested in exploring further will end up there anyway through following the link at Candaules. Cynically, when you see a "see also" section in my experience it's generally because someone's written an article on an obscure topic and is frantically trying to shoehorn links to it to avoid the {{orphan}} tag, not because a link to it is a genuinely useful service to the reader. ‑ Iridescent 15:22, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Congrats on the Main page appearance. What a beautiful article! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 01:46, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the monster of a title and subject, well summarized "It was intended to inspire in viewers a belief in women's rights, a rejection of the then-prevalent notion that it was the duty of women to obey their husbands in all things, and an understanding of the then-radical concept that women had a right to use violence to defend themselves against an abusive husband. Unfortunately none of the audience actually realised this, and it was almost universally considered an attempt to slip a piece of creepy and violent pornography into the mainstream." - I am happy to have something English with a short title on the same page, In Exile. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:04, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks both, although main page appearances are an honour I could happily live without; this just reminds me why I no longer have anything to do with FAC. At 90,000 pageviews this has a decent shot at yet again being the most-viewed TFA of the year, and yet again has attracted the usual mix of vandals and busybodies both to the main article and to assorted pages linked from it, all of which will at some point need to be cleaned up. (The pageviews of related pages spiked—I suppose at least that indicates that people are reading the things.) ‑ Iridescent 15:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

And it indicates that the topic is interesting. For comparison, my own DYKs Arago hotspot and 1257 Samalas eruption also drove traffic to related articles but only about a 10th of the viewers clicked through. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Well… in this case I suspect less "interesting" and more "very long title so the link dominates the box, and illustrated with a picture of a naked woman". The only one of Misplaced Pages's "writing guides" that's actually worth the pixels on which it's printed advises to always assume you're writing for a fourteen-year-old, which is the single best piece of advice I've ever received regarding Misplaced Pages. ‑ Iridescent 20:08, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Today, I have a title that literally translates to friendly vision, is a bit longer in German, Freundliche Vision, but nothing compared to the monster. Why are all trasnlations different (welcome, pleasing, but not friendly)? - Written as sort of a program on 2 January, the day my grandparents married ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

If I were you, I'd drop File:Wild Flowers, Kirkstead - geograph.org.uk - 556738.jpg from that article. Rightly or wrongly, the juxtaposition of "field poppies" and "German" will instantly generate the wrong connotations in British and Commonwealth readers; aside from the swastika and possibly the hammer-and-sickle, the poppy is probably the single most loaded symbol in British culture. With a new and inexperienced arbcom who think they can impose "consensus" by force and don't understand that they're about to destroy the delicate armistice agreement that took years to negotiate, the last thing you of all people want is to be labeled "the one with the problematic infobox". ‑ Iridescent 23:09, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, I had no idea. The label would be one of the milder kind, though. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:36, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I found this, with even a more dreamlike quality. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:43, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks good to me (although without actually knowing anything about the work, I can't say whether it's relevant or not; I'm aware that Strauss is highly regarded but he does nothing for me). ‑ Iridescent 23:47, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't write for the love of Strauss, but the title ;) - Next good one: Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, or "dissipate, sorrowful shadows", for which I also found an image with a dreamlike quality (in 2016). Some OR: the music goes from complex to simple, just as the wording of a certain Faust, beginning "Vom Eise befreit" (s. image) to "Hier bin ich Mensch ..." (Here I am a human, and permitted to be one.) - I keep dreaming. You characterized the new arbs well. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

At least this thankfully looks certain to fail, which will hopefully put a stop to any of the new arbs who see the looming case-from-hell as an opportunity to impose their own personal style preferences by force. Why is it that so many people—on both sides of that particular debate—are incapable of grasping the concepts of "what works on one article isn't necessarily going to work on another" and "civility is based on mutual respect and can't be enforced at the point of a gun"? ‑ Iridescent 15:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

"I have experience only on one type of article" and "'But the other guy started it!' is only an invitation for an escalation sequence", maybe? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:22, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but these people are on the arbitration committee, not a couple of good-faith users who've only ever edited List of non-marine molluscs of El Hatillo Municipality, Miranda, Venezuela and consequently don't understand that not every article on Misplaced Pages should necessarily follow the "explain where the place in question is, then list all the local slugs" format. If you look at the "arb comments" section, it's patently clear that they're voting to accept a case without even knowing what they're accepting, as it's very clear that some of them think they've voting to give themselves the right to rewrite the MOS by fiat and to make it enforceable (which it never has been up to now), some of them think they're voting to examine the interpersonal interactions of a limited and defined group of people, and some of them think they're voting to establish a death-squad empowered to break up arguments by arbitrarily blocking the participants on one side or the other. ‑ Iridescent 16:53, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, the comments in that section have really solidified three of my past Arbcom votes (two in favour and one against). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:06, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

New day, music and moon. Did you know what Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125 and the title of this thread have in common? Both articles were ttranslated to Spanish by the same editor, who is blocked. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Argh. Don't remind me of the Spanish Translations. I've written or expanded over 200 articles but most of them would be far more useful when translated to the Spanish (and Romanian/Bahasa Indonesia in two instances) Wikipedias, since they concern topics in Spanish-language countries. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Spanish always lags behind the other big Wikipedias, because even though the unilateral declaration of independence by the es-wiki userbase failed, the period the fork was active was the 2002–06 period of exponential growth of the other Wikipedias, so they spent years playing catch-up. Regarding Eltomas2003, I can completely see why he was blocked; don't just take into account vandalism and blatant copyright violation here, but the repeated copyright violations elsewhere. There comes a point when Assume Good Faith runs out and you have to accept that someone is never going to be willing to stop being disruptive. ‑ Iridescent 16:34, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata (redux)

No-one has mentioned wikidata here for a while. I noticed the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Linking to wikidata and the uses of {{Wikidata icon}} (mentioned at the TfD) in List of public art by Oldenburg and van Bruggen and The Offerings of Peace and The Offerings of War (permalinks: , ) are interesting. Links to wikidata can be useful. Hopefully a range of options will be provided, rather than a straitjacket. I happen to think that in a tabulated list, a column explicitly naming (e.g.) Wikidata entry Q24641121 might work. It feels a bit like people are arguing over whether to carefully curate certain forms of article-related data here on Misplaced Pages in the form of a carefully constructed article that fits together, or whether to do the data curation on a separate page (i.e. on Wikidata). And how to get the interaction working between the two. It is in some ways interesting seeing this all play out. But in other ways distressing at the amount of time spent hand-wringing.

I might raise this later in the context of an idea I have to in some way include somewhere in (or connected to) an article, the data point that an illustration or photograph of something exists (in this case two photographs in The Illustrated London News from 1924 and 1925 that I can't quite work out the copyright status of) and in some way including that information so that readers/researchers/editors are aware of it, and can go look at the photograph themselves if so inclined. It is kind of like an image version of 'further reading'. Pointing people towards image resources even if they can't be included in the articles directly. Does that make sense? (On the most basic level, a sentence along the lines of "An illustration of x event/object was published in the ILN on abc date", could be referenced to that ILN issue. Similar to how you sometimes get "Portrait of XYZ held at the NPG", with accompanying reference. But these are often best included as footnotes.) I should give the actual example later, as that will make more sense. Carcharoth (talk) 12:52, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Until Wikidata matures and gets its act together, we should not be linking to it. Just one example of why: it is user-generated content with little or no editorial oversight and thus inherently fails WP:RS, just as WP:CIRCULAR applies. The icon should be a bargepole. - Sitush (talk) 13:45, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

What Sitush said. Unless and until the WMF implement a mechanism by which changes on Wikidata show up in the watchlists of people on the various Wikipedias who have the article in question watchlisted and (crucially) can be reverted without having to navigate to Wikidata and perform the edit there, we shouldn't even be linking to Wikidata let alone transcluding anything from there. Yes, we link to other language versions of the article in the sidebar but readers understand that articles in different languages are written by different people; because Wikidata results appear in English, readers will reasonably assume that they have the en-wiki imprimatur and (crucially) that any quality-control review that's taken place on en-wiki has also covered the information on Wikidata.

Since your initial post has raised the topic of visual arts articles as a field in which Wikidata links would purportedly be useful, let's take a look at one. Here is the corresponding Wikidata page for the non-randomly-chosen Candaules. This is a relatively simple topic—a straightforward illustration of a single incident from a single chapter of a single book—which is a current FA on two different Wikipedias so the information and (crucially) the sources are easily available, and the WD page has had over 50 separate edits so someone there has obviously put some time into it and not just quickly created a stub as a drive-by edit. The page has not a single referenced claim, includes obviously nonsensical original research ("depicts=overweight" when two of the three figures are positively emaciated by the standards of 19th-century art and the third is a heavily-muscled Commander of the Royal Guard and by definition at the peak of fitness), and also contains outright errors ("inception=1820", "depicts=walking", etc). Multiply that by 5,552,448 to get an idea of the scale of the problem cleaning out the Augean Stables at Wikidata would entail even if it were locked down and no further information was added to it in the meantime—and bear in mind that this is an article that in its FA review has gone through source checking so the cited statements in the article can be presumed accurate and don't need to be researched from scratch, which is decidedly not going to be the case for the overwhelming majority of WD entries.

Google has multi-billion-dollar budgets and 70,000 staff and still doesn't manage to get the "integrating data and content" thing working correctly (just ask Greggs)—it's the height of both arrogance and stupidity for the WMF to think they can accomplish with a shoestring budget and a handful of volunteers what a global multinational which has providing accurate search results as its core business fails to do. While I was initially agnostic about Wikidata, and while I didn't think it had much to offer to the big Wikipedias could see a potential value in allowing ready access to the data for people writing in smaller languages without them having to try to translate English, French etc sources, I'm now swinging firmly to the anti side. Wikidata is now more than five years old, and as far as I'm concerned they no longer have the right to play the "we just need a little more time and it will all be working properly" card.

Personally, I think we've by now reached the point at which we should concede that the Wikidata experiment as originally envisaged has failed and that the best discussions to be having are on how a formal breaking of ties can be arranged with minimum acrimony and on what a post-Wikidata en-wiki will look like, but given the level of "I'm going to ignore anyone who disagrees with the party line" that came from the WMF even on the relatively minor matter of short descriptions (TL;DR summary: an RFC was held which produced a consensus to remove Wikidata-generated summaries from mobile view; the WMF response was to redefine "mobile" to exclude iOS and Android and carry on as before), I hold out no hope at all of any progress until the half-a-dozen Wikidata enthusiasts who stonewall and disrupt any discussion that looks set to conclude that Wikidata isn't perfect are shown the door. ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
(Paging Fram and RexxS, since if I'm going to have the luxury of having my talkpage turn into an informal RFC on Wikidata yet again they probably both ought to be aware.)

A quick follow-up to Iridescent's example regarding Google. Spend a moment Googling Jean Alexander. It is nearly a year since I told Google that their infobox thing is confusing her with an author of aeronautical books, hence showing her as the writer of Russian aircraft since 1940. It still shows that as of today. I've no idea where they are scraping their information from or what algorithms there are using to pull it all together but clearly it has the potential for big BLP problems here if Wikidata is essentially following a similar path and we're pulling information off it. As if we don't have enough problems already. - Sitush (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

While Bing is also a culprit, I'm sure most of them are just using the same algorithms... either way, I answer probably a dozen or two OTRS tickets a week with "We have no control over what search engines show in their Knowledge Boxes. Please let them know, since it has nothing to do with us." Primefac (talk) 19:47, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

And it doesn't have anything to do with us. But if we have information in en-WP that has been drawn from Wikidata then that does have something to do with us. - Sitush (talk) 19:52, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

That isn't a problem with Wikidata. The Google box of Lake Manix gives "Bristol Lake, Mojave River" as outflow and "Newberry Springs, Yermo" as cities. Wikidata only gives "Mojave River" as outflow and the infobox for some reason gives "Yermo, California, Newberry Springs, California, Yermo, California" as settlements and "Mojave River through Afton Canyon, Baxter Wash or Bristol Lake less likely" for the outflow. So I suspect it's a problem with Google in general. 'course it's a prehistoric lake not a litigious real life person, but if that is the standard for Googleboxen I wonder what a BLP will say. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

​My point re Google results isn't claiming that Wikidata is corrupting them. It's that if even a global multinational whose entire business model is predicated on them convincing people that their data is trustworthy, and whose customer service department alone probably outnumbers the entire Misplaced Pages active editor base, can't get these things right, it's not reasonable to assume that a volunteer project that only has a few dozen active editors many of whom are—um—'differently competent' is able to handle the issues arising from mass hosting of potentially sensitive data. (Re the editor numbers, they claim to have almost 20,000 active editors but that claim is bullshit; any time an admin on any WMF project deletes a page with a corresponding Wikidata item they attribute a Wikidata edit to that admin, which means people who've never had the slightest involvement with Wikidata get credited as "highly active editors". They pull the same stunt with any editor who's ever performed a page-move, too.) ‑ Iridescent 20:25, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

That was my point by example, too. They've known about the Alexander issue for ages, it is a no-brainer to check and they have a massive staff. Yet still it persists and, as Iridescent has shown below, is being persisted. - Sitush (talk) 20:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And the errors in turn get picked up by sites whose algorithms work off the assumption that Google, Wikidata et al are accurate, and other sites copy those sites, and eventually a single sloppy journalist reads one of them and doesn't check the facts for themselves, and hey presto we have a honest-to-Hilda Reliable Source so the information becomes verified and never gets removed from Misplaced Pages and Wikidata… Welcome to the wonderful world of citogenesis (google "Hairy bush fruit" for a good example of just how far citogenesis can spread—that particular one came from a single vandal edit in 2007).; Iridescent 20:02, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm seriously starting to lose my rag on this. At this point I have not gone nuclear but it's not going to be too long. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:30, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Before you lose your rag, wait and see how the oncoming storm pans out. While infoboxes and Wikidata are two different things, the topics—and, crucially, the people—have such a close overlap that whoever's left standing at the end will have a drastic impact on how Misplaced Pages/Wikidata integration proceeds in future. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Architect notability

Prompted by seeing Ptolemy Dean in a BBC documentary (a repeat from 2012), I created the list article Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey. Am now wondering if the three red-linked people in that list are notable. I think Foster is. A stub could be created on Horne. Not sure about Burton. It would be a stub, and might scrape past. What do you think? Carcharoth (talk) 14:56, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

<tps>I'll have a look through some of my dead-tree references to see what might be done. Acroterion (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Am asking at WikiProject Architecture as well (the proper place to ask!). Carcharoth (talk) 15:29, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

My inclination would be that anyone who's ever held the post is inherently notable in Misplaced Pages terms since pretty much by definition not only will the appointment will have been written about in detail, but they must have been considered significant to have got the job in the first place. That doesn't necessarily mean they need an article; if there are genuinely no usable sources then there's no point creating more William Garrat permastubs. ‑ Iridescent 16:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Foster has an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture with enough for a reasonable start. Horne is not mentioned in the ODA or the 1901 Sturgis Dictionary of Architecture and Building, but I find references to him here and there on the Internet and we might piece together a paragraph or so. Burton might sustain a stub - he was recognized with an MBE for what that's worth, but he doesn't seem to have gotten much independent coverage and is not in the ODA. I think the post lends notability, but as Iridescent notes, it would be best if we can find enough sources to get past a two-sentence stub. Acroterion (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Both Horne and Keene are discussed in Architectural Outsiders, which seems a fair enough description. When you have posts like this that are sustained over centuries without being famous and really top-level posts, then you do seem to get periods where, um, less notable people come along and do the job. Burton's main claim to fame seems to have been to hold both this post and the post of Surveyor of the Fabric at Canterbury Cathedral at the same time. I am not going to attempt a list of the holders of that post, though I see the successor appears a bit shy (a case of photo cropping failure). There has been a continuous line of architects tending to St Paul's Cathedral, with the latest being Stancliffe and Caroe (Martin Stancliffe and Oliver Caroe). It is tempting to try and do that list as well. It includes Henry Flitcroft, Somers Clarke, C. R. Cockerell and Bernard Feilden apparently. Carcharoth (talk) 18:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

My gut instinct is that St Pauls will be fairly easy to do, as the CoL are obsessive hoarders of documents so all it would take would be a trip to the Guildhall Reference Library and a willingness to wade through microfiches and to annoy the librarian by asking for books in the dusty recesses of the archives. Whether it's worthwhile would be another matter; there's no point writing something unless either there's an obvious chance that people will want to read it, or you can feel reasonably confident that you can make the topic interesting enough that people who don't know they want to read it will stick around to take a look when they stumble across it accidentally (such as the half-hour I've just spent reading Etchmiadzin Cathedral); I suspect there's a decent chance that this may be one of those topics where it's more of a service to the reader to direct them to the subject's own website. ‑ Iridescent 18:38, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, it's all out there already. But you would be surprised at how neither Westminster Abbey nor St Paul's feel they need to maintain such a list (I looked). Dropping the library/archive/collections team at such places a note can result in a list being pulled together by someone tasked to do that. I have 15 so far. But will probably be stopping soon and turning to other things. Carcharoth (talk) 18:52, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I did end up doing Surveyor of the Fabric of St Paul's Cathedral, and it is nice to see the articles we have and the one's we don't. Some may quibble over the inclusion of Wren there, and the post of Surveyor goes back further (to John Denham and Inigo Jones). Some sources variously use the constructions 'Surveyor of the Fabric of', 'Surveyor to the Fabric of', and 'Surveyor of the Fabric at'. If I create enough redirects, I may head off a move request... I am not going to do a list for Canterbury Cathedral. I suppose I should link to Cathedral Architect and architectural conservation. Carcharoth (talk) 23:50, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

No reasonable person will quibble about Wren. Any list of architects responsible for St Paul's that didn't include Wren would be being wilfully perverse. Westminster Abbey must have a list somewhere, even if it's not online—they surely must get "who ws responsible for the building of foo?" questions fairly frequently. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Your signature

Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.

You are encouraged to change

 – ] :  – iridescent 2

to

 – ] :  – iridescent 2

—Anomalocaris (talk) 07:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

>SerialNumber54129 07:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Anomalocaris, given that that account has made a grand total of 21 edits in the past year and hasn't edited at all in two months, how are you selecting who gets these notifications? Looking at your recent contribs, you're notifying editors who haven't signed anything for months (e.g. this one whose last signed post was in February 2016 so there's no way you could know what they have set as their current signature), so you're clearly not doing it from recent changes. Are you working from the preferences database, and if so who at the WMF gave you consent to access it, given that when an editor died and his widow requested we disable his email to prevent her getting notifications the request to access even that one field in preferences needed to be bounced all the way up the chain of command to Jimmy Wales? FWIW, while the <font> attribute may be declared "obsolete" the word doesn't mean the same thing to W3C as it does in real life, and the rules for parsing a legacy color value remain compulsory for browsers to support in HTML5, so if <font color="#006633"> is throwing errors then the problem is at your end, not mine. ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Based on this discussion I think they're using an SQL query. Primefac (talk) 15:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC) (talk page stalker)

Primefac is correct; most of my recent notifications are from an SQL query, which looked back 30 days; that query was done 7 December 2017, and I'm nearly finished working that list. Shouta is on the 7 December list; I do not know why and I am puzzled too, because I thought the list looked back only 30 days. I do not have access to the preferences database.

The <tt> tag is also non-HTML5 compliant; please use <code> for source code, <kbd> for user input, <var> for variable names, or <samp> for output, function and tag names, etc.  :-)

I haven't been able to access the w3.org website in over a week; if you are able to access it, please let me know, so I can complain to my ISP.

<font color="#006633"> works now, but at some point in the future, it won't, and that's why Misplaced Pages is working on moving to HTML5-compliant markup. My focus has been to reduce the creation of new non-HTML5-compliant markup by notifying users with non-HTML5-compliant signatures. I have notified over 600 users; about two-thirds of them have used their signature since I notified them, and of those, the overwhelming majority have updated their signatures to HTML5-compliant. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:49, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Follow-up: I now understand these issues more completely. The SQL query was done at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/ — which uses a database of public information that includes user signatures. This particular query was restricted to users who made at least one "talk" (Talk, User talk, Misplaced Pages talk, Template talk, etc.) edit within the past 30 days. Shouta edited their own user talk page without leaving a signature; editing the page was sufficient to be included in the report. You can do your own Quarry queries; this isn't a secret. Are you able to access w3.org? I still can't. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Inter-language article comparisons

Was pondering why some language-editions of Misplaced Pages seem to have much better articles than en-Misplaced Pages in unexpected areas. Example 1: Roland Philipps - see the Spanish-language version at es:Roland Philipps. There is even a mention on the talk page over there of Tower Hamlets and Stepney Green. Ah, I see what happened. The en-Misplaced Pages article in passing says "A Scout Group in Mexico is named after him, and has recorded his biography in detail." And then (maybe thankfully) leaves the way clear for the detail over there. I am sure you and others can come other with similar examples. Carcharoth (talk) 21:29, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, one might wonder, for example, why there's a dewp article on this guy but none in enwp. EEng 21:39, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

It is certainly noticeable that some other Wikipedias have better coverage of certain topics, artworks for example, even ones by English or American artists, although the articles are not necessarily fully developed.

For Thomas Houseworth , you'd have to ask de:Benutzer:Jörg Zägel, who seems to have an interest in photography, and wrote him up in 2010.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.169 (talk • contribs)

That article was almost entirely written by a Scouts2012. Many articles such as the ones I edit are almost entirely written by one editor, and if that editor only edits in one language only one Misplaced Pages will have a high quality article on the topic. And it won't necessarily make sense to outsiders why it has to be in that specific language. Check out es:Coropuna and en:Coropuna for an example - that topic is certainly more important for Spanish speakers than English speakers but since the editor who wrote most of the volcanology sections is English speaking the enwiki article covers it better. Which is a pity, really. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Sadly Scouts2012 seems to have gone away. Or chosen a new name, perhaps. There is certainly something to be said for encouraging people with sufficient language skills to translate articles from other Wikipedias. I suspect more are translated from the English Misplaced Pages into other languages than come back the other way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.169 (talk • contribs)

Aye, Arago hotspot and 1257 Samalas eruption were at least partially translated to de:Arago-Hotspot and de:Ausbruch des Samalas 1257/fr:Éruption du Samalas en 1257 respectively. id:Letusan Samalas 1257 by Erik Fastman on the other hand isn't. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:37, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

At least part of the reason topics are sometimes represented on other Wikipedias when they aren't represented here is that—while it may not sometimes seem apparent when watching the crapflood—English Misplaced Pages actually has quite a high definition of "notability" compared to the other language wikis. While we require "significant coverage", the notability standard for most of the other wikis is just "coverage in reliable sources"—consequently, we don't allow the creation of an article on every entry in a directory while other wikis do, and it's a lot more difficult to demonstrate significant coverage in reliable sources. (Thus, to take a pertinent example, there are around 800 extant William Etty paintings, but only about 40 would make viable en-wiki articles because they've actually been discussed in detail in their own right, but many of the other wikis would happily host a one-line permastub on each. Likewise, cy-wikipedia considers every book published in the Welsh language to be automatically notable by virtue of existing, even if it's just a self-published directory of garden sheds or autobiography of a completely insignificant figure which the author has self-translated into Welsh, whereas we'd expect to see evidence that significant reviewers considered the book notable or that it had some kind of impact.) There's also the Hasselhoff Factor; some topics which are considered niche in their home countries are for one reason or another mainstream elsewhere.

Incidentally, 213.205.251.169, I've undone this edit. While it's correct, the four Tate Galleries are something of a special case. Because they're so restricted for space and—particularly in the case of Tate Britain—unable to expand, their permanent collections massively outweigh available display space and they're only able to display about 5-10% of the collection at any time. This is particularly true of their 19th-century British collection, where they have a grand total of two rooms (one pre- and one post-1848) at Millbank to display not only everything they inherited from the National Gallery but everything acquired by Henry Tate, everything bequeathed by George Frederic Watts, and everything they've acquired or been bequeathed in the meantime. Consequently, they operate a policy of rehanging displays at high frequency, of rotating items between the four sites, and of taking every opportunity to loan things out. Other than the Turners (which are safe in their dedicated room), pretty much the only 19th-century works that one can safely assume will be on display are Millais's Ophelia, Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott, Constable's Flatford Mill and Rossetti's Beata Beatrix because they're the ones that drive poster sales—even world-famous works like Carnation Lily Lily Rose and Hope regularly get exiled to the store cupboard or loaned out to other galleries. (In general, they always have one Etty on display at Millbank—generally Youth and Pleasure although at the time of writing it's a rather nondescript nude study.) Unless it could somehow be automated, for Misplaced Pages to try to keep track of what is and isn't on display at any one time is a recipe for constantly going out of date, as well as for annoying readers if we don't keep what's on display and where up to date, since it's perfectly possible that someone reading about a particular work will decide they want to see it and get annoyed when they turn up at Millbank to discover that the work in question is currently in Tate Liverpool, on tour in Tokyo, or languishing in a climate-controlled bunker off Goodge Street. ‑ Iridescent 16:59, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

WP:VAMOS cautions against "currently (not) on display" for these reasons, except for works that are really core in a collection, or very static collections. The Royal Collection is another that likes to keep its artworks on their toes. At the least, a date should be given. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Even "works that are really core in a collection, or very static collections" is risky. With the possible exception of Michelangelo's David and the Mona Lisa—and a few special cases like frescos that physically can't be moved without dismantling the building around them—pretty much everything has the potential to go on loan or into storage at some point. Ponce lets Flaming June travel reasonably frequently despite it being the only piece in their collection that anyone's actually heard of, the National Gallery of Scotland has unceremoniously shoved a huge stack of their most famous works in the storeroom while they rebuild the lower levels, and even the Bayeux Tapestry looks set to go on holiday. (On the subject of works being put in storage, this desperate publicity stunt raised an eyebrow; I don't know if you're familiar with the internal layout of MAG, but to reach the empty spot formerly occupied by this "depiction of women as either a passive decorative form or a femme fatale" which was so offensive it had to be removed, the visitors will have to pass an entire wall occupied by a fifteen-foot mural of naked women luring men to their deaths and feasting on their half-rotted corpses.) ‑ Iridescent 15:43, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Arbitration and other history

I was musing on what you said above about the new ArbCom, and I realised that things have got to the stage where I don't really know or recognise half of them. OK, that's not entirely true. I recognise about 10 of them. But I can no longer divine where the committee is likely to come down on certain issues. Maybe that is a good thing.

In passing (and probably more interesting), it is gratifying to see articles being created in recent years that I wouldn't have thought would have been possible when I first wrote articles mentioning the topics (people in this case). Two examples: Gordon Alchin (created January 2016) and William G. S. Cadogan (created November 2014). I somehow missed the creation of the latter article, but I see the creator ended up blocked as a sockpuppet, which is a bit disconcerting.

Still more in passing, would you have any advice on George Harold Baker? I could work on the article some more, but am not quite sure what the right balance would be. And that brings me full circle to a discussion we had on these pages about grave inscriptions (see More on memorials from September 2016 for a refresher). I have done a couple of these now that the CWGC put the grave inscriptions up more prominently: , , , , , . The interesting thing about some of these is looking at the CWGC scans of their records, you see which relative requested the inscription (the next-of-kin entry and address) - that is not included for Prince Maurice, so no clue there as to who from the Royal Family came up with that epitaph. Maybe it is recorded somewhere else, maybe not (secondary sources sometimes comment on this, but quite rarely).

Small addendum, on something that popped up on a search: this discussion from nearly three years ago featured Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The triforium got mentioned there. And the Westminster Abbey website has improved still further over the last few years. On my recent readings, I found that the plans to open up the triforium to create a new exhibition space are far advanced. Read all about it here! (is it bad that I find that quite exciting?). :-) Carcharoth (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

My comment isn't necessarily a criticism of the individuals—there's always a tendency in January for newly-elected arbs to slip into a "we shall now proceed to construct the new world order" mentality and want to immediately set about acting as an Instrument Of Justice, and consequently to take on tasks that more experienced people would reject. Looking at the new names, I can fairly confidently predict that this committee will be far more keen to micromanage and interfere than any since the bad old days, but I can't predict which way they'll jump on any given issue. There's the additional factor that there's now one person on the committee whom I'd consider actively crazy, and while they'll always be outnumbered 14–1 so won't actually have much impact, they'll potentially steer discussions in directions they wouldn't normally have followed.

I no longer have access to the relevant archives and logs so don't know the full story, but that SPI looks like a very odd situation. As 213.205.251.169 might be able to testify it's not impossible for someone to be operating multiple good-hand accounts simultaneously, but it's something that would take a lot of effort with no obvious benefit—there's no "I don't want to link my real name to controversial edits" or "I have a high profile but want to edit in uncontroversial obscurity" argument in this particular case. We just went through the same thing with another long-term user here—maybe this is more of a trend than I thought.

George Harold Baker might be quite difficult, as I imagine a lot of the sources will be print-only and not widely available outside Canada, and if he was from Quebec there's a decent chance that sources will be in French. A quick-and-dirty way to flesh it out will be to check the Parliamentary records for the period in question and just list which way he voted in each division, and some quotes from his speeches if he made any, as that's an easy way to give readers an idea of his views on various issues without slipping over the line into the dreaded Original Research.

It's now been a hundred years, so the relevant royal archives for Prince Maurice should be opening, although material pertaining to the Royal Family has a tendency to be "lost in the floods of 1957". In his case I'd be shocked if his epitaph were chosen by anyone other than his mother.

If they're planning on using the triforium to divert the flood of tourists away from the main body of the church all well and good, but I don't hold out much hope. To my mind Westminster Abbey now has the feel of an English Heritage Disneyland, and they should probably be putting more of it off limits rather than opening it up further; I can totally see why the latest batch of royals are choosing to have their weddings at St George's Chapel rather than Westminster Abbey or St Paul's. (Speaking of places that are overrun by tourists, I haven't forgotten the Natural History Museum and am just being lazy.) ‑ Iridescent 10:00, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. There is quite a bit more in the 1917 memorial booklet (available online), but that will begin to overwhelm the article unless used carefully. The article also needs to mention Samuel Simpson Sharpe. I read up on that, and am wondering what has happened here? More here. Quite a contrast in the stories and the playing out of the public memory there. Carcharoth (talk) 12:59, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

At a guess, there were probably complaints that Sharpe was being honoured while other shell-shock and shot-at-dawn cases haven't received official pardons. Or, it may be something as simple as the delays to the Nigel Gresley statue at King's Cross, because the man's descendants complained about the design. ‑ Iridescent 17:20, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

There is a crazy person on the committee? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:55, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Some would say there are fifteen. It's really not unusual for arbs to be unusual characters. ‑ Iridescent 22:00, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Leysdown disaster

While you're here, do you (or anyone else) have any idea what this is all about? It's in Nunhead Cemetery, immediately next to the WW1 graveyard - there's no explanatory sign, and neither it, nor the Scott memorial mentioned, is something I've ever heard of, not is there any mention why something designed by Scott - which would presumably have been listed - has been replaced with this plain tablet. ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

We have HMS Arethusa (1849) - presumably the ship mentioned. But nothing on the disaster. But Prof. google knows all about it - rather interesting Johnbod (talk) 15:41, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) According to this site, "In 1969, during the time the cemetery was badly neglected and the target of vandalism, the life size bronze scout was stolen and probably sold for scrap." One of those niche topics perhaps, Iridescent...? >SerialNumber54129 15:48, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Lots of blogs, but aside from this brief BBC report on the centenary there doesn't seem to be anything online other than the contemporary press coverage, and I'm not particularly inclined to go wading through old books looking for the occasional mention. Baden-Powell House might know if anything's ever been published on it. ‑ Iridescent 17:09, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

What title would you suggest? >SerialNumber54129 17:14, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

"Leysdown disaster"; that's what the BBC use so you have a Reliable Source for the term being used to describe it. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Ta. Just found a redirect for it, too. >SerialNumber54129 17:36, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

This book (Kids From Over the Water: An Edwardian Working-class Childhood in South-East London) has what looks like a good account of what happened. Statue sculpted by a Miss Lillie Reed apparently (designed by Scott). Carcharoth (talk) 17:40, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Carcharoth; yes, I saw that, and it would be bloody useful- but I wondered if it was actually RS? I mean it's not Angela's Ashes, but it doesn't seem to source itself much? >SerialNumber54129 17:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Most of the facts can probably be additionally sourced to contemporary newspaper reports. Is anyone intending to write an article on this - I might at some point. Carcharoth (talk) 11:58, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, Carcharoth, I was thnking of it, partly as a way of dragging me out of my comfort zone. The problem with doing so, of course, is that I may (almost certainly will!) not have access to the sources, like you perhaps. >SerialNumber54129 12:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

If you're in Britain, sign up for City of London Libraries—you don't need to live or work there, just be prepared to visit either the Barbican or Artizan Street (round the corner from Liverpool Street station) to bring proof that you reside in the UK and to collect your card, after registering online. It opens a huge swathe of normally paywalled archives, and also allows you to virtually borrow books (the book will appear on your e-reader, then self-delete after three weeks unless you renew it). If you sign up for the CoL and Westminster—who offer an overlapping but different range of archives, between the two you have access to pretty much every digital archive you'll ever need for anything pertaining to English history. ‑ Iridescent 14:51, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

There was a bronze statue of a scout, stolen in 1969 apparently. Google "Walworth Scouts and Leysdown Tragedy". Lots of sources, including a picture on the cover of a book about it on Amazon. Apparently David Beckham's great-grandfather and one brother surivived; another brother drowned. No article on Leysdown tragedy ... yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.73.172.168 (talk)

While we're talking about cemetery oddities, I nominate this, which rivals Liliana Crociati de Szaszak as a combination of "genuinely moving" and "genuinely disturbing" (zoom in to read the inscription), and is in the decidedly prosaic surroundings of Willesden rather than some exotic clime. I assume the sculptor had a spare Shaun Ryder head knocking about the studio. ‑ Iridescent 15:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I presume the 'G' and the 'M' stand for Georgie and Maurice (the husband's name)? The inscription isn't particularly disturbing, unless I'm missing something? (The tragedy itself is disturbing enough.) It is rather strange to come across sculptures like that suddenly in a graveyard. Carcharoth (talk) 18:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I the sculpture is almost macabre—like a dollface? >SerialNumber54129 18:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

It's the sculpture that's disturbing, not the inscription—my comment about zooming in was just to see the back-story. This one is still the oddest statue I've ever seen—it's on a corner at the end of a sombre row of tombs in the ultra-respectable La Recoleta Cemetery, and you can literally see strollers do a double-take as they see it. (If you're interested in grave monuments and ever get the opportunity, I can't recommend Recoleta highly enough—the Porteños picked up the Victorian style of funerary architecture from the British but unlike the British never lost it and continued building elaborate tombs and weeping angels up to the present day, all in whatever the prevailing style happened to be at the time, and the net result is an extraordinary mashup of designs. The surrounding area is also lovely, and gives the general impression that someone has somehow sawn off a chunk of central Barcelona and towed it across the Atlantic.) In terms of general oddness, I find it hard to believe anyone will ever find a more peculiar grave than that of John Renie. ‑ Iridescent 22:17, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Aside about checkuser

• Please accept my apologies IP. An unfortunate proximity to elsewhere on the ~31 range in the city :) happy editing! >SerialNumber54129 16:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

No need to apologise. It is easy to jump to conclusions. And it could have been worse. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.72.151.19 (talk) 23:34, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• The perils of mobile broadband; because the IP address gets reallocated every time you drive under a bridge, overenthusiastic admins—especially those from places like the US where IP addresses are far less dynamic—apply rangeblocks or write LTA cases in good faith, without realising that the ranges in question can knock out entire countries. (See User talk:Oshwah#Range block for a recent example.) If you're in the UK—and not on one of the specialist providers like Hyperoptic where the IP address is genuinely stable—go to whatismyipaddress.com every so often and check yourself against the block logs and LTA cases. You'll be shocked at how often you're flagged as a vandal address. ‑ Iridescent 17:03, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

True :D -I'm sure I saw her editeng from a library in my nec of the woods, and that was wierd. I should know better in any case. Cheers, >SerialNumber54129 17:14, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Remember, geolocation in the UK is meaningless; as a case in point, 31.73.172.168 is currently simultaneously geolocating to Cannon Street station and the suburbs of Bristol. Trying to pin down a BT IP—as is the case at Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Vote (X) for Change—is particularly pointless, since the whole "every house is a hotspot" way BT is set up means your IP address can literally change ten times in a minute if you're using a laptop in a moving vehicle. ‑ Iridescent 17:27, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

That's brilliant; also bizarre  :) Per beans, etc, but CU bases itself on that or similar information, surely...?! >SerialNumber54129 17:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't know why Checkuser is surrounded with such "oh, we can't disclose how it works!" mystique. MediaWiki is open-source software and anyone who so desires can either install it on their own computer and play around with all its functions, or read the user manual for themselves. Checkuser on a username outputs the IP addresses they've used in the last 3 months and (optionally) each edit they've made and what the useragent was, and CU on the IP address will show the usernames that have used it in the last 3 months and their respective useragents. There really isn't any secret information that it discloses; when we say "Checkuser is not magic pixie dust", we mean it. ‑ Iridescent 18:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Not a secret, just not advertised  ;) the only place on en.wp these images are is this page... I guess I just wondered how much actual use the information is when one can be in both the city of London and bristol! >SerialNumber54129 18:20, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Those particular images aren't, but File:CheckUser log.png is in WP:CheckUser, along with a link to Technical:mw:CheckUser; more detailed description of how the feature works and how to install the extension on one's own wiki.; this really isn't a secret. ‑ Iridescent 18:27, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I was going to set up a personal wiki once, but it was so mind-numbingly Byzantine in everything that had to precede it, or bolt on to it, etc., that it became proper tedious. Cool notion though, one's own 'private collection', as it were. >SerialNumber54129 12:27, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I did it, it took an afternoon. Its not difficult as such but it does require following certain steps. Add an extra few days if you want to care about external network access as opposed to have a closed internal wiki. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:43, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Cheers Only in death; I thought, when you write a lot about separate but all interlinked subjects, it would be a useful storage system with built-in cross-referencing. I discovered that I would have to learn a new lingo, though  ;) °«»° >SerialNumber54129 12:33, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Where private wikis shine is when you have multiple people all working on different aspects of the same thing, and you want to be able to link everyone's work without everyone getting in each other's way. For personal use, I find it hard to think of a use-case where the benefit would outweigh the time and space it takes up; if you want to cross-reference documents internally, just set up a quick-and-nasty Access or Base table. ‑ Iridescent 15:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiSpeak

Since it was mentioned (a long time ago) on this talk and said that you were a major contributor I did find this German Misplaced Pages page about the same. Amazing how similar the wiki speak is between languages. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Block review: We'll fabricate a block rationale; if it doesn't fit we'll make it fit, Madness: A requirement for partaking on a project such as this., Admin: Depending on the case either a hyperintelligent saint (if he agrees with you) or a braindamaged Hitler (if he for unidentifiable reason disagrees with you), but either way superhuman: He knows everything, can do everything, is allowed to do everything, always online, always available and can do any amount of work with faster than light speed so that everything's done yesterday., Semiprotection: The rabble stays outside, Personal attack: Every criticism of you and Penis: The most important article topic, to the point that at least one needs to be in each article. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 23:14, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I wrote quite a bit of it (and all of the RFA Decoder), but WP:WikiSpeak was very much Eric Corbett's baby. It doesn't surprise me if the issues on de-wiki match those here, since there are such close ties between en-wiki and de-wiki that the cultures are solidly intermeshed. What would be interesting is whether there are equivalent pages on those Wikipedias like Russian or Welsh which have a very different internal culture, and if so whether they treat things differently. If you want some free money, you could probably persuade the WMF to fund a research proposal into the matter; "community building" is one of their pet topics. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I've written a few bits of WikiSpeak (IIRC I did AfC - "a place where articles don't get created", using {{sfn}} to pretend you know what you're talking about, "This article is shit, piss off" for CSD is definitely what I'd say) but the main inspiration does indeed come from Eric. Like all good pieces of humour, everything about it is close enough to what really goes on around here. I wouldn't hold out much hope in it fostering "community building" though, for everyone who likes it there's probably another who thinks it's totally unacceptable. Indeed, I think Eric has said it was a good way of getting his real views on WP out in the open without fear of being blocked for it. Ritchie333 17:17, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

A place to write a lengthy article about a notable 19th-century mechanical engineer, only to have it rejected by a 17-year-old Pokémon fan six weeks later because the formatting was a bit wonky. might be the best summation of my issues with AfC I've even seen (I'd also add who just accepted a ref bombed brochure because the company's marketing director gave him a barnstar.) TonyBallioni (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

My personal favourite out of that list is ANI: Plural of ANUS. See also IANAL. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:23, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Or a collection of anuses. EEng 20:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Random stuff from CWGC trawl

From a recent trawl of pages using links to the CWGC to reference war dead (some really push the boundaries and take an idiosyncratic approach):

• Manitoba memorial lakes ("There are more than 4,200 lakes, islands, bays and other geographical features named after Manitoba's war dead.")
• Hamilton Road Cemetery, Deal (bit of a blow-by-blow account)
• List of cricketers who were killed during military service (has 355 links!)
• Winterbourne Junior Boys' School (the memorial section)
• This was quite sweet: "Photographs of the Centenary Celebrations (taken on a mobile 'phone)" (actual quote)
• Talk:BOAC Flight 777#Burr's wife - bizarre (see also Raymond Burr)
• A mini-edit war: 'Restored the names of the war dead, as these details are important to the local community of Cloone' (edit summary)

There is more, but that is just a selection. The 'lists of' annoy me a bit, as can be seen here (my half-started attempt to make sense of a long list). There really are lists of people from everywhere? And endless permutations of lists? Feels like just scratching the surface. Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

1. Sometimes I expand an already existing article in an user sandbox, add the new content to the already existing article and then ask for a history merge; XTools treats an article that received a history merge as if the article was created by me when that isn't the case, such as Antofalla.