User talk:Dicklyon

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.

Random style tip

... Seasons Seasons are in lower case (her last summer; the winter solstice; spring fever), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events (Old Man Winter; the team had great success on the Spring Circuit). Avoid references to seasons that are ambiguous due to differences in seasons between hemispheres. Read more ... Add this to your user page by typing in {{Styletips}}

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)

Ivan

		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)

		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)

		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)

		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)

Convict Lake

		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)

	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)

	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)

		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 ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  19:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

		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)

		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)

	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)

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

that's for these hacks:

• 
  Permutation test
• 
  Correlogram
• 
  Correlogram

New topics

Add new topics at the bottom please.

Wikidata images

Here are some photos I shot just because the map told me I was near Wikidata items missing pictures: Dicklyon (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

• 
  Hotel Bellwether
• 
  I and J Street Waterway
• 
  Baumé Restaurant
• 
  Fine Arts Theater

Archiving notice

Hey! During your moving of a few pages (1 2 3 4 5 6 7), you forgot to update the archive location. This is just a reminder - don't worry, I've fixed it. Thanks! Aidan9382 _(talk) 05:20, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Dicklyon (talk) 14:05, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Square root of 7 for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Square root of 7 is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Square root of 7 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

-- RoySmith (talk) 00:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Square root of 6 for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Square root of 6 is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Square root of 6 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

-- RoySmith (talk) 00:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Pointless edits

Hi! Please don't make pointless edits such as this. WP:DONOTFIXIT is a guideline, but is quite specific: "Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental". Watchlist clutter is something that bothers many editors, so please don't contribute to it. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:26, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi Justlettersandnumbers, if you are going to quote guidance, can I suggest you do so in its full context. At WP:DONOTFIXIT under "Good reasons to bypass redirects include" it states: Spelling errors and other mistakes should be corrected. Don't link to a misspelled redirect. This does not necessarily mean that the misspelled redirect should be deleted. This is just such a case, at least to the extent that miscapitalisation in the body of the phrase can be viewed as a spelling mistake. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:30, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Cinderella157, you are mistaken – capitalisation has nothing to do with spelling. Pointless edits cause annoyance by cluttering the watchlists of other editors, and should be avoided. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:42, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, Spelling errors and other mistakes [empasis added]. I never said that miscapitalisation was a spelling mistake, though I could cite instances where others would disagree. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, Dicklyon has already agreed to pause those fixes (I had asked him to elsewhere). Cinderella157, making mass edits to change the target of a piped link away from a capitalisation that follows a style different from ours isn't generally considered constructive (see Wikipedia talk:Redirect#RFC on NOTBROKEN interpretation). – Uanfala (talk) 12:57, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think I piped any link to avoid a redirect; that's something I never do. I know I did some the opposite, using an established redirect to avoid piping a link. And yes I changed some piped links to not use the miscapitalized redirects, and yes I've agreed to stop that for now. I know that fixing miscapitalizations puts things on people's watchlists, and I know that in some cases I did multiple such fix edits on the same article, which is annoying to me, too. The trouble is there's not a great process for finding and fixing all these things without also fixing some in piped links, and where those are not fixed they keep showing up in the articles that link to the miscapitalized redirect. I acknowledge that we did not find a consensus on how and whether to deal with such problems in post-move cleanups. Dicklyon (talk) 14:36, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

And speaking of pointless edits, your revert was that and also WP:POINTY. Dicklyon (talk) 14:39, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

And I'm sorry that I replaced [[Indus Valley Civilization| with [[Indus Valley civilization| in some articles before realizing that replacing with [[Indus Valley civilisation| made more sense, avoiding the redirect, not just the miscapitalized one. Anyway, I'm not doing more such for now, but if the Move Review goes right and I continue the post-move cleanup, I might. Dicklyon (talk) 14:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

• Dicklyon, edits to piped links like this one (as well as what appear like hundreds of others made at the same time) are of the same type that was discussed a few months ago. I thought that you already appreciated that making such large-scale cosmetic changes wasn't seen as a very good idea? Uanfala (talk) 03:05, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  I realize that some of those link updates were piped and hence made no visible difference. On balance, the ones that are visible, plus the skipping of pointless redirects, makes for a net win at least. I'll take your point though. Dicklyon (talk) 03:08, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  Dicklyon, I'm speaking from a place of ignorance here, but is it possible to exclude search terms that end in a pipe character from your automated editing runs? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:27, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, it's possible, though a bit more of a nuisance. Also not as good, when trying to find and replace over-capitalized links, since those will still be listed as over-capitalized links. It's just better to fix them all, imho. I know there was no consensus about that. It still boggles my mind that anyone is bothered by such edits. Dicklyon (talk) 03:32, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  By the way, the original complaint here was about "Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental." I agree, and I haven't done any of that. But having piped links that also go through redirects is a wholly different matter with no redeeming value, as far as I can see. Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  Dicklyon, your JWB setup appears to still be leading you to change text in pipes (like here). Yes, there is a difference between introducing a new pipe (which people agreed was harmful) and changing an existing one (which was seen as an instance of a cosmetic edit that is best avoided). The reason people are bothered with those edits are the same reasons that they're bothered by other cosmetic edits: they flood watchlists, take up editor time and make it difficult to spot more consequential preceding edits, without making up for any of that with any tangible benefit (the changing of an effectively invisible text from one style into another is generally not seen as bringing non-negligible benefit). Uanfala (talk) 04:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I understand your point, and I don't expect you to find much benefit in such edits. But they're also pretty harmless when not done in huge numbers, and the process by which they happen makes it a lot easier to find and fix the ones that do matter, compared to a process that goes to a lot of trouble to leave the ones that don't matter much. And they do provide some at least some minor advantages, eliminating redirects through errors, and getting those errors out of the source so that the correct capitalization will be seen by subsequent editors, rather than the wrong capitalization. Dicklyon (talk) 00:10, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

MOSFET

Hello. Just wanna let you know @Maestro2016 , the main contributor to articles like MOSFET, Mohamed M. Atalla and hundreds of other articles has been banned for being sockpuppet of banned user Jagged 85 a well known vandal [[1]]. You can see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85 and Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85 for more info about him. I've started discussion here about what to do with MOSFET and MOSFET applications, because I think it would take too much time and effort to clean them up, and they should be stabbed or at least massively trimmed. If you have time, it would be nice to know your opinion about it. Thanks DMKR2005 (talk) 20:33, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Great Belt Fixed Link

While I support the proposal on principle, given the steady trending towards capitalizaion, don't you think maybe there are a ton of obviously over-capped articles to fix? Just my unsolicited opinion (in the form of a question). Primergrey (talk) 01:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I just fix what I find. If you have a trove of obviously overcapped article titles you'd like to draw my attention to, let me know. Yes, I do believe there exist a ton of those, I just don't know where to find them. I did fix about 20,000 overcapped titles already this year, by the way. Dicklyon (talk) 20:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

20k? That's impressive. I was mostly thinking about it from a PR standpoint. I don't think for a second you've earned much, if any, of the bad press you've gotten. But, perception being what it is, it might do your rep some good to throw one back, if you know what I mean. Either way, happy editing and I'll see you around. Primergrey (talk) 22:34, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't move most of those, but got a few rounds of bot moves approved after establishing consensus in a couple of groups; and I probably counted some from 2021 in that guestimate. Looking at logs, it appears I've personally moved about 800 in 2022. Only a handful of those needed RM discussions or resulted in other discussions. I've done well over 20k JWB-assisted case-fixing edits in 2022, and moved from "top 400" into "top 200" by total number of edits. Now and then someone gets upset about losing their precious capital letters and such; I don't think that has given me a bad rep. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to Local Wikimania Event in San Francisco this Friday

Hi!

Wikimania is happening and hopefully you're enjoying the sessions. While it's fairly last minute, you're warmly invited to participate in the local Wikimania-themed meetup in the Wikimedia Foundation office this Friday (tomorrow!). You will have to register in advance, but we would love to see more people from the WikiSalon community participate! For more information and registration, please check out meta:Wikimania 2022/San Francisco Meetup.

The event will involve hacking, teaching, learning, and celebrating and we'll have snacks. We will have the opportunity to watch live sessions at Wikimania together in the afternoon. The rest of the day we'll have opportunity to participate in the hackathon, and we may have some on-demand workshops/learning sessions.

In case we run out of space, it's first-come-first-serve so let us know soon! Hope to see you there.

(Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this talk page notice here)

On behalf of the Bay Area Wiki Salon team and Bittakea, Effeietsanders

Speedy deletion declined: Aircraft maitenance engineer

Hello Dicklyon. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Aircraft maitenance engineer, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not a recently created redirect - consider WP:RfD. Thank you. Salvio 18:44, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Lame. This is an obvious typo/misspelling. Wikipedia is not a spellchecker. MarshallKe (talk) 04:12, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead and WP:RfD it then. It's not worth my attention. Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations opening soon

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are opening in a few hours (00:01 UTC on 1 September). 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 doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Baseball

Howdy. Would you please save the lowercase arguments for after the RM at Major League Baseball Wild Card Game? Besides, you'll find "Wild Card" being used throughout the MLB-related pages. If you want, by all means open up a RFC on the matter at WP:SPORTS or WP:BASEBALL, but first let's see how the RM turns out. GoodDay (talk) 03:30, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

No, I won't. And no, "Wild Card" is not uniformly capped in MLB-related pages, as that would be against the guidance of MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 03:43, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

And I've been meaning to tell you, that if you want to call yourself a wikignome, you really ought to be work in the direction indicated by guidelines in the MOS and elsewhere, not against them. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

So that's the thanks I get for not opposing you, at your RM on other sports tournaments. Nice. GoodDay (talk) 03:53, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for not opposing me there, and thousands of other places! Very nice of you. Dicklyon (talk) 03:54, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Lacrosse capitalisation.

Hey. I was wondering if you could discuss why you've been making capitalisation changes, for example "NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Championship" -> "NCAA Division I women's lacrosse championship"? As far as I can tell from sports publications (eg ESPN, The Fayetteville Observer), the former is the correct name, because the championship is formally and fully called the "NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Championship". This is in line with the guidance at MOS:SPORTCAPS. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, while working on case fixing mostly "Tournament" articles this morning, I moved about a dozen Lacrosse Championship pages after first finding NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship, which was clearly not a proper name. Maybe I over-generalized from there. I paused for feedback, and now I have some. Let me get back to you later when I have time. Dicklyon (talk) 19:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship is the proper name, and so using the upper case capitalisation is correct. The NCAA themselves list all of their Division I championships as such, and some are even registered trademarks (in footnote see NCAA Division I Men's Baseball Championship). Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Note that the NCAA doesn't usually capitalize in their headlines: [2]. Also sometimes not in the text, as in "NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse championship information is ..." at the end of that linked page. Dicklyon (talk) 19:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see that. I did a quick search and their news archive seems to be a mess of formatting issues, even for explicitly trademarked leagues. Per SPORTSCAPS, and how we generally handle sourcing, it's probably better to look at secondary usage by sports publications. ESPN seems to be pretty consistent with its use of capitals in the names, and I liked above The Fayetteville Observer. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, I think I agree. Except not on NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship, which is a reference to three different named things. I'll work on unrolling later. Dicklyon (talk) 19:39, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Even for the divisionless/semi-disambiguation page, some secondary sources use the capitalisation for NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship; Sports Illustrated, Baltimore Sun, so you may want to do a more exhaustive search across all sports publications. I'd recommend checking sourcing for each championship before making any such moves going forward. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've rolled it (almost) all back. Let me know if you see anything I missed, and feel free to change it any way you prefer. With the rollback, I also undid a lot of other capitalization fixes, so they deserve more work. But I'm staying busy with tournament fixes and such for a while. Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.IagoQnsi (talk) 05:01, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Apologies, I was mistaken in creating an ANI discussion, and I have noted as much at ANI. Please disregard. –IagoQnsi (talk) 05:06, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the first time someone has gone straight to ANI instead of inquiring/discussing. Dicklyon (talk) 14:49, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

NCAA basketball tournament article moves are screwing up dozens of categories

I assume you'll be ensuring that Category:NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament participants by year and all of its affected subcategories, of which there are now dozens sitting empty and prone to speedy-deletions by editors who don't what's going on, will be quickly updated and corrected by you, yes? SportsGuy789 (talk) 06:16, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Or really, all categories including and under Category:NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, since it's more encompassing. SportsGuy789 (talk) 06:19, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for pointing out that issue. I will ask for speedy moves of the cats (eventually; the immediate problem was fixed by another already). It appears that many have the immediate problem fixed. Dicklyon (talk) 14:48, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It looks like these edits also broke template transclusions in multiple articles (see this list, this list, this list, this list, this list, and this list). Please revert or fix them, and please preview/test your edits before doing a batch of them. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:53, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I hadn't done the required template moves yet (for those with irregular names accessed through redirects in particular); fixed now. Sorry about that. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

I think there are still a few thoussand case fix edits needed, and maybe more template moves and some other moves. I'll keep at it. Please do keep checking and let me know if I make mistakes along the way. Or help. Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Is there a reason why you are emptying the categories about NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament participants? This could be seen as emptying categories "out of process". If you believe these categories should be deleted, please make a proposal next time at Categories for Discussion which is the proper way to address groups of categories on the same subject. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:45, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll look into it. A link would be useful. Some of my JWB edits go too far and I have to repair categories afterward; but I thought I had fixed that earlier, so maybe you're asking about some categories that I hadn't noticed yet. Dicklyon (talk) 01:48, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Why are you requesting speedy deletion if there's a transient problem with categories? Dicklyon (talk) 01:51, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

As I said above in this section, "I will ask for speedy moves of the cats". Dicklyon (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

@Liz: OK, I fixed all of those back into their original categories, so can get ready for the usual cat move process now. Probably you should revert your CSD tags. Dicklyon (talk) 02:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

@SportsGuy789 and Liz: Please let me know if you see any remaining problems. I know there are still some redirect creations pending to fix some red links, but if you see red links I'd like to investigate and fix manually, too. Dicklyon (talk) 19:31, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: The articles still aren't moved e.g. 1981 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. SportsGuy789 (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Right. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_College_Basketball#Mostly_done. I've just been going through and fixing a bunch of those by making new redirects by hand (working backward from 1956, so haven't done the newer ones yet). I'll keep at it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, I just made new redirects for those through 1981. Let me know if you see any others. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Please stop

@Dicklyon: your sloppy automated capitalization chage edits continue to place hundreds of articles into redlinked categories and break wikilinks. Editors who continue to use automated tools irresponsibly risk having access to those tools removed or being blocked from editing. Pinging @Liz:, @Jonesey95:, @Sumanuil:, @SportsGuy789:. Thank you in advance, UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:43, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

What is it you want me to stop? If I stop trying to finish the cleanup process, errors such as you mention won't get fixed. Help me through this phase by pointing out errors when you see them please. As you can see at the bottom on User talk:Tol/Archives/2022/10#Up for another TolBot page moving task? and on the cat speedy move page, I'm diligently working on finishing this case cleanup. Actual help would also be accepted. Dicklyon (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I thought it was clear, but to reiterate: stop making edits that put articles and templates into non-existent categories, and stop making edits that link articles and templates to non-existent articles. And as to actual help? Please check my contributions first before adding your snarky sarcastic comment; I would much rather be making different contributions to the encyclopedia than cleaning up messes that YOU created. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:41, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I have stopped that phase, with tens of thousands of fixes across thousands of articles; cleaning up a few mistakes now. Just noting that if you see a mistake, pointing it out would be helpful. Dicklyon (talk) 14:47, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

It isn't a few. I think you might have broken thousands of links. I'm finding them on almost every page I go to in college basketball. APocketJoker (talk) 00:12, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I see you reverted two edits. That gives me a pretty good clue to a corner case I missed. I'll work on that. Please do let me know what else you're seeing. Dicklyon (talk) 02:42, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I've taken care of the ones with that pattern, I think. Let me know if you see others. Or simply revert to clue me into where to look. Dicklyon (talk) 03:16, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@UnitedStatesian and APocketJoker: Please do check a few places you've noticed and let me know if you see any more red links or other bugs I created. I'm committed to getting this cleaned up well. There's an ongoing effort to make some new redirects that will fix one class of red link errors, perhaps including the ones that APocketJoker showed me that I fixed manually already; I don't know how widespread these might be, but we might find out soon. See User talk:Tol#Redirects needed. I don't mind fixing more manually if you point them out, but this should automatically fix most of the rest of the problems. Categories are being moved, too; see WP:CFD/S#Current requests. Dicklyon (talk) 16:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

About 120 categories have been moved now, fixing almost all of the cat redlinks. Let me know if you see any we missed (we found a few, to be fixed within a few days). Dicklyon (talk) 16:57, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Please check your edits! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:25, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

And again. Please slow down and inspect every page after you edit. Look for obvious red links. It appears that you introduced Template redlinks to somewhere between 50 and 100 articles with this most recent series of edits. Please rethink your process. This is not OK. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Fixing... thanks for noticing. Dicklyon (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

The best fix for these is not to stop, nor to revert, but to provide the missing redirects that will fix a bunch of these at once, and prevent future similar case-fixed redlinks. Working on it. Sorry for the transient redlinks. Dicklyon (talk) 16:30, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I thought there was rough agreement (in the discussion linked above) that these sorts of edits aren't helpful. It seems that every time this is pointed out, you politely acknowledge the community stance on that, but then quietly get back to doing the opposite of that. – Uanfala (talk) 18:16, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Which edits are you saying are not useful? I will attempt to explain if you're more specific. Dicklyon (talk) 18:28, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

And yes I do understand and acknowledge the point of those who think replacing redirects in piped links is not enough of an improvement to bother with, if that's what you're referring to. But per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirect#RFC on NOTBROKEN interpretation, there are also plenty of people who think it's OK or a net positive when part of a general case fixing effort. Plus it's unrelated to what Jonesey95 was talking about, which were genuine errors on my part, which I've mostly fixed and am committed to fixing in general if/when I make them. So I remain unclear on what you're trying to tell me here. Dicklyon (talk) 19:27, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and Uanfala: Please do let me know (or just revert) if you see any other errors or non-useful edits that I've made. I fixed a bunch of stuff with a few redirects, but I'm sure more will turn up. Dicklyon (talk) 01:01, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

It's not my job to revert 100 bad edits. Instead of being sure that more will "turn up", please scroll through each article that you edit and look for red links. If you find one, please fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:03, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Nobody's asking you to revert all my mistakes. But if you see any that I have not fixed already, let me know about one or more and I'll get an idea what else needs to be worked on. Thanks. And yes I do already fix any that I find myself. Dicklyon (talk) 05:10, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Jonesey95, to be clear, I'm really thankful that you reverted me on about 10 of my last 10,000 edits, as that allowed me to find and fix many more errors than just those 10. I'm not relying on just you, but on the community in general, to notice the few things that may have snuck through my careful but imperfect process. Thank you so much for all that you do, and apologies for my imperfect efforts. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election voting opening soon!

Voting for the upcoming project coordinator election opens in a few hours (00:01 UTC on 15 September) and will last through 23:59 on 28 September. 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. Voting is conducted using simple approval voting and questions for the candidates are welcome. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:26, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Correction to previous election announcement

Just a quick correction to the prior message about the 2022 MILHIST coordinator election! I (Hog Farm) didn't proofread the message well enough and left out a link to the election page itself in this message. The voting will occur here; sorry about the need for a second message and the inadvertent omission from the prior one. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Question

Is 1980 correct? There seemed a contradiction between 1980 and "the late 1980s" in the two articles, and the 1983 source I looked at seemed to go with 1980. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:48, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Randy, how about some context? What 2 articles? Dicklyon (talk) 03:19, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see, it's about this edit. You are right: 1980. I left Xerox PARC in mid 1981 after demonstrating the first working optical mouse chip. John Markoff wrote "The Mouse that Rolled" in 1983 about these; I can share a copy if you like. Dicklyon (talk) 03:25, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, just seemed one of the two articles was incorrect, then I clicked on the linked "The Mouse that Rolled" which is used as a reference and 1980 seemed more likely. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:27, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Hockey articles

You have been removing the capitalization of "First Team All-Stars" and "Second Team All-Stars" on NHL player articles, which has been the correct and official construction for the better part of a century. Kindly (and promptly) revert these automated edits, and perhaps in the future hit the talk pages of pertinent Wikiprojects in advance of presuming that such a pervasive usage across many dozens of articles must be incorrect. Ravenswing 04:53, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Those were JWB-assisted, but not automated. I considered carefully, in light of sources such as these books in which "first team all-stars" and "first team All-Stars" are most common; and web pages such as this one. Now that I look, it's unclear why I left "All-Star" capped, but in some contexts it pretty much is. What's the sourcing for caps being correct? Dicklyon (talk) 05:01, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

@Ravenswing: It's similar for "All-Star team", including in the context of NHL All-Star team(s) as these books show. Why are you capitalizing? Dicklyon (talk) 16:20, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Seriously? If you're unwilling to take the word of experienced hockey editors over casual glances at the first page of a Google search, try the NHL itself NHL announces 2021-22 First and Second All-Star Teams. Try highly authoritative sources such as Charles Coleman's Trail of the Stanley Cup (p. 902 and subsequent in Vol III, for instance), or every edition of the NHL Media Guide. Try the Professional Hockey Writers Association, which votes on these awards [3]. Or hockey-reference.com, one of the two main standard stats compilation sites NHL All-Star Teams. Ravenswing 18:52, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Have you had a look at MOS:CAPS, which in its lead says "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia."? Also the essay WP:SSF about specialist style not being the relevant thing is worth consulting. Sports on Wikipedia in general are full of over-capitalization, and that's one thing I've been doing a lot of work on recently. I'm happy to discuss, but it should be in relation to guidelines, not your expert opinion. Also note tha the thephwa.com page you linked uses "All-Star team" with lowercase team, and doesn't user "first team all-stars" at all. I agree that NHL.com caps every permutation of the words First, All-Star, and Team, without regard to what's a proper name; that's their style. Dicklyon (talk) 20:54, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election voting closing soon

Voting for the upcoming project coordinator election closes soon, at 23:59 on 28 September. 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. Voting is conducted using simple approval voting and questions for the candidates are welcome. The voting itself is occurring here If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

, Jr.

Just a friendly reminder that some people reviewing edits like this may be tempted to invoke WP:COSMETICBOT or WP:NOTBROKEN. I've no problem with them myself, but I usually refrain from making them in bulk to avoid controversy. Thanks for all the good work, Certes (talk) 14:01, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I'll suppress the purely cosmetic ones then. Dicklyon (talk) 14:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello. As you quickly edit pages (a million edits in sight) please remember that the Jr. changes should not include the established names of fictional characters, so if you can do a quick check on that as you use the tool. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:18, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm only working on author names presently. Hopefully they're not fictional. Dicklyon (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

You never know, in the past lots of womenfolk snuck onto bookstore shelves by mannaming (to coin a term?). Thanks. I remember when you first used a tool and were surprised that you quickly added 10% of your total edits. Luckily or unluckily I'm not tech savvy enough to play with the tools, although I use Hotcat (which is more of a search engine). Wondering if any Jr.'s have ever contacted Wikipedia about the absence of their comma. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:35, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Make sure you're also screening your change for Sfn errors. Some of your edits on pages in my watchlist have resulted in a broken sfn because it was based on the author last name as "Name, Jr." ButlerBlog (talk) 15:44, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Butlerblog: Do you have an example for me, so I can grok the pattern you're referring to? Dicklyon (talk) 16:28, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Never mind, I see DuncanHill fixed some, so I get it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Unneeded space

Your process is adding unneeded spaces between parameter delimiters and their keywords, such as here where there is already a space between the previous parameter's value. Could you please stop it. Never mind that the omission of the comma is only a preference, and that, in this case, presence of the comma reflects the source's usage, as well as possibly making it clearer that "Jr." is not a middle initial. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I've been matching on a variable number of spaces (including zero) and replacing with one; hardly excessive. If I replace with zero spaces, I'll get complaints from the other side (e.g. see this edit where the original spacing was pretty unusual, but locally consistent). If I go to the trouble to replace with the existing number of spaces everywhere, will anyone be better off? As to the comma, I'm going by MOS:JR, not a personal preference. Dicklyon (talk) 22:15, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

By the way, I've gotten 7 "Thanks" from 5 different editors today on these fixes. I had no idea they would be noticed or popular changes; nor that they'd be noticed and unpopular. Dicklyon (talk) 22:18, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I've notice that, in recent edits, the space is not being added. Have you changed something. You were/are adding a space where none are needed to facilitate formatting in raw mode and where you make it inconsistent in look, if not function (think of an admittedly rather simple regex that searches for |[A-Za-z] where a space would throw it off).

MOS:JR says, "Omission of the comma before Jr. or Sr. (or variations such as Jnr) is preferred." Its omission is not required. In text, "John D. Rockefeller Jr." is obvious and omits two somewhat fussy commas that set off "Jr."; but your changes on my watchlist have made changes to a reference's first-name field, where "John D. Jr." omits only one comma that seems to be more necessary to indicate that the suffix is just that, not part of the middle name.

Maybe there's a difference between last night's and this morning's? I'm not near the computer with those setups at present, or I'd look. Dicklyon (talk) 23:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

There are still some added spaces in this mornings latest edit. I'll work on it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The responses you've received may be skewed by the fact that there isn't a "No, thanks" button. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:17, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

So true. I once suggested such a button with opposite sentiment polarity, sort of like the hand signals drivers are known to give each other. Reactions varied. Dicklyon (talk) 23:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

The spacing, or not, of a cite should be preserved. Some space, some don't, but changing it en masse is likely going to cause arguments. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:48, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I see that; fixed my patterns accordingly. Dicklyon (talk) 23:55, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, I can deal with preserving the existing spacing, and also returns, by matching on (\| *(last|last1|surname) *= *[\w ]+), (Jr|Sr)\.*([ \n]*\| *(first|first1|given) *= *([\w \.]+) *)(\||\n) and replacing with $1$4 $3.$7, and more such patterns for last2, first2, other order, etc. Working on it... Dicklyon (talk) 01:38, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Sfn and Harvnb fixes

The sfn/harvnb things are really a pain. About 150 articles to go where the Jr/Sr got included with the last name, against the advice of MOS:JR. After those are fixed, I can get back to easy stuff, but these are quite a variety of pain. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi Dicklyon. I saw your correcting the effected sfns, thanks for that (I'm trying to clear some of Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors). Are you doing this in a two step process? For instance here you correct the sfns, but you haven't changed the cite (which still uses |editor-last=Mebane, Jr.). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:42, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

No, one pass. I don't see why that one failed to catch the editor-first and editor-last. I fixed it by hand, and will look for more like that later. Dicklyon (talk) 14:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Just in 0-9 l, and A the following weren't updated correctly. 153 (number), 1911–12 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team, Abraham Lincoln, Acinteyya, Anna Maria Niemeyer, Architecture of Las Vegas, Army Ranger School, Azalea Thorpe. Links are to my manual corrections. There's likely a lot more, it's just I've previously cleared all errors up to Buddhism, so these easily stand out. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:41, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I started to develop a pattern to fix those, but I noticed a confusion/error case I allowed, and search for past instances of it, and found just one, on Bo Diddley, which I fixed manually. I'm still working on pattern to fix those you pointed out and others like them. Mostly I was unavailable today. Dicklyon (talk) 23:53, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested: OK, I fixed the messup related to editors, a few hundred files. There may still be more templates that I don't know about in the sfn/harv family. If you see any more errors, point them out so I can figure out what pattern I'm not handling right, and so I can search for and fix errors already made. Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Last name Jr?

I found a new creative way that editors have screwed up nearly 200 times, but Jr or Sr alone in a last name field with various adaptations around that. Is suspect most of these may have been auto-contructed by a script that didn't allow for the suffix when parsing author names. Dicklyon (talk) 22:41, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm exhausted by edits like this one, where the last=Jr. usually belongs with the last author. It takes a lot of work to fix (or someone better at scripts and regex than me). There are way too many. And I presume lists where there's a Jr not in last place also be a mess, but not as nonsensical. Dicklyon (talk) 23:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

You may want something like

• From \|\s*last\s*=\s*([SJ]r)\.\s*\|\s*first\s*=\s*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+),\s*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+),\s*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+)(?=[|}])
• To |first1=$2|last1=$3|first2=$4|last2=$5|first3=$6 $1|last3=$7

That only works with exactly three names, but it should be easy to copy and paste variants for other numbers and only the relevant pattern will match each case. Certes (talk) 12:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, something like that. I see I have to study up on regex more before I fully understand what you've done there. And have you verified it on a test case or two? Some of the cases I've seen separate author names by two commas, and junk like that. I don't it's all doable, but probably not all at once. Dicklyon (talk) 15:45, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I did a basic test, but didn't handle multiple commas. For that, you just need to discard spaces and commas after each of the two useful commas with [,\s]* rather than just spaces with \s* as I did:

• From \|\s*last\s*=\s*([SJ]r)\.\s*\|\s*first\s*=\s*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+),[,\s]*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+),[,\s]*([^,|}]+) ([^,|}]+)(?=[|}])

This type of regexp will never catch every formatting error, but it should be useful enough to save manual work on most of them. Certes (talk) 16:04, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

And then I run into nice things like |last1=Jr.|first1=Jeremy M. Berg, John L. Tymoczko, Lubert Stryer; with Gregory J. Gatto}} ... Dicklyon (talk) 23:18, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I've left dozens or perhaps hundreds of those for a later time or for someone else. Not something I can handle. But I've made a few thousand Jr fixes in the last few days, so maybe I'll declare success and pull out now. Dicklyon (talk) 04:33, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I've been working through these. Almost done. Quite a variety. Dicklyon (talk) 01:03, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Need help with moving multiple pages

In this discussion there are talks about moving north of 1600 pages so archive search boxes can be added in the lead via {{archives}}. This problem arose, because 1671/2551 wiki articles'names end with archive, instead of archive 1, thus being out of the aforementioned template's domain. My question is what would be the appropriate AWB regex for such thing. Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:15, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm a relative novice with AWB and Regex. I'm sure you can find better help. Dicklyon (talk) 22:20, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks anyway. Qwerty284651 (talk) 22:22, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!

Dear colleague,
Thank you for correcting some of the {{cite book}} templates in which I had added the ', Jr.' at the end of the 'last=' parameter. Thank you also, therefore, for teaching me about MOS:JR, of which I was ignorant! I have now started correcting more of these templates and their associated {{sfn}}s, and will review other articles of mine, in which more of these corrections might apply.
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(become old-fashioned!)} 20:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome! Dicklyon (talk) 22:20, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Ulises12345678 (talk) 10:56, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

your bad edit(s?) regarding commas damaging list-article(s)

This edit by you was horrible, because a) it made three changes that disconnected links from existing pages, b) it imposed "single comma" treatment for "Smith, Sr., House"-type situations which I believe is completely wrong and incorrect always, and c) it imposed different treatment for names of places in one list-article without regards to treatment perhaps at other list-articles linking to the same places and perhaps also corresponding disambiguation pages. It would be grammatically correct, I understand, to have either two commas "John Smith, Sr., House" or no commas "Smith Sr. House". But there's no way you should make changes like that, especially with ignorance or disregard to your completely disconnecting the list-article from existing pages. I reverted that one edit. But it appears you used an automated editor and I am afraid you may have also been damaging other pages too. So, please stop, and please consider and please reply here with ping to me, okay? sincerely, --Doncram (talk,contribs) 06:12, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

OK, yes, I messed up and will review and fix that and other recent edits. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I just opened an ANI action, asking for other editors to step in, because I saw that your campaign has affected more than 1,000 pages, and it is a much bigger problem to address than I can handle right now. I returned to this page to inform you, and see you have replied here. Please continue, however, at the ANI, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#more_than_1,000_possibly_bad_edits. No offense, but I tend to disbelieve your immediate assertion just now, that you will fix all the problems, as I don't yet believe you understand the multiple problems involved. If you were immediately undoing all of your edits, then I would believe you, but I imagine you do not yet intend to roll them all back. Without more discussion, I rather would expect you would fix some but all of the errors. So, again, please let's move to ANI. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 06:24, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Dick, yes, changing titles and names in cites doesn't seem like a good thing overall because of their real-world existence with actual titles (which includes the comma) and, at worse, they break the cite. I noticed your work on this with some Martin Luther King, Jr. citations which no longer line-up with the "real" citation. Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? Randy Kryn (talk) 10:38, 8 November 2022 (UTC)