User talk:Dicklyon: Difference between revisions

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Please add new talk topics in new sections, at the bottom of the page, and sign with ~~~~ (four tildes will expand into your signature).

I will reply here, and expect you to be watching my user talk page, even if you are Nyttend.

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Overlinking

Make wikilinks only where they are relevant and helpful in the context. Links can be distracting and may slow the reader down. Redundant links (like "the tallest people on Earth") clutter the page. High-value links will stand out more clearly in the absence of low-value links.

Barnstars and such

		The Original Barnstar
		I'm not sure why you haven't picked up a bevy of these already, but thanks for all your effort, particularly in tracking down good sources with diagrams, etc., on the photography- and color-related articles (not to mention fighting vandalism). Those areas of Wikipedia are much richer for your work. Cheers! —jacobolus (t) 02:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		To Dicklyon on the occasion of your photograph of Ivan Sutherland and his birthday! What a great gift. -User:SusanLesch 04:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		All Around Amazing Barnstar
		For your hard work in improving and watching over the Ohm's law article SpinningSpark 00:59, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Original Barnstar
		For your improvements to the Centrifugal force articles. Your common sense approach of creating a summary-style article at the simplified title, explaining the broad concepts in a way that is accessible to the general reader and linking to the disambiguated articles, has provided Wikipedia's readership with a desperately needed place to explain in simple terms the basic concepts involved in understanding these related phenomena. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Surreal Barnstar
		For your comment here which at once admits your own errors with humility yet focusses our attention upon the real villain Egg Centric (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		For your great contribution to Wikipedia in adding pictures and illustrations to articles improving the reader's experience by adding a visual idea to the written information.--Xaleman87 (talk) 05:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

	The Special Barnstar
	I could not find a barnstar for standing up to an outrageously unjust block so you get a special one. Hang in there. В²C ☎ 23:25, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

	The Resilient Barnstar
	For your work in standardising article titles in line with the now consistent MOS:JR guidance, I present you this accolade. Your continued work in this regard, and in others, has been appreciated. It may have taken years, but much was accomplished. RGloucester — ☎ 14:44, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For an eternity of super-gnoming at WP:Requested moves to rein in entire swathes of article-titling chaos and bring them into order. I'm sure it can seem thankless work at times, so thanks! — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 19:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Buster7 submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

It is said by many that A picture is worth a thousand words. Wikipedia articles are vastly improved and enhanced by the use of images. Dicklyon's user page displays just some of the over 500 images he has added to Wikipedia articles making the articles more enjoyable and interesting for our most important commodity, our reader. WP:Photography. He is a long-time veteran editor with over 137000 edits (58% in mainspace) who always uses the edit summary to clarify his edits and communicate his intentions to following editors. He also participates in various timely and important WP:Manual of Style discussions to improve what and how we do things around here. A trusted, productive and helpful editor that deserves recognition as an Editor of the Week.

The Original Barnstar

I've started to note the many scholarly contributions of this author, beginning with editing of the Wikipedia Cintel pages. For images and vision, I've had a lifelong career in color grading for feature films, tv commercials, videos, etc. with telecine and other systems worldwide; as a musician, 'Human and Machine Hearing' will certainly be fascinating. Thank you to Richard F. Lyon for providing the PDF of this work to all.

Lingelbach (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

		Fighting the Good Fight Barnstar
		For resisting those who would like Wikipedia’s capitalization rules to resemble a corporate brochure or a government press release —Wallnot (talk) 02:49, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	This is for your really thorough clean up after the Armenian genocide move discussion. My watchlist is full of your edits since days. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:20, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

	The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
	Thank you! Biggerj1 (talk) 15:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

that's for these hacks:

	The Minor barnstar
	SO MANY MINOR EDITS! Thank you for your work. -ASHEIOU (THEY/THEM • TALK) 19:46, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There we go again, commenting on the quantity of my edits instead of the quality. But minor thanks anyway. Dicklyon (talk) 00:23, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New topics

Add new topics at the bottom please.

Note

this page has many infobox order errors, if possible to clear or look for original pattern: Template:Infobox football club / Manila Jeepney F.C. 93.143.88.246 (talk) 17:33, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what you mean by order errors. Are you not able to edit to fix what you're seeing? Dicklyon (talk) 17:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Clemson Baseball

I see you recently made edits to Clemson Baseball 1958 and 1959 seasons. My father was Clayton Lowder Jr. A catcher for Clemson from 1958-1960.they called him “Lil Fella” Do you have any stats or anything else about those teams for those years? Joswego10 (talk) 04:54, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Super G

While cleaning up links at Template:Footer Super-G World Cup Winners Men, I noticed that Category:FIS Alpine Ski World Cup men's Super-G discipline titles has incorrect styling (capitalization and no hyphen) for the first 21 years (Super G instead of super-G). I imagine that those could be done without a new move request. Do you agree? {{replyto|SilverLocust}} (talk) 23:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please do. And thanks for what you've done already. Dicklyon (talk) 04:26, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion

Related to the recent move discussion regarding Westerns, it was noted by multiple editors of both sides (i.e. "western" vs "Western") that "Spaghetti" should be lowercased. I tend to agree with this assessment as it is consistent with all other subgenres that do not begin with a proper noun, such as contemporary Western, neo-Western, revisionist Western, etc. Essentially anything that is not a country/region. Per WP:APPNOTE, I wanted to make you aware of the move discussion since you originated the discussion that precipitated this. See Talk:List of Spaghetti Western films#Requested move 24 July 2023. ButlerBlog (talk) 16:23, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, "spaghetti" isn't a proper name; someone is just capitalizing the entire genre, against MOS:GENRE. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:37, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sentence case question

Hey Dicklyon, I wanted to ask your opinion about whether a move discussion would be needed or not. I stumbled across Category:World Archery Championships and I found that all of the titles include unnecessary capitalization of the events, such as 2023 World Archery Championships – Men's Team Recurve or 2023 World Archery Championships – Women's Team Recurve. This is not the case for other sets of pages, such as those in Category:Archery at the Summer Olympics and Category:Archery at the Asian Games. My understand is that tennis is typically the only exception to sentence casing after the first word after an en-dash (when referring to events). I want to say a move discussion is not necessary, but I thought I'd check with someone more experienced in MOS:AT than I am. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we reached a consensus on the "men's" and "women's" and such after en-dash; certainly there's no consensus that tennis should be different, and I've been leaving such things capped in other sports. Definitely lowercase the team recurve part, but maybe we need another discussion for the bigger issue. Dicklyon (talk) 18:22, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dicklyon: Sorry, I could have been much clearer in my question. I understand that the "men's" and "women's" portion of the titles has not had a consensus. I was trying to ask specifically about the part that comes after that, which you've answered. The more I looked at other archery events, the clearer it became to me that Category:World Archery Championships was the outlier in the capitalization of events. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

August 2023

PLEASE stop "fixing" file names. - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 23:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sumanuil: If you'll tell me how you spot these errors so quickly, I'll use that to spot them myself and immediately fix them. Thanks for your fixes, too. Dicklyon (talk) 23:22, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Dicklyon (talk) 23:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I watch the category Articles with missing files. You and I just happend to be working at the same time. - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 23:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've got a setup now to populate my JWB candidates list from that cat, and then I can search for things indicating that it might be on topics I've been editing, to reduce it to a short list that might be my fault. I'll try to run it often enough that you won't see more errors from me. Hopefully. Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My uploading album covers

Please stop reverting my edits as soon as I make them, I have uploaded thousands of album covers and know what I am doing. Thank you J04n(talk page) 01:11, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some of us work on clearing out Category:Articles with missing files. When you cause something to show up there, and if we happen to see it before the upload gets done, we'll likely revert to fix it. You can then of course revert back once it's uploaded, as you've done here. Or upload first. Dicklyon (talk) 01:17, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When I upload first the non-free media folks delete the file because it's not used in an article. I work on a completely uncontroversial task that is a net positive for the project and just want to be left alone. Can you please wait 3 minutes before reverting my edits. Thank you J04n(talk page) 01:27, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for working on that task. Maybe the strategy that will help on both ends would be to prepare the upload and the article edit in two separate tabs, and commit them nearly simultaneously, to minimize the interval in which one or the other alone is not OK. Dicklyon (talk) 03:00, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Slalom "fixes"

Can you please undo all your "slalom" related "case fixes", the first two I checked (and reverted) both created a mess, one by creating a mixed case nightmare, and the other by turning blue links into redlinks by making completely unnecessary changes to reader-invisible piped links. Fram (talk) 07:18, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll check and correct as needed. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you did a few, and then you start again with unnecessary, unwanted changes to piped links (semi-automated changes which don't change anything for the reader and don't improve the working of enwiki, instead of actually going through your previous edits and reverting things like case "fixes" in the titles of references, which you should leave well alone. If you had no intention of actually reverting your errors, just say so, but don't make some token edits without actually addressing the issues. Fram (talk) 15:44, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give me an example of an edit that you find counter-productive? I'm just generally trying to improve conformance with MOS:CAPS, but I understand that I do something make mistakes. Examples help me improve. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Checked three consecutive edits by you on my watchlist, have reverted all three[1][2][3], for 3 different reasons. Again, please stop and revert your changes, you are not checking your semi-automated edits carefully enough by far. Fram (talk) 07:32, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The next 6 ones in my watchlist all had the same issues, so I reverted these as well. But of course there are countless similar edits not in my watchlist. Fram (talk) 07:37, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those changes to "Alpine Skiing" are indeed problematic, and I'll work on reviewing and better fixing. Sorry about that. Dicklyon (talk) 15:03, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed all the "IPC Alpine Skiing", which is often an organization as you note. I'll review your other reverts looking for error patterns that I can fix more globally, too. Thanks for checking, and sorry for the error rate. Dicklyon (talk) 15:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I re-edited all those you reverted, and more. Hopefully no mistakes this time, as I was much more careful. I'll keep working on it. I also noticed more over-capitalization patterns I had missed. Dicklyon (talk) 18:02, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that you are not checking your semi-auto edits and often turn articles into mixed cases. Few examples [4] [5] [6] Pelmeen10 (talk) 17:01, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, too, that I'm not checking carefully enough. Dicklyon (talk) 17:29, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the problem is that you're going to fast again, operating a semi-automated tool in a bot-like fashion. If you recall, you've been warned about this before as part of this ANI discussion. You have several runs this month with as many as 40+ edits per minute, and as far as I am aware, you're not registering as a bot to do this. Let me again point out per WP:AWBRULES, You are responsible for every edit made. You are expected to review every edit, just as if you were making an edit using Wikipedia's edit form when editing by hand. Do not sacrifice quality for speed, and review all changes before saving., and especially, repeated abuse of these rules could result, without warning, in your software being disabled. I'd ask you once again to slow it down, or register a bot. ButlerBlog (talk) 20:40, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that I sometimes don't check closely enough, and that I'm responsible for the results. If you notice that I've made in error in doing so, let me know. I've learned now that "IPC Alpine Skiing" is a proper noun, and I've done some case changes in ref titles that were not needed. I'm working on understanding what else I need to look more carefully for. So let me know if you see any errors, especially annoying ones. Dicklyon (talk) 23:53, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working on understanding what else I need to look more carefully for. At this point, you know the answer to that. It all comes down to speed. Slow down and review your edits. Better yet, register a bot. Go through the bot process to assist you in creating a low-to-zero error rate for your batch. If you use AWB (which you can do with your current permissions), it has an automation feature that can be enabled should you decide to register a bot, so you can use AWB for your bot without changing anything. Ultimately, the objective is accuracy - not speed. ButlerBlog (talk) 17:08, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that "Go through the bot process to assist you in creating a low-to-zero error rate for your batch" sounds promising, whether as a bot or not. Where do I get help to develop such low-error-rate patterns? Dicklyon (talk) 21:30, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reading my quote you quoted, I can see that "assist" might be interpreted as "get help in the development process". Unfortunately, the bulk of that is up to you. What I was referring to is that bot approval is a formal process that includes short runs for review, during which time if potential issues should come up, they can be discussed resolved before doing a larger run. Because it incorporates more than just you, there are multiple eyeballs on it to get it approved. Regardless of whether you register a bot (and I want to emphasize that I think at this point you should), when using a semi-automated tool in a bot-like fashion, you need to be familiar with the bot policy. The WP:BOTAPPROVAL and WP:BOTISSUE sections especially should provide some insight. Likewise, should you decide to use a different tool, you can start from the codebase of an existing bot. There is a lot of good info at WP:CREATEBOT (even for manual, semi-automated WP:MEATBOTs like what you're currently doing). You might consider the switch to WP:AWB. You can create more complex regular expressions in sequence using its "advanced" find-and-replace settings than you can in JWB (at least IMO/experience). There is a good overview of AWB's regex capabilities here: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression. ButlerBlog (talk) 13:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'll try to get myself a Windows machine and work on that. A more advanced way to detect and elimination pattern matches in file names and ref titles and other special contexts would be super helpful. In the mean time, I'll go slower and more carefully. Dicklyon (talk) 16:26, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh... yes, unfortunately, AWB is windows based. You can run it in a VM though and there are several possibilities; see: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Mono and Wine. There are also some ports of the code in other languages available on github (although I have never tried any of those). The tool does also have a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth the effort. Some additional items that may be helpful in your quest for zero-error rate:

It has a regex tester, so you can make changes to your regex and see the results without saving/reloading the page
It can build a "false positives" list which helps with bigger runs that may have some consistent items you want the regex to ignore

ButlerBlog (talk) 16:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Combing through Fram's reverts, I see 3 kinds of errors:

Partial downcasing where full downcasing would have been better: "Alpine Skiing" –> "Alpine skiing" where "alpine skiing" would have been better (but capped Alpine is not too unusual, so also acceptable). And "Giant Slalom" –> "Giant slalom" where only "giant slalom" would have been OK; similar with "Super Combined". (User:Pelmeen10 also noticed some of these, including Parallel slalom.)
Not realizing that "IPC Alpine Skiing" was the name of an organization (this seems to be the main thing that got Fram's attention).
A few changes to ref "titles". These titles were typically, where I can find from online sources, constructed from headings on various kinds of docs, often from all-cap, as opposed to actual titles. Still, it was a mistake to mess with them.

There are sometimes also edits that break file names, but those are quickly found and fixed since they show up immediately in Category:Articles with missing files. Sometimes another watcher of that fixes them before I do, and sometimes I fix a bunch of things in that category when there are none of my own. Dicklyon (talk) 19:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything else that y'all have noticed that I need to be more careful of? I realize there's also a lot more over-capitalization I could fix if I read every line of the articles. Dicklyon (talk) 19:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram, Pelmeen10, and Butlerblog: Please do let me know if you've seen errors other than what I've acknowledged and fixed. Dicklyon (talk) 04:21, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can I take the relative silence as indicating that my error rate was actually not bad? No more errors to report? Dicklyon (talk) 05:19, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well... it is a holiday weekend after all. ;-) Seriously, though, based on your mention, I did take a brief peruse through things and I didn't see any issues. But it also looks like it was a fairly innocuous change. I think in the past what has caused the greatest amount of consternation amongst other editors is when there are large numbers of false positives that your regex picks up and you accept the change without reviewing it. So, while it seems this regex was probably fine, I again would strongly caution you against going too fast. In this run, you reached speeds of 67 edits per minute. At that rate of speed, you're not reviewing your change and you're not going to have much (or any) recourse should there be complaints about causing a large number of errors. The best way to avoid that is to slow down. ButlerBlog (talk) 13:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:05, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 224: / Line 224: @@
 {{ping|Fram|Pelmeen10|Butlerblog}} Please do let me know if you've seen errors other than what I've acknowledged and fixed. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon#top|talk]]) 04:21, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
 :Can I take the relative silence as indicating that my error rate was actually not bad?  No more errors to report? [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon#top|talk]]) 05:19, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
+::Well... it ''is'' a holiday weekend after all. ;-)  Seriously, though, based on your mention, I did take a brief peruse through things and I didn't see any issues.  But it also looks like it was a fairly innocuous change.  I think in the past what has caused the greatest amount of consternation amongst other editors is when there are large numbers of false positives that your regex picks up and you accept the change without reviewing it.  So, while it seems this regex was probably fine, I again would strongly caution you against going too fast. In this run, you reached speeds of 67 edits per minute.  At that rate of speed, you're not reviewing your change and you're not going to have much (or any) recourse should there be complaints about causing a large number of errors.  The best way to avoid that is to slow down. [[User:Butlerblog|<span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="color:#333366;">Butler</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#D2B48C;">Blog</span></span>]] ([[User talk:Butlerblog|talk]]) 13:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 == Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open ==