User talk:Iridescent

The arbitration committee "assuming good faith" with an editor.

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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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia? 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 Wikipedia: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)

I'm sure I left my ring of invisibility here somewhere. Under that sheep? Or inside the horse?

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 Wikipedia'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 Wikipedia. ‑ 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 Wikipedia 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)

Congratulations on this btw! 89K views on the day, & some 135K extra over the whole period. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Ta—this one survived relatively unscathed. These Etty ones always seem to do well in terms of views—I suspect the appeal is three parts nudity to one part intriguing article names. The better measure of whether something on the main page is actually interesting the readers—as opposed to them clicking the link out of curiosity and then wandering off after skimming the first paragraph and deciding it sounds boring—is how much of a spike it creates in "that was interesting, I'd like to know more" related articles, rather than in the raw pageviews on their own. ‑ Iridescent 16:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

It will be interesting to see if naked men being whipped by demons trumps bare bottoms with readers. My money is on Destroying Angel. ‑ Iridescent 10:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

References

People murdered in British Columbia

Hi, I was wondering if I should write articles about people who were murdered in BC, and if would they be kept. For example this article that I wrote The Murder of Melanie Carpenter is on two category pages Category:People murdered in British Columbia and Category:Violence against women in Canada, but most would say it does not belong on the List of people who disappeared mysteriously, since it doesn't have enough coverage, so I have removed it from that list, but I think it should be kept as murder cases are notable aren't they? So again I ask if should I write some more cases about people who were murdered in BC, and if would they be kept? Davidgoodheart (talk) 03:09, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

You answered your own question with "it doesn't have enough coverage". No, murder cases are not automatically notable; the exact figure varies according to which definition one uses, but by the UNODC's figures there are between 400,000 and 500,000 homicides every year. Will you please actually read Wikipedia:Notability (events)#Inclusion criteria, to which you keep being pointed; I'll reproduce the most pertinent part here for you:

1. Events are probably notable if they have enduring historical significance and meet the general notability guideline, or if they have a significant lasting effect.
2. Events are also very likely to be notable if they have widespread (national or international) impact and were very widely covered in diverse sources, especially if also re-analyzed afterwards (as described below).
3. Events having lesser coverage or more limited scope may or may not be notable; the descriptions below provide guidance to assess the event.
4. Routine kinds of news events (including most crimes, accidents, deaths, celebrity or political news, "shock" news, stories lacking lasting value such as "water cooler stories," and viral phenomena) – whether or not tragic or widely reported at the time – are usually not notable unless something further gives them additional enduring significance.

Number 4 is the one to pay particular attention to. Some crimes are notable because they had a lasting impact or had significant ongoing coverage, but the presumption is that a criminal act is not notable in Wikipedia terms. (A very rough rule of thumb is "has a non-vanity publisher published a book about the crime?".)

As with the missing persons cases, I strongly recommend you stay well away from articles on criminal cases; not only do you not understand Wikipedia's rules on notability, but more importantly you don't understand the law on libel. As SMcCandlish and I have already explained to you, the WMF is not going to protect you if you unintentionally libel someone, which is very easy to do in an article on a criminal case. (On Murder of Melanie Carpenter it's not quite as problematic, as the person you're accusing of murder despite their never having been convicted is themselves dead and can't sue, but sooner or later someone will take exception to your throwing accusations around. Please read and absorb what SMcCandlish told you here; Wikipedia is really not a good place to be writing about current criminal cases.) ‑ Iridescent 08:25, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for the info, as you have now given me some new insight on this subject, but I think that I really DO know the laws on libel, as I know that it is only libel if it is untrue, and if it causes the person who I wrote about damage. Regarding what I wrote about Murder of Melanie Carpenter (which has now been upgraded by an editor and me, and looks a lot better!) I am just quoting what the newspapers are saying so I don't understand how that could seen as libel, as I think the newspapers themselves would be in danger of libel wouldn't they? (please tell me how I could be wrong if I am). Do you think that if I created a single private Wikipedia article about a murdered person and posted it online, and their killer was in fact tried and found guilty in court and I cited that in the article that I wrote about if I would be in any danger of libel? Davidgoodheart (talk) 00:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

IANAL but just to say you are seriously misunderstanding what 'libel' means. Canada follows English law, and as such intent is presumed (i.e. whether or not you intended to be defamatory has no bearing), and justification (i.e., "the claim is true") is only a defence if you can prove beyond doubt that what you're writing is true. As you've been repeatedly told, while Wikipedia is well placed for covering historic cases that would otherwise have slipped into obscurity and we welcome articles of that nature, it is not the appropriate site to host a current missing persons database. ‑ Iridescent 10:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Greatest edit summary to date

You in general have some of the best edit summaries, but this takes the cake. Also, yes, it does look like a monkey taking a shit. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:55, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• It's incredible  :) but what the **** were they thinking of‼️⁉️ I mean, How does the ability to write a small essay (colourfully, even!) actually help the reader...or the writer for that matter. ...SerialNumber54129^{...speculates} 19:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Protection logs are the only positive I see. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Agree; but ~"unlimited"? —ever played a no-limit poker game?! They clearly haven't!!! ...SerialNumber54129^{...speculates} 19:08, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
      • 1000 char limit
    • I see edit summary conversations being quite annoying to keep track off Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:12, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
      • Someone, somewhere, presumably thought this was a good idea. ‑ Iridescent 19:26, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
        • Request from de.wiki in 2006 and I think part of the 2016 community wishlist. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
          • Well that was for mainly for non-latin characters which have half or a third of the limit of 255 as two bytes per character; not for expanding it so much so IIRC Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:35, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
            • Yes—That was the Russians requesting 255 characters, not a request to allow browser-crashing edit summaries. ‑ Iridescent 19:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
              • Plenty of scope for copyvios in edit summaries, then. - Sitush (talk) 20:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
• @TonyBallioni, you do realize that if the WMF now change their mind and hide these extended edit summaries, you're just posting at random about monkeys taking a shit? ‑ Iridescent 19:33, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
  • If you listen to some of my detractors, that'd be one of the more productive things I've done on this project. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:43, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• I thought my iPad had gone beserk then! Think I might support removal... Aiken D 19:36, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Commenting here purely to try out this new feature Gurch (talk) 19:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• • • • • • The request is meta:Community Tech/Edit summary length for non-Latin languages, which became a task to lengthen edit summaries because apparently Unicode cannot be squeezed. I notice that We don't want to encourage Latin languages to post 3x longer edit summaries, because edit summaries aren't intended to be a primary communication method. So we'll put a limit on the size -- probably 250 characters, rather than 250 bytes, which in Latin languages would mean no change at all. This will put non-Latin and Latin languages on par for edit summary length. is apparently an outcome of the internal discussions, so maybe there was a slip-up somewhere? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
            • Interesting; hope they acquisece Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:46, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
            • Also, I didn't know that hurricanes have their own 🌀 Unicode symbol. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:41, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I hate you all... Primefac (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2018 (UTC) Except Jo-Jo, who taught me something new. Hurricane! Primefac (talk) 19:43, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Now that is a blast from the past, especially with *miss a thread above. Anyone want to find Poetlister and hold a 2007 reunion? ‑ Iridescent 19:43, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

the last 11 years were a bit of a blur Gurch (talk) 19:45, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Not to hijack the thread, but... Holy cow! Gurch is still around! /(checks contribs)/ Oh, it isn't the miracle I thought it was. But still, yay. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:49, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Gurch, you really haven't missed much. Anyone want to go find Keeper76 and complete the set? ‑ Iridescent 19:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Have I missed much? Majorly talk 19:57, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Good grief, is every BRC-era admin watching this page? If we can get Lara and Betacommand I think we have a full house. ‑ Iridescent 19:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It's raining OG's! Hi Majorly! One of my RFA noms... --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi! Just thought I’d freak you all out. And now, back to real life... Majorly talk 20:04, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Nooooo, don't goooo! We miss you!!!! PS: Most of those symbols show up as blank squares for me, so I am somewhat missing the fun part oO SoWhy 20:08, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

As long as we're blowing (the mind of) Iridescent, I suppose I can say hi too. Hi. Keeper | 76 04:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Very important parenthetical ;) Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:14, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Hah, this was a fun read. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• Here we go  :) ...SerialNumber54129^{...speculates} 19:44, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Everyone got it out of their systems now? Because I'd like to be able to see my watchlist without killing my elderly eyes... Ealdgyth - Talk 19:48, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Fifty Wikipedia Points and the unblock for the vandal of your choice to whoever can slip

998 characters
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
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in as the default edit summary for any bot or script. ‑ Iridescent 19:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh my... I already have four good candidates in mind, mostly user scripts for things like auto-sign... would end up hitting everyone that used it rather than one "culprit". Bloody good thing only admins can edit .js Primefac (talk) 19:54, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Gurch, do you still have write access to the Huggle source code? ‑ Iridescent 19:55, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh my, imagine that - carnage Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It would certainly get the WMF's attention. Primefac (talk) 19:57, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

It would certainly make a rather good point Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• There is an RfC about this at VPP Turn off extended edit summaries Jytdog (talk) 19:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
  • At VPR, actually; I've fixed your link. Primefac (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
    • • Thx Jytdog (talk) 20:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
        • Life's too short; have you ever known the WMF devs revert a change once it's been made, other than in two specific cases where Wikipedia was on the brink of open civil war and full-scale content forking? (The cynic in me says that the way to get this change reversed is to leave a shedload of good-faith but lengthy edit-summary essays on arbitration cases, highish-level policy discussions on Meta, pages you know will be on Jimmy's watchlist, and pages that you know will be on the watchlists of board members, but it would need to be done entirely in good faith so as not to constitute disrupting Wikipedia to make a point.) ‑ Iridescent 20:18, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
          • Grand idea, let's bring this to User_talk:Jimbo_Wales then as we all know it is a very productive area Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:23, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
• While we're on the topic of blowing up watch lists, I've decided to join in using Iridescent's suggested edit summary.

  In retrospect, that may not have been a good idea.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 21:15, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

• Iridiscent, FWIW, the "Does anyone have any idea" icons included in the summary linked by Tony at the top of the thread are mostly Japanese culture emojis: the first is a post office ("〒" just means post) I see an onigiri, a yukata, ...

Anyway, on a more serious note, I wish so many people weren't satyrically abusing the new system, as the odds are overwhelmingly high that, rather than the community blocking/banning editors who problematically abusing the new edit summary length rules, it's more likely that massive abuses, even good-faith jokes by established contributors, will lead to the WMF withdrawing the change, and I honestly have never liked the short character limit as I often find myself wanting to include long URLs (as a substitute for links to stuff) and would like to see the new system stay in place, perhaps in an "opt-in" fashion or in the form of a new editor permission for established contributors who would prefer to link to talk page diffs rather than vaguely say "see talk".

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

​The obvious practical solution (which I see a few people have already suggested) is to automatically truncate edit summaries after the first 200 or so characters, with a "show all" button. Consequently, it would remove the issue of crapflooding watchlists, but still allow the (rare) cases where it's genuinely useful to post a wall of text in the edit summary rather than on the talkpage. I make no apologies at all for using intentionally disruptive edit summaries to illustrate the issue; people can engage in hypothetical "net positive" discussions all they like, but when they see a wall of emojis or Zalgo text clogging their watchlist it drives the point home that this isn't just opposition-for-opposition's-sake but that I'm demonstrating that this raises genuine potential problems. (An immediate one that springs to mind, that I don't think has been raised, is that presumably scripts like WP:AWB will now list every change they've made in their edit summaries, rather than truncating at 255 characters as they currently do.) In over a decade as a Wikipedia admin and with 300,000 edits, I can probably count the number of times I've thought "Damn, I wish the edit summaries were longer" on the fingers of one hand, and I can think of no legitimate circumstance ever when someone would genuinely need to have a thousand character story as an edit summary. ‑ Iridescent 13:01, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• Hmm...The edit-history of Iri's t/p seems to be gradually metamorphosing into a piece of art-work.Any more contributors?! ~ Winged Blades^Godric 05:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Sign me up! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Natureium (talk • contribs) 7:53, March 3, 2018 (UTC)

And so the copyvios in edit summaries begins - a trout to Natureium for [1] violating copyvio from [2] and/or disney Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:40, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Is an emoji representation of a song a copyvio? Is a foreign language translation of a song a copyvio? Emojis represent ideas rather than words. Is it then a summary or interpretation of a song rather than a translation? Natureium (talk) 19:33, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes x2; not only does direct translation still count as copyright violation, but cut-and-pasting from another website undoubtedly constitutes copyright violation. The big corporations aren't going to go after most websites—it's good publicity for them if people are talking about your movies—but Wikipedia is a different kettle of fish. That you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL applies just as much to talkpages as it does to article mainspace, and Disney's lawyers aren't about to let you release Let It Go into the public domain. (I assure you this definitely isn't just an academic point with no impact on the real world; to their credit WMF legal tend to bat away the takedown notices and demands for identifying information of the editors who posted things, but they receive a steady stream of them.) ‑ Iridescent 23:43, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• Watchlist User ^[FBDB] Do you clowns mind? L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 12:22, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

• Shrug; take it up with whatever WMF dev decided this was a good idea. If they provide us with the facility to do something, they need to have a reasonable expectation that we'll use it. ‑ I̛͓̙̹̗̱̘̳͑̓̾͌͑̆̈͞r͈̥̳͕̈̓́̄̀͟͠ͅi̴̲̩̮̭̰̭͋̂̏̑̔̒̕̕͜͝ḋ̷͚̟̫̳̣̳̱̰̄̔̕̕͡ͅę̴̧̨̹͖̄̓͌͘͢͜͞ͅͅs̴̙͖̗̼̠̭͙̊͊̓̓͒͋̕͘̕͠c̶̡̨̺͓̟͚͂͆̍̒̅̇ĕ̡̛͎̭̱̼̺̱̲͛̋̑̀̿͢n͎̳̱̮͓̈̎̈͂̑t̴̡̧̨̲̲̭͎̻̾̒̏̍́͘͡ 12:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

oh god Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:37, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I came for the edit summaries and left imagining an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite number of infinities accidently creating all of the edit summaries ever written. Except for these. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:03, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

To be a true 2007 reunion, we need WP:AN/K back. I've always had you watchlisted, but when I first looked at my watchlist after this festival of fun I was wondering what I broke. Hi all StarM 00:58, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• Please chill with the disruptive edit summaries, guys. I appreciate that this feature was poorly thought out, but pissing everyone off who has this user talk watchlisted isn't going to fix it. Intentionally disruptive edit summaries aren't helping things. File a Phab task. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

• ​To repeat what I said above but which has probably been lost in the wall-of-text, I make no apologies at all for using intentionally disruptive edit summaries to illustrate the issue; people can engage in hypothetical "net positive" discussions all they like, but when they see a wall of emojis or Zalgo text clogging their watchlist it drives the point home that this isn't just opposition-for-opposition's-sake but that I'm demonstrating that this raises genuine potential problems. If just half-a-dozen people posting on a page with fewer than 500 watchers (most of whom are sleepers or long-retired socks) is enough to piss off large numbers of people, what is going to happen when the penny drops on /b/ or Reddit that they can now summary-bomb high-traffic pages with Ⓐ ⓣⓗⓞⓤⓢⓐⓝⓓ ⓒⓗⓐⓡⓐⓒⓣⓔⓡⓢ ⓞⓕ ⓑⓤⓑⓑⓛⓔⓣⓔⓧⓣ, with m̲͓̦͇̰͇̫͔͉̩͊̄̒̿̀̈̑̀ų̺̹͙̩̩̮̲̮̐͊̌̋͘͢l͎̳̘͇̪̫̼̀́̿͒̋́̆́̐t̵̰̟͎͓̩̘̩̀͂̈̍̌̅̚͢͠i̶͉̭̜̳̅̌͑̓́̀̊͟͡p̢̟͉̭̥̤̫̔͆͆̔̀̍̀̏̎͠ͅͅl̡͙̻̯͇̥̱̩̔̀̓̒̽̍̽̇̈͢͢e͕̞̣̩̠̼̅̓̾̄͊̍̚͘͟͡͞ b̡̹̺͎́͑̀̈̉̚͟i̩̱̬̯̎̄̓͊̆͢ḡ̵̢̛̬̤͓̭̤͓̭̞̈́̈́̓̈̓́̽͝ c̸̹̻͍̻̖̲̝̃̎̈̔͒̎͒̉̕̕͟ͅḩ̶͈̦̹̜̤̯̼̤̠̈͌̐̀̑͆̋̋͗̕u̷̟̼̮̱̟͖̩͈̣͒̊̃̽̆̈͢n̛͓̼͈̮̟̔̂̄̽͗̕͢ͅk̶͖̼̲̙̻̉͋́̍̍̀̍͜͠s̴̞̖̘̻̤̘̞͇͗̑̐́͒̃ ȯ̴͇̹̫͐̓̆̐͑̈̕͟͜͞f̵̢̡̛͔̖̳̪̫͈͌̓̒̉̉͛̚̕ Z̨̗̦̦̩̀̅̊̏̂̂͝ą̵̩̞̪̙̹̈̂̆͆̓l̸̡̡̧̡̺̘̮͎̱̾͒͛͂̊g̷̢͚͓̜̺̤͊̊͌̌͆ò̴̡̙̤̫̥͈͈͎͐͌͂̐͒̾̓͜ͅ t͙̱͇͎̱͇́̆͋̽͘͟͜ë̴̖̰͕͔̫̦̹̻͚́̅͂̀̇̆̚̚͜͝x̨̝̱͕̥̹͙̏̋́̑͞ͅt̟̻̰̼̉̽̾̓̂͗͘͜͢͠ͅ or with 😺 😺 😺 🎑 🏞 🎆("multiple cat pictures") which will not only be exceptionally annoying in its own right, but will distract from other potentially problematic edits?

  Wikipedia is already being flooded with over-long edit summaries from people acting in entirely good faith. Aside from anything else, as I predicted somewhere when this particular shit began to head towards the fan the bots are no longer truncating their edit summaries, which means that when at some point someone in entirely good faith uses AWB to perform a bunch of multiple fixes to multiple articles, Special:RecentChanges is going to end up looking like a pipe roll. ("File a phab task" would be pointless; since this has been imposed from above by the devs on the basis of what they sincerely believed was a community request, the only way to get it reverted is to demonstrate that it's causing problems.) ‑ Iridescent 13:29, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Did someone say AN/K? Believe it or not, that was my creation, if memory serves! Enigma^msg 00:26, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Wow, @Enigmaman:, that's a blast from the past. Iridescent's milk shakes bring 2007 admins to the yard. Hope you've been well StarM 02:15, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Enigmaman, your memory doesn't serve; the history still survives and it was actually MBisanz. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 May 26#Wikipedia:AN/K is possibly the oddest deletion debate I've seen since Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biscuits and human sexuality. ‑ Iridescent 10:18, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

DYK for Catherine Lynch

On 11 March 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Catherine Lynch, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that at the inquest into the death of Catherine Lynch (pictured), the presiding coroner described her as "one of a class who were a nuisance to themselves, their husbands and everybody else"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Catherine Lynch. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Catherine Lynch), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Alex Shih (talk) 00:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

When I added her to the stats, you called me too modest (rightly so). I am loosing modesty over my #996, also a woman, and my first ever with 25k+ (actually, 10k was the highest so far), and I am even prouder that the hook gave 3k+ views to "supporting" Brigitte Fassbaender and almost 2k to Occupied France. Another female prisoner to be pictured tomorrow. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

today --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:31, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I was afraid the prisoner would not be as attractive as the woman showing skin, but perhaps our readers are better than I thought. All three women nicely together now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:43, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Images can draw people in, but its only if there's an interesting story that those readers go on to share the link with their friends and you get a real spike in readers. If you look at Wikipedia:Did you know/Statistics#All-time DYK page view leaders and Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed, then aside from articles about current events that would have had high page views regardless, the one thing they all have in common is that the underlying story is actually of potential interest to people who aren't necessarily interested in the topic. ‑ Iridescent 10:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Like 1257 Samalas eruption, Licancabur Lake and Lake Manly, although the first two profited from clickbait hooks. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 11:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Review request

I don't know whether you still review articles, but if you do, would you consider commenting on the Guy Burgess peer review? The review has attracted some comments but I am hoping for something perhaps a little more analytical. If however the subject bores you to death, I won't be offended if you decline. Brianboulton (talk) 15:17, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Will do but won't be until Friday at the earliest and likely later. If the PR is archived before I comment I'll comment on your or the article's talkpage. ‑ Iridescent 2 14:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

✓ Done. Appropriately enough, Burgess's ashes are interred only a few minutes walk from Droxford. ‑ Iridescent 09:54, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 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 Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 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? 07:26, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

An article about Arbcom is being featured on the main page? Wow! EEng 11:51, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

The opposite is featured today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

EEng, you really made me laugh!! Thanks!! Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 14:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Have to say, you have the best article names. --GRuban (talk) 18:58, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

No, I have the best article names. EEng 22:15, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Lord-a-mercy. I am especially amused by the fact that your article about the specific instance has half-a-dozen paragraphs, a quotation, and three illustrations, while the generic case is one sentence long and that with a grammatical error. --GRuban (talk) 22:34, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I forgot to call your attention to the DYK. How neglectful of me. EEng 23:08, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Because this is a very cluttered painting and it's impossible to discern what it's about at standard TFA size (see right), I've taken a slightly drastic approach here; I've replaced the image with a crop of a small part and an "expand" link to view the whole thing, and slashed the blurb down to absolute bare bones (919 characters) to allow the image to be resized larger than is usual, to give readers at least a fighting chance of seeing what it's actually a picture of. Paging Dank to confirm this is OK, as this is something of a departure from usual practice (although we took the same "crop the image, enlarge what remains, and reduce the text" approach when the equally-cluttered Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm was TFA). I'm unlikely to be around on the day; anyone who is, had probably better watchlist this as unless you run Pig-faced women it will almost certainly be the most-viewed TFA of the year thanks to that goofy title, and will consequently get the usual flood of vandals and good-faith 'improvements'. (To pre-empt an obvious 'improvement', the absence of an infobox here is entirely intentional; when I've written in the past about "very elaborate artworks where the importance of having the lead image at a large enough size for detail to be visible is more important than repeating information which is already in the first paragraph of the article anyway", this is one of the two articles—the other being Beaune Altarpiece—I had in mind.) ‑ Iridescent 10:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Iri, David gets all image requests. Pinging David Levy. - Dank (push to talk) 13:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that this is the most suitable approach (and the custom code appears to have been applied correctly). —David Levy 17:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for another work by William Etty who "had acquired a (deserved) reputation for thinly-disguised pornography masquerading as art, and tried to address this with The Destroying Angel…, in which assorted loose-moralled types receive a thorough smiting. The "Reception" section is slightly longer than is usual on painting articles; because it was painted specifically with how it would be received by critics in mind, the critical response on its initial unveiling is more significant than for most visual arts articles"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Roughly twice as popular as Earth. If anybody feels like cleaning up the assorted stupidity it's accreted on the day feel free, although it probably makes sense to wait until it's dropped off the main page altogether rather than try to hold back the tide. ‑ Iridescent 2 08:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Pleading and begging

Can someone take mercy and volunteer to review Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Edmund_Hillary? ASAP because it's intended for an April 1 appearance. EEng 14:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Taking mercy ;) - Btw, I have unreviewed articles for March, DYK, beginning with O how fleeting, o how futile. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

It's all a transaction with you, huh? OK, I'll take a look tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for the quick work. EEng 22:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

It's all so much Eric Berne with you, huh? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:22, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I dislike "all"-sentences. My English ... - all I meant to say is that here you seem to get nervous about April 1, while I have 4 women that should better come in March, + 3 hymns that won't fit after Easter. Have fun, I'll travel. - "Pleading" reminded me of me pleading like Abraham with God in 2013, - the last time I did that ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:19, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, got diverted. I promise I'll start tonight. EEng 14:33, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Oops, someone got there before me. Do you have another, maybe one with the sources not in German? EEng 04:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Update: two hymns got their place, I gave up on the third, but it will be too late for all (now 5 and more to come) women, same procedure as every year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Razing of Friesoythe

Hi Iridescent. You kindly reviewed Razing of Friesoythe for DYK a month ago. As a newcomer to this aspect of Wikipedia I was wondering if there was anything further I should or could be doing in this regard? If there is, a pointer towards an instruction page would be appreciated. If there isn't, apologies for bothering you. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• (talk page watcher) @Gog the Mild: No, nothing you (Iridescent hasn't been around for a few days) need to do now ; it's in the approved queue. Did you want it to appear on the main page on 14 April for the anniversary? It will have to be moved, I believe, but I'm not sure what noble (or ignoble!) personages attend to that: pinging @BlueMoonset and Cwmhiraeth: for their assistance, as they deal with such arcane lore on a daily basis  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 16:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I shall ping the powers that be. I am hoping that it may feature as an On This Day article, and I assume that it is preferred to avoid duplication. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: Ah! Interesting. But they're two different things, and I doubt they can appear twice (at least, a DYK can't ever have appeared bold linked elsewhere on the man page, and I assume that the exclusion is mutual with OTD). No need to go through the DYK process if you wanted it for "On this day," surely...? —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 17:37, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

No guarantee that it will get OTD. My first GA and I got an invite to nominate as a DYK, so I did. Iridescent approved it a month ago, so I just wanted to check if I was missing something. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:47, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I see: doubling your chances, as it were. Good luck! —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 17:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Gog the Mild, I don't believe that a DYK appearance will interfere with a later OTD appearance (and articles sometimes appear many times at OTD ove the years), but OTD and ITN appearances (bold links) will pre-empt any subsequent DYK appearance. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:15, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset: Thank you for the explanation. I shall await developments. Gog the Mild (talk) 09:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

That's interesting; I wonder why the differering standards? Because there are less datable, anniversary-friendly articles produced as there are run-of-the-mill dyks perhaps? —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 10:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

It's entirely intentional; DYK's purported purpose is to demonstrate that Wikipedia is expanding. OTD on the other hand suffers a severe paucity of adequate material as its quality standards are much higher, and there generally isn't actually much to work with on most dates. See the date in question (you need to click on "show" next to "staging area" to unhide the full list); given that we need to maintain at least a vague semblance of geographical, topical and chronological variety, not allowing OTDs to re-run would literally deplete the entire stock in a single pass. Howcheng and The Rambling Man can fill you in with more detail on exactly how these things are chosen and what quality criteria are applied, if you care. ‑ Iridescent 10:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Heh  :) I don't think I need drag such stalwarts away from their heavy lifting (Sisyphean though it may be!)...do you fancy turning the nit-picking up to eleven for my latest effort? No worries if you're busy. I was going to say, a bit tied up...but considering the images^^^up there, that could be misconstrued  :) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 10:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: If you're being shown for DYK you won't be eligible for OTD in the same calendar year. But please feel free to add the listing in the staging area for consideration in future years. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 15:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The arcane lore of Wikipedia. :) I have no idea if I am likely to appear in OTD. Nor DYK. No doubt time will tell. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:58, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Maybe OCD? ADD? TLA? TMI? OTL? Primefac (talk) 01:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

...and after all that, probably MIA!!! ;) 07:53, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

It's actually a fairly sensible rule; just watch Talk:Main Page for a while and you'll see a non-stop stream of "you cover insert topic too frequently" complaints. (When Destroying Angel runs there will probably be complaints about running works by the same artist two months apart; or see this guy and his insistence that the fact videogames regularly appear on the main page is the result of a massive conspiracy and not down to the fact that significant numbers of people find videogames interesting and write about them.) At the time of writing the main page includes articles relating to the Royal Air Force in both the TFA and OTD slots (at my instigation, to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the RAF and consequently the 100th anniversary of the concept of "stand-alone air force"), and even that will probably get complaints of systemic bias. ‑ Iridescent 08:49, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Is the real problem not too many main page articles connected with User:Iridescent? ;) On the bright side, Friesoythe is in the queue for DYK in 4 days and I am optimistic that it may make OTD on 14 April. No doubt sparking a rash of "Why is Wikipedia being cruel to Canadians?" complaints. Gog the Mild (talk) 10:53, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

I think it's a niche genre of "main page articles connected with User:Iridescent"; "main page articles connected with User:Iridescent which require the reader to purchase a new screen to be able to read the title" perhaps :D ;) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 11:07, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The unwieldy titles are only really an issue with Etty—everything else I do tends to be from later when titling conventions had become more settled. At the time Etty was working, the concept of "paintings having names" had only just been invented (all the titles one thinks of as set in stone, like Mona Lisa, The Creation of Adam, The Birth of Venus etc, are actually the names given by 19th century curators), but the "keep the title short and memorable" convention hadn't yet come into being and the titles of artworks were more akin to an alt-text description for cataloguers and reviewers. (Illustrated newspapers didn't exist until 1842, remember; unless one happened to live in the town where a given artwork was exhibited or was in a position to make a long journey by stagecoach or the newfangled steam trains, even someone with an obsessive interest in a particular artist would never see the majority of their work and relied on descriptions and engraved prints to form their opinion of a given work.) Consequently, Etty paintings tended to get names like Joan of Arc, on finding the sword she had dreamt of, in the church of St. Catherine de Fierbois, devotes herself and it to the service of God and her country and A Composition, taken from the Eleventh Book of Milton's Paradise Lost. (In a particularly extreme example, Youth and Pleasure was originally exhibited under the title Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, while proudly riding o'er the azure realm, in gallant trim, the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm, unmindful of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, that, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.) With most artists, the paintings were given more suitable names when the modern museum collections were formed and curated in the late 19th century—e.g. Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq became The Night Watch—but Etty's fall from fashion was so complete by then that nobody ever bothered, so they now exist as something of an 1830s time capsule. ‑ Iridescent 20:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

On a scale of 1-10, how much trouble would I get in if I renamed Youth and Pleasure to its former title? Still 25 mins of april fools day left... Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:35, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

You wouldn't get in trouble as it's a genuine alternative title, although it would promptly be redirected to The Bard, the poem from which that comes and for which anyone searching would almost certainly be looking. Unless someone's conducting their searches based on the 1832 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition catalogue, it's not a plausible search term for the painting. ‑ Iridescent 18:34, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Origins of CSD G5

You'll know the answer to this, if anyone will. I'm sure there was some specific reason that G5 was implemented, and it probably wasn't "nuke any article, regardless of its merits, if somebody outsmarts our ability to kick them out". The context to this is that I declined such a tag on The Railway Detective simply because the article looked like a perfectly innocuous stub / start class effort, that deleting would be a bit of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

For my overlong thoughts on this issue, please see my essay here. The other thing I'd like to know is why we always describe CSD categories via alphanumeric codes instead of words or even initialisms. We don't do that anywhere else on Wikipedia that I can think of. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:52, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

• Running it down now. This is the first diff where it appears and is marked controversial even then. Previously only articles created and edited only by a banned user were speedyable. So there is clearly some trigger around Feb 2005 that required a change. User:Netoholic is still actively editing so might know. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Relevant talkpage here. Although amusingly enough the main complaint was that the numbering was changed. Which probably means the referring to numbers as NYB says above, pre-dates a lot of the other conventions we have on ENWP. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Also the index as a result is not terrible, given the nature of people to refer to the various criteria by their codes. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:10, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• In your case, the article that you declined probably would have been allowed to be deleted under the original criteria (here) as it only had like 3/4 edits of no substance by someone other than the creator. Apparantly this is Jimbo's fault. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:15, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

• A long time ago I proposed the CSD crieria were simplified and consolidated as there are far too many of them and the numbers confusing and arbitrary to newcomers, but the idea was opposed. Aiken D 00:14, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Just done a bit of spelunking myself - what is now G5 was written into policy on 26 July 2003, and comes directly from something added to the blocking / banning policy on 3 June 2003. This is much older than I thought! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:25, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It almost certainly originated—or at least was popularized—by the war of words between Jimmy Wales and Greg Kohs. (See MyWikiBiz for a brief and rather unsatisfactory summary.) Basically, as Jimmy saw it Greg was thumbing his nose by using socks to create obviously valid articles and daring Wikipedia to delete them (Arch Coal is one that springs to mind), and as Greg saw it he was improving Wikipedia by creating neutral articles on noteworthy topics and Jimmy and his supporters were deleting them out of spite and a misguided adherence to policy at the expense of quality. To a lesser extent the Poetlister saga probably had something to do with its migration from custom to practice. Enough Wikipedia Review people watch this page that someone can probably winkle Greg and PL out to give their side of the story (Defenders Of The Wiki, if IPs from either Philadelphia or East London pop up in this thread don't blindly revert them). As regards the official Banned Means Banned line that eventually congealed into G5, there are quite a few people still about from that fight (JzG and SlimVirgin are a couple of obvious ones, or just look through the history of User talk:Thekohser for names you recognize.) Why CSD criteria have those opaque codes rather than simple names I have no idea; the only other place I can think of where that happens is the Featured Article criteria, but in that case it's legitimate to assume that anyone seeing something like "oppose, fails 1C" is already familiar with what the codes mean. ‑ Iridescent 00:24, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I do think Guy's deletion rationale of Arch Coal on 20:06, 2 January 2008 is .... somewhat original (though I suspect it's more "I made a mistake" than "I don't like this topic"). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:33, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, Kohs. I am very confident that he never thought he was "improving Wikipedia", he was exploiting Wikipedia for personal profit, and never understood why anybody would have a problem with that. Everything he ever did here after he was banned, was done in order to "prove" that his abuse of Wikipedia for personal profit was so self-evidently a good thing that only a sociopath could possibly oppose it. Naturally he didn't create obvious spam, or at least not when using obvious socks, because he was making a WP:POINT. I found his worldview hard to understand - prior to Jan 20 2017 I had never really seen anyone behave that way. The 20:06, January 2, my summary was "bollocks" because, if you look, I was trying to restore only the post-rewrite content, but fumbled it. We didn't have revdel back then. Guy (Help!) 13:47, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I assumed that was the case, I doubt you would have really deleted an article with WP:CB as the rationale! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

​​Well, sort of. Greg undeniably turned into something of an asshole constantly trying to refight the same battle in the hope of a different result (not exactly a unique situation on Wikipedia, and many worse offenders than him are still very much with us), but I do believe that when he started he not only thought that he'd worked out a legitimate way to reconcile "neutral point of view" and "conflict of interest", but that he genuinely believed that he had the WMF's blessing to proceed, and was hurt and confused when Jimmy suddenly changed his mind. As I've pointed out before, his original proposal—a noindexed dedicated spamspace where articles written by people with a potential conflict of interest could be parked awaiting assessment by a neutral third party, and only moved to mainspace when they'd been thoroughly vetted for spam, puffery and bias-by-omission—is pretty much exactly the solution that the WMF itself came up with a decade later when the present-day "create it as a draft and then submit it to Articles for Creation" process was set up. To draw a somewhat forced analogy, the difference between someone like Grawp and Greg was the difference between a dog that's mean from the get-go and keeps attacking the neighbors' kids, and a dog whose owner constantly beats it until eventually it snaps, flies off the leash and attacks the family; in both cases, the net result is a mad dog that shouldn't be kept around the house any more, but who's responsible for the dog reaching that point—and whether it's ethical to devote time and effort to trying to find the dog a new home or just to take it to the woods and shoot it—is different in each case. ‑ Iridescent 02:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

To Ritchie333: That line predated my work on the page, I was only reordering/organizing the items. The line I think originates here when a list of exceptions to the normal 7-day deletion discussion process was added by MartinHarper. He later coined the phrase "Candidates for speedy deletion" at this edit. -- Netoholic @ 00:34, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that what Ritchie is asking isn't when G5 was created, but when it metamorphosed in common application from "articles written by a banned user can be unilaterally deleted by an admin if they feel it necessary" to "articles written by a banned user should be unilaterally deleted unless someone demonstrates a reason not to". This is a fairly recent development; there are dozens of perfectly good quality articles written in the not-so-distant past which technically violated G5 but which nobody seriously considered deleting, but which nowadays would be routinely deleted as a matter of course "because banned" regardless of whether they suffered from any issues or not (one obvious example that springs to mind). SoWhy, you probably follow this more closely than me; have you any idea? ‑ Iridescent 02:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Gotcha. Even if G5 is worded somewhat stoically (along with any other CSD criteria), the policy still includes the phrase at the top of the page "at their discretion" so that adds an implied "can" to all the criteria. I can understand most admins not wanting to reward bad behavior of a banned or sanctioned user by making sure that user's defiance doesn't enshrine them as the creator of a new article. Likewise, if another admin objects to a specific deletion after checking it out and would like to restore it, they can work it out with the deleting admin. -- Netoholic @ 04:02, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I've always understood G5 as "can" rather than "should". If I'm reviewing something, I will almost always delete it if it meets the G5 criteria, but with two exceptions, I'll always tag for G5 rather than directly delete if I come across it first: it recognizes that there is a diversity of opinion in the admin corps about the use of G5, and that someone else should review to see if they think it justified. The exceptions to that rule being an ar.wiki sockmaster who will create dozens of footballer stubs to the point where twinkle tagging would take me me a good 30 minutes and the other being any of the incarnations of A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver, who at this point would only use the tagging process to launch more protests with new socks or with IPs. Given, I'm "fresh blood" if you will, but this is the way I've always explained it to people who ask my thoughts on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

(pinged) Sorry, I cannot contribute more to this. I know that a couple of editors in recent years have emphasized the WP:DENY aspect of G5 but I cannot tell you when this started. Judging from the WT:CSD archives, this discussion from 2010 might have been one of the key moments but there have been discussions in 2013 and in 2015 about the same question. Regards SoWhy 19:35, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• Dragonfly67 has an allegory regarding G5 pages that I've always found reasonable, and also falls in agreement with the Greg case mentioned above. Primefac (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I tend to stay out of the way of G5 deletions in the grand scheme of things, but my general view is that if there's a reasonable chance anybody else could improve and maintain the article, we should leave it. Block the creator by all means, but if we don't leave their good work, maybe they'll just come back and write it again, and this time be even more aggravating. This reminds me of a situation a while back where a sock of Kumioko made his way onto my talk page, and since I don't know him from Adam and he was being civil and polite (if forthright and uncomplimentary about admins), I listened to what he had to say and gave a sympathetic ear and a reasonable reply - and then got jumped on by 2-3 admins for having the complete and utter chutzpah to do so. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata Infobox RfC, Portals, and Wikipedia and Politics research project

I should start with an apology for the imbroglio over the recent AfD and the overspill here. I feel partially responsible in that I asked for the AfD to be kept open, thinking that it would help to have some of the community views out in the open. I had forgotten how polarising that can be at times. Talking of which... the VP infobox RfC is still open, and I somehow managed to miss that the much-trailed Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC went live on 6 April. A bit of a monster to read through already. Another VP RfC that caught my attention was the proposal to end the system of portals. I must confess, my first reaction on seeing that (if it goes through as looks likely) was to wonder how the fight over the prime real-estate at top-right on the Main Page will pan out, and whether there will be a renewed impetus for a 'Main Page Redesign' (tm)? It makes the spam I got on my talk page look boring by comparison. A link to a page on meta and it looks genuine enough, but I wonder why they think I edit pages on politics? ("We aim to survey a set of 200-300 people who have edited Wikipedia pages related to politics"). The message even went so far as to say that I am a frequent editor of pages on Wikipedia that are of political interest. Hmm. Carcharoth (talk) 11:47, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Huh, insisting that a discussion in which it was obvious there would only be one way it could go, which consisted of little more than people launching unsubstantiated personal attacks, and which the nominator openly admitted was started in bad faith, remain open, and as soon as it became obvious it wasn't going to go your way promptly running off to an attack site to canvass the shit-stirrers is "polarising"? Shocked, shocked, I tell you.

I wouldn't consider the "portal corner" of the main page prime real estate by any stretch—hardly anyone even notices it, and those that do tend to assume Arts Biography Geography History Mathematics Science Society Technology All portals is just another Wikipedia slogan, not a set of clickable links. 2000 page views a day is pathetic by mainpage standards; this is the first link on the second most viewed page on the internet (other than the Wikipedia link), and gets the kind of page views that would be considered poor for even the dullest space-filler of a DYK. (Portal:Arts got less than half the pageviews of Did you know ... that the mycotoxin phomoxanthone A causes fragmentation of mitochondria within minutes?.) The number of portals probably ought to be drastically slimmed down, as quite a few of them were the pet project of one or two people and are now moribund, but I wouldn't consider that a reason to get rid of the concept. That said, since the "we need to make a change, this is a proposed change, therefore this is the change we need to make" echo-chamber is in full voice the writing is clearly on the wall. I'd imagine the active ones like Portal:Trains and Portal:War will just quietly rebrand and carry on as before. (I'd argue that even the completely defunct ones like Portal:London Transport still serve a useful purpose as a collection of useful links aimed at readers, as opposed to the more editor-focused Wikiprojects, but I know which way that argument would go; Wikipedia is in one of its intermittent bouts of "delete anything I haven't heard of" "refine our focus on core content" tail-chasing. As with all the previous "we're losing focus on the core content!!!" moral panics, the best thing to do is shelter as much as possible until the crusaders get bored, rather than try to stand against the tide.)

You're getting that Politics message (I imagine) because of your recent stuff about the Parliamentary War Memorials. The software only sees you're editing articles about politicians; it isn't smart enough to see that you're writing about their military rather than their political careers. I regularly got medicine-related notifications when I was writing things like Biddenden Maids, for the same reason. ‑ Iridescent 14:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Heh. I clearly need to focus more (and really try and attend to some content issues), and post less here (your talk page) and at the 'attack site' (I disagree with that characterisation for the record, but know better than to try and dissuade you of your views on that). Your views have always (to me) been a mix of really hitting the nail on the head (your comments about echo chambers and moral panics are great examples of this), contrasting with (to a lesser extent) leaving me sometimes feeling like you've completely missed the point. But then I suppose we all do that at times (I know I certainly do, and I really struggle sometimes to see when that has happened). What is the difference between being flexible enough to admit when getting something wrong, and standing your ground when you think you are right? Anyway, time to shelter from the incoming tide! Carcharoth (talk) 14:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

If everyone agreed all the time it would be a dull place… (I'm fairly confident I didn't miss the overall point—even if it wasn't your point—regarding Lynch. That AFD was as clear a case of "This article isn't on a topic I personally consider important, so let's throw as much mud as possible and hope that at least some of it sticks" as I've ever seen.) With regards to WP:BADSITES, I'll admit that I'm not that familiar with its recent incarnation, but from what I've seen of it it's considerably worse in its new clothes. The old Wikipedia Review was sometimes too tolerant of weirdos, but Somey in general did a decent job at keeping it as a neutral zone in which people of different opinions could all say their piece and in which people with complaints were expected to be prepared to answer "well, how would you do it better?", and at being willing to show the door to the obsessive cranks. In its Wikipediocracy incarnation it just gives me the impression of being a mutual support group for a bunch of malcontents whining at each other about how they didn't get their way in some dispute or another; on the occasions I've visited it recently it feels a little like taking a vacation inside Ottava's head. ‑ Iridescent 16:43, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

OTD

Re the Kishinev riot entry, your removal of my comment indicates you didn't get the point: Even in 1903, riots causing the deaths of 50 people, in this case Jews, would certainly not have attracted worldwide 'positive' attention (except perhaps from racist lunatics). Thus the word "positive" was redundant, particularly since the blurb refers to "persecution of Jews." Embarrassing. Sca (talk) 20:51, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Iridescent didn't remove your comment. I did. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, so it was TRM. Look, my brief language comment re "negative" was not a big issue and I wasn't trying to make it one, but I really think you should have left it to see if others would comment. Sca (talk) 16:58, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

As The Rambling Man is too polite to say in as many words, if you're going to adopt a "righteous indignation" posture you might want to perform the most basic fact-checking before you start throwing around accusations. The nature of Wikipedia means it's not difficult to see exactly who has edited what and when, and when it takes all of two mouse clicks to see who removed your comment but you just pick someone apparently at random and accuse them of removing your comments it just makes you look either incompetent or lazy.

As regards your other point, the late 1880s and early 1900s were the zenith (or nadir) of scientific racism and colonialism, and both overt racism and more subtle notions of cultural superiority were the mainstream consensus, not the preserve of "racist lunatics". (As an obvious example, even in bastion-of-liberty cradle-of-democracy mother-of-parliaments etc-etc-etc England Jews were only permitted to enter Parliament in 1858, to become fellows at universities in 1871, and the response of the British government to the pogroms of the 1900s wasn't to threaten Russia or impose sanctions but was to ban Jewish refugees from entering British territory; the reason the US and Argentina have such a high population of Russian Jewish descent isn't because East European Jews had any particular desire to live in culturally alien countries thousands of kilometres from their homes and families, but because similar restrictions on Jewish immigration were imposed by almost every European country.) The significance of the Kishinev pogrom was that it did attract significant negative coverage in other countries when other pogroms had been ignored or in some cases tacitly or even overtly supported. (If you want a modern analogy, consider the overwhelmingly negative coverage—outside some Israeli and pro-Israel US media—of the 30+ and rising Palestinian deaths in the 2018 Gaza border protests, compared to the more usual "well, it looks bad but it's their own internal affairs and we shouldn't take sides" or "they were probably all terrorists and had it coming" attitude towards I/P violence.) If you seriously don't understand that not only have there have been periods in relatively recent European history in which the deaths of 50 Jews would have been positively received by many, but that the Russian pogroms and other Tsarist atrocities in the Pale of Settlement were—along with Ottoman atrocities in the Balkans, Japanese imperialism in Asia and Leopold II's outright lunacies in central Africa—seen at the time by many in the west as the necessary imposition of order in territories which the German–Austrian bloc and the Anglo–French alliance each feared would break away from crumbling imperial control and fall into the other's sphere of influence, then I would respectfully suggest that you're not competent to be commenting on 19th- and early 20th-century European history.

This is hardly the first time that you've waded in all-guns-blazing based on your own misreading of something rather than any actual error by anyone other than yourself, and I'd urge you to stop commenting on topics you don't understand or throwing around unsubstantiated accusations against other editors without evidence. I have no doubt you're acting in good faith, but eventually you'll waste the time of enough people that you'll end up becoming the sequel to this. Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors is a page To report an error on today's or tomorrow's Main Page, not your blog or a forum for you to offer your personal opinions of and commentary on whatever happens to be on the Main Page. ‑ Iridescent 15:30, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks, Iridescent, for your 583 words of righteous indignation regarding my eight-word comment. You could have said everything you had to say much more succinctly without stooping to snide personal comments about my degree of understanding or cultural literacy. Good bye. Sca (talk) 16:58, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Tbh, if one does insist on referring to other editors and/or their edits as "embarassing," then one should probably expect one's position to be forensically dissected, since one has staked so much upon it. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 17:23, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

What? Serial Number 54129, it was the WORD "negative" that was, IN CONTEXT, embarrassing. It was used by whoever wrote the OTD blurb, not by Iridescent. – Sca (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

PS: Charming image on your page. – Sca (talk) 17:46, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, It's a Goya, and probably one of the most famous of the Black Paintings; quite a lot of people have heard of it, actually. Some have even seen it before. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 18:47, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

You're too modest; "one of the most famous paintings of all time" is probably nearer the mark, to the extent that an obscure website of which even Sca may have heard uses a variation of it—without the need for explanation—as their top-level award to editors. (If you Google most famous paintings of all time you get one of their nice little carousels at the top, and yes it's there.) ‑ Iridescent 18:55, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I think the integer's point was that when you go around to another person's user talk page, make an accusation that they did something they didn't, and end it with Embarrassing. you can generally expect a negative response. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:52, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni:, just so. It is rather—asking for it, I believe the vernacular is. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 18:47, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I believe "can dish it out but can't take it" is the phrase you're looking for. ‑ Iridescent 18:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Sca I suggest you read all of this seriously; your repeatedly pointed failures at ERRORS added to the concerns above really mean you're in danger of becoming a persona non gratia in these parts. After all, I should know. The Rambling Man (talk) 03:34, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Isn't that usually Persona non grata, Rambler? – Sca (talk)

Again, this was a minor issue, and the fallout seems out of proportion. But I do apologize for mistakenly addressing my concerns to the wrong person. Sca (talk) 14:27, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

At least you got something right here, perhaps that's some positive outcome from the whole debacle. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:39, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Q regarding Jews being allowed into parliment: would a lack of repeal affected Disraeli? Our article says he was rased Anglican from the age of 12, would this be enough or int he eyes of the "law" was he Jewish? Conversion to Christianity enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics. Britain in the early-nineteenth century was not a greatly anti-Semitic society, and there had been Members of Parliament (MPs) from Jewish families since Samson Gideon in 1770. But until 1858, MPs were required to take the oath of allegiance "on the true faith of a Christian", necessitating at least nominal conversion. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 03:25, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Disraeli wouldn't have had any issue; in all four of the then constituent countries of the UK the notion of religion-by-descent didn't exist and religion was always based on practice not ethnicity, and thus a Jewish convert to any other religion immediately ceased to be Jewish. The issue was that admission to Parliament required an oath "upon the true faith of a Christian", an oath that Disraeli as a convert was able to make but Lionel de Rothschild wasn't. There's a list of the relevant dates for each country which previously had specific anti-Jewish laws at Jewish emancipation#Dates of emancipation; many of the repeals are much later than you'd think.

In recent years things are more complicated than the traditional "a Jew is a member of the Jewish religion and ethnicity doesn't come into it". The 1983 case of Mandla v Dowell-Lee set case law that a group meeting both "a long shared history, of which the group is conscious as distinguishing it from other groups, and the memory of which it keeps alive" and "a cultural tradition of its own, including family and social customs and manners, often but not necessarily associated with religious observance" as meeting the definition of an ethnicity as well as of a religious group, thus bringing Jews and Sikhs under the umbrella of racial discrimination legislation (the significance was that at the time religious discrimination was legal but racial discrimination wasn't; thus, post Mandla one could legally say "sorry, no Catholics" but not "sorry, no Jews"). The Equality Act 2006 outlawed religious discrimination and meant that discrimination on the grounds of religion and ethnicity were treated the same under UK law, rendering the distinction largely irrelevant; the 2009 Supreme Court case of R (E) v Governing Body of JFS (the first case ever tried before the Supreme Court, and consequently quite high-profile) established that it was down to the courts and government and not the Jewish community(ies) to determine who was a Jew, and that membership of a religion depended on whether the person in question was observant in that religion rather than their ethnicity.* Well, you asked. ‑ Iridescent 05:58, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
*E v JFS was a complicated case, revolving on whether a Jewish school had the right to deny admission to a child of Italian Catholic descent who was an observant Jew but who wasn't Jewish in Talmudic terms as neither the child nor his mother had formally converted; it split the Supreme Court 5–4. The text is here if you're interested in such things and have too much time on your hands.

Fascinating, especially when you factor in some of the current scholarly views of religion as a form of race (as an overly simple example, someone named Kennedy in the United States will be assumed to be Catholic by many, regardless of if they are or the time the last entered a Church. You could substitute it for something such as Qureshi in Islam in some regions, etc.) TonyBallioni (talk) 22:33, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

A question about wikipedia religion

This is only semi- serious, but who are "The wikipedia gods"? Do they need to be appeased through sacrafices? Or is it a cult?💵Money💵emoji💵^Talk 23:55, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

That knowledge can only be gained by a Level 7 WikiWizard. Primefac (talk) 00:04, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I refuse to erect an altar to Jimbo. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:50, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

​Would refusal to erect an altar to Jimbo cause Lares Anger? ‑ Iridescent 2 08:30, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I can't say much, but the closest we get is a somewhat-misshapen bust in the entryway... Primefac (talk) 01:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I get it. The admins are actually a cult around Jimbo- rouge admins are actually ones who are opposed to the cult. The admins consider Jimbo a god, and the "gods" Iridescent was referring to are Jimbo and the admins who have a ascended from worship of Jimbo- they are known as check users and stewards. Thank you @Primefac: and @Ealdgyth: for helping me understand Wikipedias hierarchy. 💵Money💵emoji💵^Talk 01:17, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

The fact of the matter, and this is not a joke, is that Jimmy Wales is almost completely irrelevant to the day-to-day operation of this encyclopedia, and almost nobody actively involved with administrating this project thinks much or cares much about Jimbo at this point. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

That is true. @Ealdgyth: So what will it be if a question will be either erecting an altar or being indef blocked? I need to assume you would chose erecting an altar. :)--Biografer (talk) 01:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Indef block = path to eternal happiness, Wikivana, where one has surmounted the tribulous word-salads and Byzantine acronym-soups... —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 09:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we all hope for a day when we're far enough from this to stop dropping Wikipedia Essays into normal/real life conversation. Primefac (talk) 11:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

And signing billets-doux with four tildes instead of the usual... ;) —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 12:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Really? I thought that indef blocks = go hang yourself. Some Wikipedians who are deeply in love with this project might do just that. :(--Biografer (talk) 17:26, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

x

hanged, drawn and quartered

hey, i checked before i made my changes to the Hanged, drawn and quartered article... undoing my revision with "British topic, British spellings" is an extremely poor excuse... even other wiki articles linked do not have the double "l"... check your dictionaries, too... the Cambridge, Oxford, Collins and Miriam-Webster dictionaries all show one "l"... none of them other than Collins even mention two ells for a British form of the words...

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/disembowel https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/disembowel https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/disembowel https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disembowel

in any case, i'm not going to argue about it but yeah, you're not correct...

Wkitty42 (talk) 11:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• (talk page watcher) @Wkitty42: Not "an extremely poor excuse"; WP:ENGVAR is well-established within the manual of style; specifically, see WP:TIES: An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation, and various examples are given. So, the article about the electric chair uses American English, whilst HDQ uses British English. hope this clarifies, —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 12:01, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

The policy you’re looking for is MOS:ENGVAR. Especially helpful is American and British English spelling differences. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:03, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker) Um, yes, @Wkitty42: The issue is that those are inflected forms, not the simple verb. See the article Ealdgyth pointed to, under "Doubled consonants". Yngvadottir (talk) 21:19, 29 April 2018 (UTC)