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=Old stuff to resolve eventually=
== Cueless billiards ==
{{Unresolved|1=Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.}}
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Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
:[[Crud]] fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually.  I think at least some variants of [[bar billiards]] are played with hands and some [[bagatelle]] split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's [[bocce billiards]], article I've not written yet.  Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once.  Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. [[Hand pool]] might be its own article eventually.  Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics".  Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have [[crud]]), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really.  I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-)  In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at [[WP:CFD|CfD]]. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled [[:Category:Pinball]] just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to [[:Category:Darts]] soon.
:PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''<big>[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]</big>'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
::I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted [[Yank Adams]] as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
:::Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a ''bunch'' of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.?  I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''<big>[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]</big>'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
::::If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
:::::Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years.  I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for.  S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the ''Blue Book of Pool Cues'' too for under $200 total. Here it is [http://billiardencyclopedia.com/ for $160], plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-)  DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh.  Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''<big>[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]</big>'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
::::::It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
:::::::Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''<big>[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]</big>'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
::::::::{{Anchor|doh}}PayPal Plugin ''ist kaput''.  Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
:::::::::Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a [http://newspaperarchive.com newspaperarchive.com] three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

=== Sad... ===

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
:Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK.  PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''<big>[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]</big>'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
::[http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1891-06-14/ed-1/seq-16/;words=YAnk+Adams+Yank Jackpot]. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
:::Nice find! — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
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==Some more notes on [[Crystalate]]==
{{Unresolved|1=New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.}}
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Some more notes: they bought [[Royal Worcester]] in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[http://www.worcesterporcelainmuseum.org.uk/uploaded/documents/7-Worcester-factory-ownership.pdf]; info about making records:[http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201009/2101665071.html]; the chair in 1989 was [[Lord Jenkin of Roding]]:[http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/warning-hits-crystalate-1.617980]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991[http://books.google.com/books?ei=z7QcTs wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate]; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:[http://normanclare.co.uk/DOY No5 Balls.html]. [[User:Fences and windows|<span style="background-color:white; color:red;">Fences</span>]]<span style="background-color:white; color:#808080;">&amp;</span>[[User talk:Fences and windows|<span style="background-color:white; color:black;">Windows</span>]] 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
:Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
::I've worked most of it in. [[User:Fences and windows|<span style="background-color:white; color:red;">Fences</span>]]<span style="background-color:white; color:#808080;">&amp;</span>[[User talk:Fences and windows|<span style="background-color:white; color:black;">Windows</span>]] 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
:::Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]'''   <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ʕ(<sup>Õ</sup>ل<sup>ō</sup>)ˀ</span>  <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contribs]].</small></span> 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
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== [[WP:SAL]] ==
{{Unresolved|1=Not done yet, last I looked.}}
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No one has actually {{em|objected}} to the idea that it's really pointless for [[WP:SAL]] to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing [[MOS:LIST]], which is where all of [[WP:SAL]]'s style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to [[WP:Stand-alone lists]] with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]'''  &nbsp; <span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ∘¿<span style="color:red;">¤</span>þ </span>&nbsp; <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
:I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. '''[[User:SilkTork|<span style="color:#8D38C9; size:2px;">SilkTork</span>]]''' '''[[User talk:SilkTork|<span style="color:#347C2C"><sup>✔Tea time</sup></span>]]''' 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
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== You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright ==
{{Unresolved|1=Need to fix [[William A. Spinks]], etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.}}
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That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with [[WP:MCQ]]? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--[[User:Fuhghettaboutit|Fuhghettaboutit]] ([[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit|talk]]) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

:Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday.  This page was HUGE. It'll get there again.  I'd forgotten MCQ existed.  Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top of and "See also" at bottom of [[WP:COPYRIGHT]]?  Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at [[Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright]]!  Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
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== Hee Haw ==
{{Unresolved|1=Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation. In the intervening years, we've settled on natural not parenthetic disambiguation, and that standardized breeds get capitalized, but that's about it.}}
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Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys.  And probably will get along on some other stuff again later.  Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones.  I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed.  Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine.  I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days).  I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects.  Truce?  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
:Truce, certainly.  I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers {{em|and}} editors.  I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about.  [[Landrace]] has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and [[breed]] not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources.  Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense.  What {{em|is}} happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed.  WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week.  Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether [[pig Latin]] is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-)  The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue.  Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys &ndash; and the naming form that took, i.e. [[Poitou donkey]] not [[Poitou (donkey)]], I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one.  It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

::I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up.  As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve [[landrace]] which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles).  As for breed, that is were we disagree:  At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?"  Fixed traits, human-selected?  At what degree, at which point?  How many generations?   I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is:  seriously:  [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/breed] or [[breed]] or [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/breed].  I think you and I agree that the [[Palomino]] horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the [[Arabian horse]] who claim the breed is [[User:Montanabw/List of horse breeds promoters claim %22truly primitive bred pure since Adam and Eve%22|pure from the dawn of time]] are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land?  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
:::I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around.  But it's something that is going to have to be looked into.  I agree that the [[Landrace]] article here is poor.  For one thing, it needs to split [[Natural breed]] out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a ''traditional breed'', though the concepts are related.  Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
:::::::::Side comment:  I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud...  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
::::::::::Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
:::::::::::::Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to [[landrace]] now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so.  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
::::::::::::::Aye, it's on my to-do list. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
::::Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).

::::The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--[[User:Curtis Clark|Curtis Clark]] ([[User talk:Curtis Clark|talk]]) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

:::::::I have been reluctant to use [[landrace]] much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?):  Curtis, any idea where this did come from?  It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between [[selective breeding]] and a "natural" breed -- of anything.  And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like [[Kiger Mustang]], which is kind of interesting.  I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, [[Chiweenie]]s?  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

::::::::The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of [[maize|corn]] growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that [[MRSA]] is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--[[User:Curtis Clark|Curtis Clark]] ([[User talk:Curtis Clark|talk]]) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
:::::::::Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through {{em|mostly}} natural selection, long after domestication.  E.g. the [[St Johns water dog]] and [[Maine Coon cat]] are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

:::::::::I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question.  [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color:006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
::::::::::Yep. — <span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">'''[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]''' &nbsp;<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[User talk:SMcCandlish|Talk⇒]] ɖ<sup><big>⊝</big></sup>כ<sup>⊙</sup>þ </span> <small>[[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|Contrib.]]</small></span>  20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
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== Redundant sentence? ==
{{Unresolved|1=Work to integrate [[WP:NCFLORA]] and [[WP:NCFAUNA]] stuff into [[MOS:ORGANISMS]] not completed yet?  Seems to be mostly done, other than fixing up the breeds section, after that capitalization RfC a while back.}}
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The sentence at [[MOS:LIFE]] "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed?

There is an issue, covered at [[Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names]] for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

:#I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes.  I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely {{em|different}} groups of people are apt to capitalize.  Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff".  There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound".  Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces.  Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds".  I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything.  Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former.  If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings. 
:# I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to [[MOS:ORGANISMS]], which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point?  I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit.  The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at [[Lynx]] or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With [[Lynx]], I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lynx&oldid=77254811], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
:::#Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above.
:::#I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "''Canna''" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
::::#Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it. 
::::#Beats me.  Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
:::::Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
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== Note to self on [[WP:WikiProject English language]]==
{{Unresolved|I think I did MOST of this already ...}}
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Finish patching up [[WP:WikiProject English language]] with the stuff from [[User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language]], and otherwise get the ball rolling. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
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== Excellent mini-tutorial ==
{{Unresolved|Still need to do that essay page. Work in [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests&diff=prev&oldid=879431792 this] material, too.}}
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Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 124#This really isn.27t difficult once you sort it out|this]] - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued [http://digitalarchive.parliament.uk/PIC/D/3/5 here] (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being [http://digitalarchive.parliament.uk/book/view?bookName=HL%20Remembrance%20Book%20WW1&catRef=PIC%2fD%2f3%2f5&mfstId=0f295b4e-26fb-4884-ab37-baeeb9d509b6#page/n116/mode/2up here], which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). [[User:Carcharoth|Carcharoth]] ([[User talk:Carcharoth|talk]]) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
:{{ping|Carcharoth}} Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page.  As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at [[Help:CS1]] (which is dense and overlong as it is).  The e-book matters bear some researching.  I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers.  For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use {{para|at}} to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible – some are just continuous texts.  One could probably use something like {{para|at|in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document}}, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
::Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). [[User:Carcharoth|Carcharoth]] ([[User talk:Carcharoth|talk]]) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
:::{{ping|Carcharoth}}  Ah, I see.  I guess I would treat it as a {{para|via}}, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg.  I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as re{{em|publishers}}, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like {{para|at|in paragraph 23}}, and for a much longer one use the {{para|at|in the paragraph beginning "..."}} trick. A straight up {{para|pages|82–83}} would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
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== [[WP:MEDMOS]] ==
{{Unresolved|1=Go fix the WP:{{var|FOO}} shortcuts to MOS:{{var|FOO}} ones, to match practice at other MoS pages. This only applies to the MoS section there; like [[WP:SAL]], part of that page is also a content guideline that should not have MOS: shortcuts.}}
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You had previously asked that protection be lowered on [[WP:MEDMOS]] which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, [[User:Barkeep49|Barkeep49]] ([[User_talk:Barkeep49|talk]]) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
:Thanks. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it'll come back to me. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
::Now I remember. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 06:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

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== Ooh...potential [[WP:WIKIGNOME|WikiGnoming]] activity... ==
{{Unresolved|1=Do some of this when I'm bored?}}
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{{yo|SMcCandlish}}

I stumbled upon {{cat|Editnotices whose targets are redirects}} and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, [[WP:WIKIGNOME|WikiGnoming]] activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-)

Cheers,
<br />--[[User:Dmehus|'''Doug Mehus''']]''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">  [[User talk:Dmehus|T]]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">[[Special:Contributions/Dmehus|C]]</span>'' 22:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
:Argh. I would've hoped some bot fixed that kind of stuff.  I'll consider it, but it's a lot of work for low benefit (the page names may be wrong, but the redirs still get there), and it's been my experience that a lot of editnotices (especially in mainspace) are PoV-pushing crap that needs to be deleted anyway. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:20, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
::I'm going to pass for the nonce, {{U|Dmehus}}.  Working on some other project (more fun than WP is sometimes).  I'll let it sit here with {{tlx|Unresolved}} on it, in case I get inspired to work on it some, but it might be a long time. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
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== Note to self ==
{{Unresolved|Cquote stuff ...}}
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Don't forget to deal with: [[Template talk:Cquote#Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 14:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
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== Now this ==
{{Unresolved|Breed disambiguation again ...}}
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Not sure the ping went through, so noting here.  Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation.  As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment.  [[Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again]]. [[User:Montanabw|<span style="color: #006600;">Montanabw</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
:{{ping|Montanabw}} Argh.  Well, this is easy to fix with a request to mass-revert undiscussed moves, at the subsection for that at [[WP:RMTR]].  Some admin will just fix it all in one swoop. While I have the PageMover bit, and could do it myself as a technical possibility, I would run afoul of [[WP:INVOLVED]] in doing so. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 02:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
::{{ping|Montanabw}} Did this get fixed yet?  If not, I can look into it. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
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== PGP ==
{{Unresolved|Gotta put my geek hat on and fix this.}}
FYI, it looks like your key has expired. [[User:1234qwer1234qwer4|1234qwer]][[User talk:1234qwer1234qwer4|1234qwer]][[Special:Contribs/1234qwer1234qwer4|4]] 21:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
:Aiee!  Thanks, I'll have to generate a new one when I have time to mess around with it. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 22:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

== German article on houndstooth, Border tartan, and related patterns ==
{{Unresolved|Considering ...}}
[[de:Rapport (Textil)]] is an interesting approach, and we don't seem to have a corresponding sort of article. Something I might approach at some point. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 22:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

== Post-holidays note to self ==
{{Unresolved|I need to come up with a better to-do list kind of thing on here, and actually use it instead of letting it turn moribund.}}
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Something to deal with quickly:
* [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 20#TupinologyWikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 20#Tupinology]]
Need to stop putting this off; will probably only take 10 minutes.

Ongoing:
* [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page]]
* [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Tables#Creating policy to support an argument]] – removed incorrect stuff about tooltips, and [[MOS:TOOLTIP]] may also need an update
* [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (lists)#Fixing disambiguation confusion]]

Several things appear to have stalled out over the holidays:
* [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#JOBTITLES simplification proposal]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Merge WP:SELFSOURCE and WP:BLPSELFPUB to WP:ABOUTSELF]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (companies)#Use of comma and abbreviation of Incorporated]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Systematic mass edits to hidden category dates]]
* [[Template talk:Infobox person#Placement of "Sir"]]
** See also 2022: [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2022 archive#Request for Comment: MOS:SIR, Knighthoods & Damehoods are name changing titles, much the same as peerages, should the MOS be updated to reflect this?]]
* [[Template talk:Infobox person#Death cause parameter]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Making redundant table captions screen-reader-only]]
* [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#A worsening MOS:DASH issue (causing mounting WP:CONSISTENT problems)]]
** [[Talk:Carson–Newman University#Requested move 21 January 2024]]
Some of these may need to be restarted as RfCs.

See also:
* [[Talk:Cosimo III de' Medici#Requested move 15 December 2023]] – [[WP:NCPEER]]'s "rule" calling for long-ass page titles like [[Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany]] got discarded like chaff; this may be significant in addressing [[WP:PEERAGE]]'s and [[WP:ROYALTY]]'s other attempts to use [[WP:FAITACCOMPLI]] to impose "their own rules" ([[WP:CONLEVEL]] failure).

Forgot about this one for a long time (need to merge the NC material out of [[MOS:COMICS]] into [[WP:NCCOMICS]]):
* [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (comics)#Merge proposed: WP:NCCOMICS to MOS:COMICS (which is already ~50% NC material)]]

An article still using deprecated [[WP:PARENTHETICAL]] referencing of the {{tlx|harv}} style to use as a cleanup testbed:
* [[Henge]]

<span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC); updated: 02:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
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<!--End old, unresolved stuff.--><br /><br />
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<!--Begin new stuff.--><br /><br />

=Current threads=

==Notice of a discussion I think you'd be interested in knowing about==
	
Hey Mac, I thought you might want to be aware of [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Basic_strategy_proposal_and_further_efforts_at_communicating_the_degree_of_community_disapproval_to_the_WMF|this discussion]] (which includes not just the linked to thread, but a much larger one further above on VP/WMF).  In summary, it appears that the WMF is prepared to imminently disclose personally identifying information about volunteers in a controversial Indian court case, where a news agency is attempting to suppress Wikipedia's tertiary coverage of the content of secondary sources (which it considers unflattering) by going after a number of individual editors as defendants.  In order to comply with court orders in the case, it seems the WMF is prepared to share this information in what a number of us consider a pretty seismically bad idea and a betrayal of community priorities and values (the WMF has also already used an office action to remove an article reporting on the case, at the direction of the court for what said court regards as legitimate [[sub judice]] reasons).  
	
While the deletion of the article has been framed by the WMF as temporary step to preserve appeal on the overall case, and there are mixed feelings in the community response as to that so far, there is a much more uniform opposition to throwing the individual editors (at least one of whom is located in India and has profound apprehension about what this could mean for his life with regard to litigation and beyond) under the bus.  And yet the WMF appears to be prepared to share the information in question, as soon as Nov. 8.  Can I impose upon you to take a look at the matter and share your perspective? ''[[User:Snow Rise|<b style="color:#19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color:#66c0fd">n</b><b style="color:#99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color:#b2dffe;">w</b><b style="color:#B27EB2;">Rise</b>]][[User talk:Snow Rise|<sup><b style="color:#d4143a"> let's rap</b></sup>]]'' 00:46, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:Yeesh. That sounds really dreadful. This seems really problematic on multiple levels. I hope the disappeared article is available through some archival service (what with Wayback being under concerted attack for so long now). But the privacy matter seems more important here.  I've been quietly arguing for some time that WMF has to stop blockading VPNs, for reasons like this. If you don't have PII to divulge, then governments don't try to twist your arm in the first place. I have the US election shitshow in my face at the moment, but maybe can look into this tomorrow. I don't have a lot of reach any longer, but my FB and LinkedIn pages probably hit the eyes of some who do on such matters. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 02:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
::I've been coming to similar conclusions about the VPN issue of late, although I confess that the potential for abuse by vandals is a difficult concern to ignore at the same time. In any event, I agree that the PII issues is the much more serious and pressing of the issues, even if neither is exactly a trivial matter.  And yes, I appreciate the timing could not be worse, but do consider looking into the matter further if time allows--few people here are more articulate than you, once you've made your mind up on how you feel about an issue. ''[[User:Snow Rise|<b style="color:#19a0fd;">S</b><b style="color:#66c0fd">n</b><b style="color:#99d5fe;">o</b><b style="color:#b2dffe;">w</b><b style="color:#B27EB2;">Rise</b>]][[User talk:Snow Rise|<sup><b style="color:#d4143a"> let's rap</b></sup>]]'' 04:41, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
:::Life got away from me, and I'll try to look into this shortly, though maybe some deadline has been passed already. PS: On VPNs, I don't mean we should permit them across-the-board, but just for logged-in users with accounts past some threshold (of the sort we impose for various other things; maybe autoconfirmed, though something more stringent could also be used). It just makes zero sense that I can be logged in as me, a user with 19 years experience here, and cannot edit beyond my userspace if using a VPN (which is more and more an automatic thing one has to affirmatively turn off in various browsers these days). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 01:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

== [[Special:GoToComment/c-SMcCandlish-20241124104100-Voorts-20241122142900|Your comments]] at the AT discussion ==

I can assure you I have no emotional attachment to the AT policy and I'd ask that you strike your comments suggesting that I'm engaging in {{tq|bent-out-of-shape ranting}}, etc. Clearly I misunderstood what you were saying regarding the "over-ride" issue; you could have just clarified your point instead of calling me hysterical. [[User:Voorts|voorts]] ([[User talk:Voorts|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/Voorts|contributions]]) 15:07, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
:{{ping|Voorts}} Done, in the interests of peace. Though I just did a direct revision instead of a strike-through.<!--
--><p>It would be nice if, for your part, you actually addressed the substance of the argument I made instead of repeatedly just criticizing perceived tone and imaginary implications (of my wording or Cinderella's), since the actually operable implications in the context are quite limited, as has been explained in some detail.</p><!--
--><p>That said, the discussion/proposal is a dead stick. Cinderella's wording choices set off so many people that the snowball is probably irreversible. This should be re-addressed some other time (perhaps after a customary 6-18 months) with more careful wording and a more clearly articulated argument, because the problem identified is a real one and it is not going to magically go away. My sectional merge proposal would obviate it, but no one's going to notice and support it because they're running around alarmed by "supersede" and "override". It might not be "hysterical" but it's not responsive to the issue in any way. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 15:36, 24 November 2024 (UTC)</p>
::Your revision is hardly better. You've still left in the stuff about argument to emotion and called me blustery. And, now you're assuming that I'm angry at you as well. I can once again assure you that I'm not angry. Stop speculating on my emotional state or my motivations. It's not productive. [[User:Voorts|voorts]] ([[User talk:Voorts|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/Voorts|contributions]]) 15:48, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
:::I revised for tone because the tone was not constructive. As for the rest: no one likes being criticized, but something that basically boils down to "stop criticizing" isn't a request I'm going to obey. I stand by my criticisms. Your and other "no" !votes in that proceeding are not in any way responsive to the substance of the proposal but only emotively over-reacting to wording used by the proponent and to imaginary not plausible repercussions. As my old friend John Perry Barlow put it in regard to such "[[terriblizing]]" (to paraphrase here; I don't have the article he wrote about this right in front of me): Objecting to something on the basis of the possible outcomes instead of the probable one is fallacious. In the imagination, there are no limits to the {{em|possible}}, but the outcome is extremely unlikely to be in the extreme range of it. As for "angry", your tone toward me there and here is clearly angry (displeased, antagonistic, combative, complaining, unhappy, dwelling on your hurt feelings instead of on the substance, however one wants to put it). It requires no mind-reading to observe this. You don't get to duck and dodge the implications of what you write by disclaiming that they convey what they clearly convey, any more than I do. I've gone the extra mile to edit my tone in response to you, but you have not met me half way. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 03:08, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

== Your user scripts ==

might benefit more users if they were also listed at [[Wikipedia:User scripts/List]]. That's the go-to place where I get all my scripts from... <span style="text-shadow:3px 3px 3px lightblue">[[User:Huggums537|'''Huggums''']]<sup>'''537'''<sub>[[User:Huggums537/Poll|voted!]]</sub> ([[User:Huggums537/Guestbook|sign🖋️]]|[[User talk:Huggums537|📞talk]])</sup></span> 05:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
:Yes, though I think they still need a bit more tweaking (even aside from one lacking the vertical formatting feature entirely). It's stuff I worked on obsessively for about a month straight, but have been doing other stuff since then. Takes a while to get back into such things. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:05, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

== Feedback request: History and geography request for comment ==
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==Io Saturnalia!==

{| style="border:2px ; background-color: #FF0000;"
|rowspan="2" valign="right" | [[File:John Reinhard Weguelin–The Roman Saturnalia (1884).jpg |250px]]
|rowspan="2" |
|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 2; vertical-align: left; height: 1.1em;" | '''Io, [[Saturnalia]]!'''
|-
|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] ([[User talk:Ealdgyth|talk]]) 15:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
|}

== New pages patrol January 2025 Backlog drive ==

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== December thanks ==
{{User QAIbox
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| bold = [[User:Gerda Arendt/Top|story]] · [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music|music]] · [[User:Gerda Arendt/Places and songs 2024#23 Nov|places]]
}}
Thank you today for improving article quality in December! - Today is [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#20 Dec|a woman poet's centenary]]. -- [[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 16:47, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

==Merry Christmas!==
{| style="border:1px solid 3px; background-color: {{{color|#fdffe7}}}; padding: 5px;"
|rowspan="2" valign="center" | [[File:Christmas postcard with Santa Claus wearing green robes, carrying full sack, with "Christmas Greetings.".jpg|190px]]
|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: center; height: 1.1em;" | '''A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!'''
|rowspan="2" valign="centre" padding: 5px;" | [[File:Scrooges third visitor-John Leech,1843.jpg|180px]]
|rowspan="2" |
|-
|style="vertical-align:top; border-top:1px solid gray"|
<br />
<big>Have a great Christmas, and may 2025 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls or vandals!</big>
<br />
<br />
<big>Cheers</big>
<br />
<br />
<big>[[User:SchroCat|SchroCat]] ([[User talk:SchroCat|talk]]) 08:30, 21 December 2024 (UTC)</big>
|}

== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ==
{{Disregard|Non-neutral pseudo-RfC; advice given to poster of it on how to do it properly}}
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== Redirect listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] ==
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<!--[[File:Information.svg|30px]]
-->A redirect or redirects you have created has been listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|redirects for discussion]] to determine whether its use and function meets the [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirect guidelines]]. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at '''{{slink| Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 December 27#"Musican" Redirects }}''' until a consensus is reached. <!-- Template:Rfd mass notice --> [[User:Someone-123-321]] (I [[Special:Contributions/Someone-123-321|contribute]], [[User talk:Someone-123-321|Talk page so SineBot will shut up]]) 12:36, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

== You're my MOS maven... ==

I cannot believe that we seriously intend for this style of number separation to be used - [[Special:Diff/1265647145|here]]. Am I utterly off base? [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] ([[User talk:Ealdgyth|talk]]) 00:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
:{{ping|Ealdgyth}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Holocaust&diff=1265682638&oldid=1265647145]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 03:57, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

== Gram capitalisation (eponym exceptionalism) ==

You've probably had your fill of this, so forgive me if so.  

<small>
My background<br />
I'm a long-time IP editor of WP with an interest in style, grammar & punctuation, who has regularly been unfairly thwacked with actions from admins or logged in editors — usually as collateral damage in an IP-range block, but occasionally through some other tiresome thing, such as edit reversion....  Some of those admins have seemed pretty trigger-happy to implement blocks, without feeling any compunction when I've occasionally pointed out that some of those specific instances were contrary to the official WP guidelines (and, furthermore, no penalty to such admins...).  Anyway, enough of my ranting...  Just that the contrast in treatment is 'interesting'.  
</small>

I was wondering why the styling at [[Gram-positive bacteria]] and [[Gram-negative bacteria]] never got resolved.  If indeed (as I think [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_221#h-MOS:EPONYM-2020-11-28T18:21:00.000Z|you made a fair case]]) one or a handful of editors were standing against the MOS, then why was there no admin action against those editors for blocking/reverting changes consistent with the MOS to retain a version at odds with the MOS?  

I notice that the [[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#EPONYM|''explicit'' guidance on eponyms in the MOS]] has stood for the past several years, but those two articles remain as inconsistent as ever.  

I don't think this necessarily has to be your burden to carry, but why are some admins not resolving this?  

—DIV ([[Special:Contributions/202.7.208.27|202.7.208.27]] ([[User talk:202.7.208.27|talk]]) 13:35, 29 December 2024 (UTC))
:As a sometimes McCandlish lurker, per your concerns about IP editing, may I point out that [[User:DIV]] is open if you want it. [[User:Randy Kryn|Randy Kryn]] ([[User talk:Randy Kryn|talk]]) 14:02, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
::Would be a pretty cool username, too. Not many three-letter ones available that are pronounceable. As an HTML-element reference, it would imply that you're full of content. :-) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 06:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:It never got resolved because most of us have lives and run out of time and patience to deal with it when there is a camp of editors who will fight ceaselessly to keep some [[WP:SSF]]-based weird stylistic divergence from our style manual, because the variant suits their off-site writing habits that pertain to some other domain. One of these cases is the preference on the part of the American Medical Association's style guide to lowercase a proper-name-bearing term any time it is used as (or as part of) a modifier instead of as a noun phrase. This is weird, intentionally inconsistent, and downright confusing. It doesn't match the writing style of any other group of English-language users in the entire world. But if editors who are fans of this practice are a thick majority of the editors who will respond to any attempt to normalize the style to reader expectations at a particular subject, then progress will tend to stonewall. Often the only way to break through such a deadlock is an RfC at some venue like [[WT:MOS]] or even [[WP:VPPOL]]. Personally, I have little patience for this stuff any longer, because there are more important things to do. They always turn into [[WP:DRAMA]] festivals.<p>That said, fixing "gram-negative" to "Gram-negative" throughout all of our material would be good to do, because almost everyone who encounters this term and is not already a medicine or biology professional is going believe that it has something to do with the [[Gramme|gram&#91;e&#93;]] unit, when it is really an eponym based on the surname Gram. Other terms lowercased for the same dubious reason, e.g. "parkinsonian", are less problematic than this case because they lack such obvious and confusing ambiguity. To put it another way, if the AMA's next style book edition demands to start spelling "CAT scan" and "PET scan" as "cat scan" and "pet scan", WP would ignore them as ridiculous and "reader-hateful". We should already have come to that same conclusion with regard to "gram-positive/negative" (and having come to that conclusion, then step-wise also concluded to avoid "parkinsonian" and the like as a consistency matter).</p><p>On your admins side question: it's virtually unheard of for admins to get involved in MoS-related disputes in a block-wielding manner, because they are guidelines not policies, and they have a lot of "real work" to do, e.g. against vandalism and spam and so on. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 06:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)</p>

== Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment ==
{{Disregard|RfC withdrawn as too unclear, before I got to it.}}
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== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: History and geography request for comment ==
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<!--[[File:Internet-group-chat.svg|48px|left|alt=|link=]]-->Your feedback is requested &#32;at [[Talk:October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel#rfc_B68F86B|'''Talk:October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel'''&#32; on a "History and geography" request for comment]]. Thank you for helping out!<br/><small>You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of [[WP:FRS|Feedback Request Service]] subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by [[WP:FRS|removing your name]].</small> <!-- Template:FRS notification --><div class="paragraphbreak" style="margin-top:0.5em"></div> Message delivered to you with love by [[User:Yapperbot|Yapperbot]] :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact [[User talk:Naypta|my bot operator]]. &#124; Sent at  12:30, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

== Style    ==

@SMcCandlish, hello … this is Augnablik, a Wikipedia editor for the past 2.5 years.  I'm writing because you were recommended as someone I might turn to for answers to questions about the more convoluted elements of MOS. Example: right now I'm in somewhat of a fog trying to decide the best way to disambiguate the subject of an article. 

I wish Wikipedia still offered a similar one-on-one feature called Editor Assistance that used to be available, as I recently discovered, only to find it was discontinued. In its absence, would you be willing to pick up on this and occasional other such questions for me?

[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 02:12, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:{{ping|Augnablik}} Sure, happy to help. I probably have one of the better mental-map understandings of most of MoS and how it interrelates in various sections, and interacts with other guidelines and policies. If I don't get back to you speedily, it's not because I'm ignoring you, just off doing something else for a while. Anyway, keep in mind that I'm just one editor; while I've been one of MoS's shepherds for 15+ years, there can be interpretational disagreements about it. If something I say seems wrongheaded, it might actually be wrongheaded, with the question better asked at [[WT:MOS]] or on the talk-page of one of the more specific MoS sub-guidelines (e.g. [[WT:MOSCAPS]] for case questions, [[WT:MOSNUM]] for number and date ones, [[WT:DAB]] for disambiguation ones, etc.). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 06:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::Thanks for such a quick reply, @[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]]. I look forward to discussions with not just a highly recommended MOS expert but also someone whose User page indicates a shared love and ownership of cats (but don't they own us?) as well as ability in versions of the English language for which I didn't even know User boxes were available. And since you're "one of MOS's shepherds"— forgive me for this — I won't need to be sheepish about asking you some of the intricate questions I may come up with.
::Here is my most immediate need. I'm working on the existing article for Ramendra Kumar, a noted Indian children's author — that is, what's left of it after having been pretty much blown to bits. I recently discovered another Indian by the same name, who also turned out to have a Wiki article: Ramendra Kumar (politician). Today I found two more Indian politicians by the name of Ramendra Kumar but an additional surname, all with at least something in a Wiki article (Ramendra Kumar Yadav and Ramendra Kumar Podder). 
::— I know that disambiguation should be created for not just the Ramendra Kumar whose article I'm working on but also the other three. 
::— I think it would also might be helpful to point out that the first name "Ramendra" should not be confused with ''Rajendra'' or ''Ravendra'', as there are other notable Indians who also have those first names along with Kumar as a surname. 
::When I thought there was only one other person by the same name, I was going to attempt a disambiguation and ask the yet-unidentified MOS expert if what I'd come up with seemed okay. But now that I know there are so many others with the same or similar names, I think I'd better just throw up my hands and turn to the expert. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::We would not involve either Ramendra Kumar Yadav and Ramendra Kumar Podder as disambiguation page entries for the name "Ramendra Kumar" (much less put disambiguation hatnotes on them) except for one who is also referred to in reliable sources as "Ramendra Kumar" alone. The unfamiliarity of these names to the average English speaker (outside the Indian subcontinent) doesn't make any difference. If we have [[Michael Jackson (disambiguation)]], we would not add someone named "Michael Jackson MacTavish" or "Michael Jackson Chen-Garcia" to it, unless RS indicated they were referred to often enough without "MacTavish" or "Chen-Garcia". It's reasonable at a disambiguation page's "See also" section to but something like "All pages with titles containing ''Ramendra Kumar''" (see the Jackson page for example). That section would also be a good place for "* [[Rajendra Kumar]]" and "* [[Ravendra Kumar]]" (or apparently not the last one yet, since it's still a red link, so would serve no navigational purpose on a disambig. page). There's no need to "point out" to readers, in a reader-addressing manner, that such names also exit and might be what they're looking for; a diambig. page's see-also section exists for not having to do that in a pedantic way, but just by providing links. :-)  <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 14:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Okay. And now a few more related disambiguation questions ...
::::* I'm thinking to remove the sentence currently serving as the lead in the Ramendra Kumar author article and instead place it within parentheses, like what the article does for the Indian politician of the same name: ('''author).'''
::::* When the above is done, then: — Underneath the article title for RK the author, I write ''For Ramendra Kumar the Indian politician, see [[Ramendra Kumar (politician)]].'' But how do I indent that line, as it appears on disambiguated pages? — Underneath the article title for RK the Indian politician, I write ''For Ramendra Kumar the Indian author, see [[Ramendra Kumar (Indian author)|Ramendra Kumar (author)]].''
::::* As for the "See also" section idea you gave, citing the Michael Jackson article, when I went there I saw what seemed a completely unrelated list of dancers of all time! In any event, your comment that we don't have to point out to readers that similar names to the one in the title also exist made me decide not to include a See also section for RK the author. I guess I'd been assuming that sort of thing was an editor's duty.
::::[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 16:59, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::Neither should be using parenthetical descriptions in their [[MOS:LEADSENTENCE|lead sentences]]; that's a style for article title disambiguation. If the author isn't markedly more [[WP:N|notable]] than the politician, he should move to [[Ramendra Kumar (author)]] (and that should exist as a [[WP:Redirect]] anyway, otherwise). For a two-person disambiguation, [[WP:Hatnote]]s are sufficient as a minimum, but it doesn't hurt for there to be a [[Ramendra Kumar]] disambiguation page (with [[Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)]] also redirecting to that), since we have at least two "See also" ideas (maybe three, if the presently red-linked [[Ravendra Kumar]] also ends up with an article), in addition to two proper entries. The navigation hatnotes at the top of the articles would be done with [[Template:For]], something like <code><nowiki>{{for|the member of Indian Parliament|Ramendra Kumar (politian)}}</nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki>{{for|the children's book writer|Ramendra Kumar (author)}}</nowiki></code>, here written to avoid annoyingly repeating the words "politician" and "author", though some editors wouldn't care and would do that anyway. This will put the indented navigational hatnotes at the point the template is used in the article's source code, which should be immediately under any {{tlx|Short description}} template (the first on the page) and before other templates like cleanup notices, or {{tlx|Use Indian English|date{{=}}January 2025}} and {{tlx|Use dmy dates|cs1-dates{{=}}ll|date{{=}}January 2025}}, which would also be appropriate for this article, and infoboxes, which probably would also be appropriate. You can learn a lot about how to use (and order) such templates by looking at the code of existing articles, some of which use more complicated hatnotes for cases of multiple disambiguations. The politician article should probably have {{tlx|Infobox politician}}. The author article is already using {{tlx|Infobox author}}, but has an {{tlx|EngvarB}} template that should be replaced with {{tlx|Use Indian English}}; the politician article lacks such an English-dialect template entirely. I improved the author's lead sentence a little, but left the rest for you to do as practice, though I could also just do it since it's easy for me.<p>Regarding [[Michael Jackson (disambiguation)]] – it's fairly likely that a disambig. page for a name both common and prominent will attract some entries that should be removed as inappropriate; I didn't mean to suggest it as a perfect model, but simply as an example of not adding [A] [B] [C] cases to [A] [B] (disambiguation) pages. I.e., if it were normal to do that, then any page of that sort would already have numerous such entries, but they do not. Human-name disambiguation pages that treat a name in isolation might do that, if the name is uncommon enough that the list is not excessively long. E.g. [[McCandlish]] has an an entry for someone using it as a given name. But we might not do this at a very popular name, for length reasons. [[Jackson]] is doing it, in sections, but in other cases we have a separate given-name disambiguation or list page, e.g. [[List of people with given name Wilson]] (I'm not sure by what criteria this would be at "List of people with given name {{var|Foo}}" instead of "{{var|Foo}} (given name)", and the one will usually redirect to the other regardless. The editors at [[WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy]] probably have an answer for this question (or perhaps what to do with such quasi-articles is in some kind of disputed state; I would not be surprised). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::::🙄 @[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]], oh yikes, what have I gotten myself into? This is even deeper yogurt than I thought. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 00:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::{{anchor|11:30, 7 Jan}} The simple approach to any case like this is to just copy what has been done already for a parallel case. "Michael Jackson" isn't even a bad example. This is name with an obvious [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC]] that will be at that name without disambiguation; 99% of readers will be expecting the singer. A disambiguation page lists as <code>*</code> list items all the articles that match the name as their title (aside from disambiguation parentheticals tacked on), as well as anyone with an alternative (e.g. former) name that also matches the name. Any partial matches (e.g. as given/middle names, or as references e.g. "List of studio albums by Michael Jackson") or easily confused similar names, go in "See also" one way or another (using a search function if there might be a lot of them, but probably just as individual entries in that section is one or only a few). For the cases that do directly match, disambiguation hatnotes go atop the article. {{tlx|For}} is useful when there are very few, but other [[:Category:Disambiguation templates]] might be used to produce different output in other cases, e.g. {{tlx|About|the|technologist}} will generate: {{About|the technologist}} It automatically picks up the base name of the page unless told to do otherwise. (That it automatically appends " (disambiguation)" is why a redirect like [[Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)]] should exist and point to [[Ramendra Kumar]] after it becomes the disambiguation page (which likely should happen because neither the writer nor the parliamentarian seem like PRIMARYTOPIC candidates to be at the base name without any disambiguating parenthetical).<p>Learning to edit Wikipedia source code is a lot like learning a programming/scripting language: there are lots of technical nit-picks, but they make sense as a whole after they're absorbed; they quickly become second nature. PS: I fixed the broken link in my previous response to [[WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::::::I can empathize with you, @SMcCandlish, in your role of senior Wiki style expert at hearing an editor squawk under the onslaught of so many directives (even though they were requested!). As a teacher and trainer in real life — what's left of it l, that is,after Wikipedia has eaten up more and more hours of my day — I understand the value of living through a bit of pain at the prospect of all the overwhelming new stuff finally getting absorbed. 
::::::::I'll stay with it, but it's definitely more of a learning curve than I expected. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 12:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::My general advice for everyone is to just write content (in a dry, encyclopedic tone, and sticking to reliably sourced facts not supposition), follow the [[WP:BLP]] policy with regard to living people, and obey [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] (i.e., don't plagiarize material from other sources). As long as you do that then your contributions should be a net positive; others will point out any formatting or other mistakes and probably clean up after them. You'll gradually absorb the norms and details as you go along. Trying to learn a complex system like this without immersion in it is like trying to learn a foreign language from a book and a video. And if, for any question, you do what a preponderance of well-written conceptually similar articles are already doing, you'll rarely go wrong. E.g., if you wonder something like "Would it be appropriate for the author article to inline some audiovisual material, like him giving a speech at a book signing?", look at other other author articles and you'll see quickly that the answer is "no". A more prosaic example would be "Should award names be in italics or some other special markup?" If you look at the biographies of major figures with numerous awards, like a celebrated actor, a highly decorated soldier, and a champion athlete, you'll see immediately that the answer is "no italics or other special markup, beyond capitalizing the proper name of the award". <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 15:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::Following the guidelines in the 1st sentence of your above message, and in the Visual editor, no problem. Working on curly bracketed code in the Source editor rather than the Visual editor, I'd prefer 2 root canals at the same time just to avoid. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 16:10, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::Should work out fine. Lots of editors use the VE, and get more comfortable with tweaking things in the source editor over time. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 01:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
{{cot|bg=darkseagreen|indent=5.6em|A note about a misplaced copy-paste, and the comedy of misunderstanding and banter that ensued}}
[[#11:30, 7 Jan|Above]], you wrote the following (nowikified here, to illustrate the point):
: <code><nowiki>{{tlx|About|the|singer}} wil generate: {{About|the technologist}}</nowiki></code>
Pretty sure that was some kind of copy-paste glitch; just thought I'd mention it so as not to lead Augnablik astray. If it was intended, please enlighten! [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:41, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
:Yeah, it was and error (of editing only 1 of 2 copies after pasting). Fixed. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:42, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
:@Mathglot, I couldn't help noticing that in your request to @SMcCandlish to look into a possible copy-paste error you'd somehow come across in a message he'd sent me, you'd contacted him with concern "so as not to lead Augnablik astray." 
:Well, I just couldn't help commenting in turn that aside from what he agreed had been a copy-paste error, he seems pretty harmless to me and indeed quite friendly. ☺️  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 04:14, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:: A typo/glitch/copy-buffer issue can happen to anyone, right? ''Leading someone astray'' does not <s>apply</s> <u>imply</u> malice, only an act of unintended obfuscation that he may not have been aware of, and was happy to fix so as not to confuse you; so the comment served its purpose. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 04:25, 10 January 2025 (UTC) 
:::Errrkk … my little attempt at humor  backfired. I thought the ☺️ emoji would be a giveaway about the intention.
:::As SMcC's ancestry is from the UK,  wellspring of dry humor that it is, perhaps at least ''he'' "got it." Hope so, but apologies and remorse for any distress caused to either of you. It was totally unintentional. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 06:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::: No worries. Just fyi, I did misread you, and even the emoji, also, which I read as a complicity-emoji, meaning roughly: "This is really only a minor gaffe on your part and not a big deal, so I'm not mad at you and don't worry but I didn't want SMcC to feel stung." No distress (didn't even realize that was a possibility) so all is well. Carry on! [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 07:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::FWIW, I got both Mathglot's intended version of "lead astray", and Augnablik's playfulness in return banter. It also funny that the "wil" typo remained throughout all of this, as if invisible. (Since fixed in the original, because I obsess like that.) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::: Not to be outdone in typos-slash-gaffes, or obssessiveness: just noticed my howler of ''apply'' instead of ''imply'' above—what was I smoking? Now [[WP:REDACT|redacted]]. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 21:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::: That wikentanyl will be the death of us all! <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 01:03, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
{{cob}}
:@[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] IIRC, Editor Assistance was closed since there was no difference in how it worked in practice compared to Help desk/Teahouse. But, it was where I had one of my funniest WP-discussions ever, [[Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Requests/Archive_129#Saint_Jean-Baptiste_(Léonard_de_Vinci)_--wikipédia_française]]. [[User:Gråbergs Gråa Sång|Gråbergs Gråa Sång]] ([[User talk:Gråbergs Gråa Sång|talk]]) 09:26, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::Editor Assistance might not have worked differently in practice compared to the Help Desk or the Teahouse, but the value I see in an EA-focused place is that it would have been extremely helpful to focus just on MOS-related issues rather than a whole smorgasbord. And the archives for those issues could, over time, have become of special interest to editors wanting to pore over past MOS advice.
::As for your interchange with Monsieur Léonard, ooh-la-la! [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:05, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I don't recall EA being MoS-focused. To the extent an individual "advisor" like me isn't helpful to you or responsive quickly enough, MoS's own talk pages are generally helpful (except the more obscure drill-down ones, which may have few watcherlisters). So anyway, what's this burning disambiguation-related style question? <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 10:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Just posted, SMcC. 
::::I thought I'd reply to GGS first, a much easier message ... and I also miscalculated your California time, thinking you'd be asleep and wouldn't see what I'd write for quite a few more hours. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

=== Follow-up to Style message thread (above) ===

Hi, SMcC ...

* Is it impossible to modify an article title? I can’t seem to change '''Ramendra Kumar''' to '''''Ramendra Kumar (author)''''', though I tried. (I’m assuming this was what you wanted done, even though I wasn’t quite sure from your comment: “If the author isn't markedly more [[Wikipedia:N|notable]] than the politician, he should move to [[Ramendra Kumar (author)]].” (Your reply to me of January 6)
* Following your above comment, you added: “(and that should exist as a WP:Redirect anyway, otherwise).” As I’ve never been involved with redirects, do I understand the procedure correctly, to mean that this entails creating a separate page on which ''both'' Ramendra Kumars are mentioned by using the [[Template:For]]? I understand the concept of redirects but I find the “how-to’s” very confusing. One difficulty I see for editors trying to “learn about how to use (and order) such templates by looking at the code of existing articles” is that we have little idea where to begin, other than (as we see when we go to WP:REDIRECT), Pelé. Or, if we’re lucky enough to have an expert like you to ask, and we get a suggestion to look at what was done for someone such as Michael Jackson. But ideally, I see need for a tutorial providing a bunch of examples to work on, each representing a different editorial situation, with feedback for our answers. 
* I succeeded in changing the infobox language from '''EngvarB''' to '''use Indian English''', as you suggested. But frankly I think if it really required changing, it would have been fine with the British English language, as Indian and British are much the same. At any rate, this exercise was very helpful because it was my first time using an infobox, and it was fairly painless although I did have to re-read the information a number of times to really absorb it.

[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 14:12, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

:I've moved the article to [[Ramendra Kumar (author)]]. It's possible you lack the ability to do page moves until after a certain amount of time as an editor. The rules about which permissions are available when isn't something I've been keeping track of. Also created the disambiguation page over the redirect at [[Ramendra Kumar]], and redirected [[Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)]] to that. And put hatnotes atop each of the articles (just pointing to each other; these would change to pointers to the disambiguation page if a third notable Ramendra Kumar comes up). If you click [[Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)]] it will redirect you to the real disambiguation page at [[Ramendra Kumar]]. There, you'll see a small "Redirected from Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)" note at the top; if you click that, you go to a version of "Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)" that doesn't auto-redirect you right back to "Ramendra Kumar". If you edit that view of "Ramendra Kumar (disambiguation)", you can see how a redirect is built. This is covered more documentarily at [[WP:Redirect]] and [[Help:Redirect]]. PS: As for "Indian and British [English] are much the same": That's especially true in an encyclopedic [[Register (sociolinguistics)|register]] (without colloquialisms), and is true of all Commonwealth English dialects aside from Canadian, which is why I've advocated merging them all so we have nothing left but "Use Commonwealth English", "Use American English", and "Use Canadian English" (the last of these being a hybrid of the first two). But there's too much nationalistic sentiment for this to happen. Everyone wants their silly "Use Jamaican English", etc., templates, even for dialects that do not exist at all in a formal register (speakers of Jamaican, Tanzanian, etc. English use British English at an encyclopedic formality level). Win some, lose some. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:39, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::A thousand thank-you's for doing all you mentioned above, SMcCandlish. What a wonderful difference it makes to the articles for both Ramendra Kumars. Seeing what you did definitely makes a big difference in my ability to understand redirects and disambiguation and such. If Wikipedia ever gets to the point I'm hoping some day, with great tutorials for everything editors need to understand along the road that offer not just information but also examples and guided practice for editors, your work on the Kumar kerfuffle would be a terrific entry.
::To be honest, I think if I'd had to spend much more time trying to sort it out much further, I'd be a good candidate for a long Wiki vacation right about now.
::Interesting to find out that making a change to a title is a page move. I hadn't realized. By the way, just as clarification about editor level, I'm an extended confirmed user with 1,100+ editing points. So apparently we can't yet be trusted doing page moves. Probably for good reason. At this point in my Wiki career, I feel like a new driver who's getting ever more comfortable on the road, but not when it goes up a steep hill with lots of bends and the road begins to narrow and rain begins to fall and ...  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 18:11, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I do wish there were better tutorial materials. I've thought of making some, but it's time consuming, and I'm not very photogenic or a good speaker for doing video presentations; someone else would be better for that. I might do some "crash course" write-ups though. I have had several in mind. Most of [[User:SMcCandlish/Essays|my WP essay work]] has been about nitty-gritty subjects of policy and guideline interpretation, and written for old hands. It would be an interesting change of pace to do some "So, you're new around here? Let me help you out" material. Page moves: Yes, a move and rename are the same thing. As for ability to do moves, if you are EC then you probably can already do it, it just might be buried in some menu or other. I use the crusty old "Vector Legacy (2010)" theme, and have customized it to hell and back with user CSS and JS scripts, so I couldn't tell you where the move/rename option is by default these days. [[Help:How to move a page]] and/or [[Wikipedia:Moving a page]] may have the info about that. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:44, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Almost forgot to suggest that instead of calling Ramendra Kumar the author a writer of children's and '''YA''' books, you spell out that acronym. Not everyone will know what it refers to. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:23, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Judging by your Talk page photo, I think you're "selling yourself short."
::::As for being an engaging speaker — on which you may also be selling yourself short — one way you could do it would be to be interviewed by ''another'' editor about the decisions and steps to take in procedures that you feel most comfortable talking about. The other editor could be (1) someone who might serve as the narrator of a whole series of "how-to's" or (2) someone acting in the role of a bewildered newish editor asking the seasoned editor for guidance. (No, I'm not volunteering! 😅) [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 04:29, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::Someone should do that, but it's not really my kind of project, and I have too many projects as it is. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:53, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
:PS: {{U|Augnablik}} I've merged these two Kumar threads. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::You mean you repositioned the later one so it directly follows the earlier one, I assume ... I think I do recall the later one had been further down.
::To do that, did you just go to the Source code and move the later one up? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 18:20, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Yep, edited the entire page, to get at all the sections at once, moved this one up, and changed it from <code>==</code> level-2 heading to <code>===</code> level-3 subheading. I would think in VisualEditor, you'd copy-paste the section, then select its heading and change it from H2 to H3 level. But I haven't used VE in years, so I'm not sure. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:44, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

== Its time for you to put on your MOS hat again... ==

I know that we don't do [[Special:Diff/1267764697|this]] (putting categories in the middle of article text), but I have no idea where we have a proscription against it, any clue where it might be? [[User:Ealdgyth|Ealdgyth]] ([[User talk:Ealdgyth|talk]]) 15:53, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:When is that hat ever off? Heh. We don't seem to have a rule against using links this way. If we did, I would expect to find it at [[MOS:LINK#Links to Wikipedia's categories]] or in [[MOS:LAYOUT]] somewhere. In this case, the custom hatnote is falsely claiming these are articles, so is inappropriate (at least in the present form) for that reason alone. It's not uncommon for category links to appear in "See also", and they are also used as direct links in this way in many navigation templates, so they are not {{lang|la|per se}} forbidden. But they do seem to be more appropriate as "See also" entries. If kept as a mid-article hatnote, it should at least be clarified to stop claiming it is providing links to main articles on Henry I's children and mistresses, and it also should not be piping these links to disguise the fact that they are categories and hide what the names of the categories actually are. The MOS:LINK section above doesn't suggest doing anything like this with with category links, and [[MOS:SUBMARINE]] says more directly not to make links confusing in a "reader-hateful" manner. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:45, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:: I think we can't have such a rule,{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} or else we will have to have a carve-out for templates which put articles into categories. (Hopefully that template is clever enough not to categorize this page in [[:Category:All articles with unsourced statements]] due to the namespace; we shall soon see.) [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 02:52, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

== RfC notice ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
Hello, this notice is for everyone who took part in the [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 140#Should Wikipedia have and maintain complete lists of airline destinations?|2018 RfC on lists of airline destinations]]. I have started a new RfC on the subject. If you would like to participate please follow this link: {{slink|Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not|RfC on WP:NOT and British Airways destinations}}. [[User:Sunnya343|Sunnya343]] ([[User talk:Sunnya343|talk]]) 00:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

== A couple more style questions about an article subject ==

@SMcCandlish, another interesting new question for you: 

I'm doing some editing on the article for Joseph Bharat Cornell, recognized as one of the world's 100 leading nature educators. He has written many books. For many years he published under just his birth name, "Joseph Cornell." ''Bharat'' is a spiritual name given to him in the spiritual community to which he belongs, and he began publishing books with all three names only in later years. 

Thinking the question of how to handle this duality in Cornell's publication names might be somewhat similar to what the MOS had to say about handling names of women authors if they marry and change the name under which they publish, I went to the MOS and looked up name information but didn't find exactly what I think I need to know about handling this situation.

Advice? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 17:13, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
:What is it that you think you need to know about handling this situation? This isn't like a marriage-related name change, or the MoS material about that would also include cases like this. If this person is most commonly known in present-day sources as "Joseph Bharat Cornell", then that's what our article title should be at ([[WP:COMMONNAME]]). If it's not (and the one semi-independent source cited thus far isn't using it) then we'd go with the shorter "Joseph Cornell", as the actual COMMONNAME and per [[WP:CONCISE]]; we only use additional names (middle, nick, adoptive, etc.) when leaving it out will confuse people as to who the subject is because the subject usually has that additional name (e.g. [[Sarah Jessica Parker]] is nearly never referred to as just "Sarah Parker", so readers will not be looking for her under that name or nor expect her to be at any article by that title). Wikipedia article titles are not about making self-marketers happy but about helping readers find and be certain they have found the right article. At any rate, it appears very likely to me that this article will be soon deleted for failing [[WP:Notability]]. There is no in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources, only an interview (which does not count) and [[WP:SPS|self-published materials]] (which don't count; Crystal Clarity Publishers and Dawn Publications are clearly his own labels, not independent and reputable publishers). If Cornell really has been awarded some kind of "world's 100 leading nature educators" label by some independent organization, then that would be worth including, with a source citations, as evidence of notability to help save the article (though that one item by itself may not be enough). PS: His yoga teacher should not be referred to as "Swami" anything; that's an [[MOS:HONORIFICS|honorific]] (non-[[WP:N|neutral]] title that should not be used in Wikipedia's own voice. Note that his article is at [[Kriyananda]] not "Swami Kriyananda". And he is at that title, instead of something like [[James D. Walters]], because most sources refer to him by (or primarily by) the name Kriyananda, not his birth name. "Kriyanada gets an Indian name" does not automatically equate to "Cornell also gets an Indian name", since they are not parallel cases. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:14, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Thanks for all the tips here. I can see why the article might be a candidate for deletion without notability buttressing. There is quite a bit available beyond Dawn Publications and Crystal Clarity (which do also publish several other authors, especially Crystal Clarity) and I'm surprised it wasn't used by the editor(s) who worked on the article. 
::Although I have a COI with the article, I'll add a few such citations as soon as possible to deter deletion. Meanwhile, I hope other editors will take over the article, as Cornell is definitely notable in his field. It would be a particularly interesting one for new editors with an interest in nature and nature education. 
::As for the addition of the spiritual name, I think it would probably be best — all things considered in what you point out here — to simply say that he got "Bharat" as a spiritual name without pointing to any one person who gave it to him.
[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 17:28, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:[[Joseph Cornell]] already is the title of someone else's article, so [[Joseph Bharat Cornell]] works pretty well as a disambiguation. If his article is kept but "Joseph Bharat Cornell" doesn't turn out to be the common name, then it would be disambiguated as something like [[Joseph Cornell (educator)]], which should exist as a redirect anyway, especially since he didn't start adding the "Bharat" until later, as you say. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:55, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Oh, that's a great catch (the existence of the other Joseph Cornell) — thanks. I hadn't noticed the other fellow's existence till fairly recently, let alone thought to check on whether there might be others with the same name.
::Joseph Bharat Cornell is such a recent name change for the nature educator that I wonder if he did himself any favors by publishing under it. Perhaps he too found the other one. But I'm sure it will confuse a number of people who know him under his original name. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 17:36, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::The hatnote at the top of [[Joseph Cornell]] should resolve any such confusion. If there turn out to be three+ notable Joseph Cornells, then we should have [[Joseph Cornell (disambiguation)]] and use that as that hatnote target instead. With regard to the educator, I'd be more concerned about establishing that he passes [[WP:Notability]] and doesn't get deleted. Adding a source about his "top 100" award would be a good start, as well as any non-interview source material about him in works he didn't publish himself. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:34, 11 January 2025 (UTC)<p>PS: I have not created [[Joseph Cornell (disambiguation)]] yet, because the survivability of the Joseph Bharat Cornell article is in doubt, and if it's deleted, then the disambig. page would have only one entry and thus also have to be deleted. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:49, 11 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::I've added some information to the [[Joseph Bharat Cornell]] article that I think will help end any concerns about his notability and keep him in Wikipedia. Much more will be added over time, hopefully more references beyond his organizational website and the interview I found in what appears a good strong educational journal. 
::::Now, to follow up on your last message above ... 
::::— I don't see the hatnote to which you refer in your 1st paragraph.
::::— I can't find a third Joseph Cornell, which in your message you seemed to believe necessary for a disambiguation page. Is there some reason that disambiguation can't be done with only two Joseph Cornells (even though you kindly did create such a page for the two Ramendra Kumars? And because the article for the Joseph Cornell the nature educator is entitled '''Joseph Bharat Cornell''', he still needs to be differentiated from the Joseph Cornell who was an artist and sculptor because the nature educator is so widely known as only ''Joseph Cornell''. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 09:12, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
::::Since I wrote you yesterday:
::::— I've added several pieces of information along with citations to support Cornell's notability. 
::::— Believing that after my work today and over the past few days I could legitimately remove the template about the need for citations in the article, I did so today. 
::::— Suddenly aware that I hadn't declared COI with Cornell (I know him a little), I did so in the edit summary when I removed the template.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 11:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::I put a hatnote in (one that addresses readers who might end up at that page without having used "Bharat" in the name). Meant to do it before but maybe forgot to save the page. Two-item disambiguation pages are not forbidden but are somewhat discouraged except in cases where there is no clear [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC]] for the base name. That's probably not the case here. But I think 2-item DABs are harmless. If someone wants to be persnicketty about it, then they can nominate the DAB page for deletion. Interview: May be usable for [[WP:ABOUTSELF]] claims, but is not usable for claimed facts beyond that and does not count toward notability; only sources independent of the subject count toward the latter. CoI disclosure: good, though even better would be to no longer edit the article. Even the best-meaning and most careful CoI editing just raises other editors' alarm levels about whether the material is neutral and accurate. If you need to make more substantive changes to the article, it would be appropriate to instead use {{tlx|Edit CoI}} on the talk page (and be patient). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:25, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::Thank you, @[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]] ... I was beginning to think I'd worn you out and that's why I hadn't heard from you for a while, though I can see how in demand you are!
::::::1- <u>Disambigution</u>: although I was delighted you added the hatnote on Joseph Cornell's page, he is much more than simply an "educator." What he is notable for is being a ''nature'' educator. 
::::::That said, however, I frankly doubt that many readers will search for either ''Joseph Cornell (educator)'' or ''Joseph Cornell (nature educator).'' So to me, it makes more sense to make a DAB. That was what my mentor recommended to be done on with two Ramendra Kumars. Definitely seems harmless.
::::::About WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, this is the first time I've heard of it. I read through the information but still haven't quite absorbed all of it and figured out which, if either Joseph Cornell is primary, but my overall thought is that if one gets a hatnote, why shouldn't the other one as well?
::::::2- <u>Interview and notability</u>: okay, helpful.
::::::3- <u>COI disclosure</u>: this is an area that I was surprised to see a huge amount of disagreement on among even senior editors, specifically whether never to edit an article with which we have even a tinge of COI vs. to go ahead and edit it as long as we're transparent and of course aim for objectivity. 
::::::Some months ago, wanting to really understand a few seeming discrepancies in Wiki documentation on COI, I raised a question about this at the Village Pump in hopes of finally getting clarity from the seniors I knew would pick up on it. I was amazed at what began to look like a free-for-all at times between editors on both sides of the spectrum. The thread went on for a long time. 
::::::I emerged with much more confidence that as long as COI is declared, and we're honest with ourselves and others, it's permissible to edit COI articles. After all, none of us can ever be 100% free from bias anyway, even with subjects with which we have no official COI. 
::::::That said, however, for several reasons I'd prefer that someone else pick up on this article now. It was a very helpful learning experience, with your guidance.   [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 19:15, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::I get sidetracked in other projects and sometimes bail on WP for weeks at a time. "Nature educator" is also fine, but it's not the purpose of disambiguation (in titles or in hatnotes) to serve an educational/informative function (that's what article text does), only ensure that the reader gets to the right place. Our rule is to use the most concise possible disambiguation string, at least in the title itself (i.e. never use "(nature educator)" unless "(educator)" is itself a disambiguation failure because of multiple notable educators by the same name.  As for people finding the article: you'd be surprised how many readers suss out our disambiguation system and take stabs at it in the URL entry line. CoI: As with virtually all WP policy matters, there's a spectrum of opinion. The advice I give is safe-side. No one will fault you for avoiding CoI editing, but many will fault you for engaging in it even if some others will not. Anyway, glad I've been able to help some, with the caveat that my take on all this stuff is just one take on it among many. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:07, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::Please help me understand, SMcC, why the two Ramendra Kumars could end up — at my mentor's suggestion — with their own DAB as well as parenthetical descriptors following each name (''author'' for one, ''politician'' for the other) on both their DAB page and their articles ... whereas for the two Joseph Cornells we're ending up with no DAB as well as no parenthetical descriptors for both an a hatnote only for the one involved in nature education. 
::::::::I think your "no one will fault you" comment in connection with which side of the COI spectrum to choose is a really useful piece of advice, and that it should be in the COI documentation. 
::::::::<big>🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿</big> Lastly, I thought to mention that you and I share Scottish ancestry. As a child, I got fascinated by Scotland and especially tartans. I actually asked for — and got — a little book of them. My family isn't sure exactly where our roots are in the "auld country," but we are certain that we have them (though along with additional roots elsewhere).  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 12:12, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::The Kumars might both end up with a disambiguation string because neither is clearly the [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC]] for the name "Ramendra Kumar"; they are vying for it, if you will. But the artist/filmmaker is clearly the primary topic for Joseph Cornell: there is a great deal more source material about this person than the author/educator, and more readers will be looking for the former than the latter. A side factor is that the latter's preferred name now includes Bharat, which serves as a [[WP:NATDIS|natural disambiguator]] without needing a parenthetical one to be used in his article title. But since he also published as just "Joseph Cornell" and some people will be looking for him by that name, redirects from "Joseph Cornell (writer)" and "Joseph Cornell (educator)" are good things to have in place. Not only because people who understand our disambiguation system may stab-in-the-dark at such a page title, but also because templates that auto-generate links to a particular set of contextual articles might expect them to exist (the largest deployed example I can think of is that various templates and scripts expect every language to be available at a "Language_Name language" or "Language_Name (language)" title or redirect, even in cases where "&nbsp; language" or "&nbsp;(language)" might not be strictly necessary in the actual page title, perhaps because the demonym is a little different from the language name, or the specific language/dialect name doesn't have any other meaning than the language. An example of that would be [[Middle English]], for which [[Middle English language]] and [[Middle English (language)]] exist as redirects (one natural disambiguation one parenthetic).<p>On the "no one will fault you" thinking: An analogy might be that [in most places] there isn't a law against tattooing your face, but it's probably not a good idea, as many people of my generation and later have learned the hard way.</p><p>Scottish families: If you know what the name(s) is/are, there's likely already a lot of information out there about where it was historically found and whether it was a clan or associated with one (most were not, contrary to popular belief). My own was an exception; it turned out so obscure and with such disputed history that I've had to do 30+ years of research about it, which is gathered at Cuindlis.org. Virtually no one else had looked into the matter, and the few that did, in 20th century, proved remarkably unreliable and often mutually contradictory. They relied largely on family stories not on documentary evidence, and spun a "west Highland chieftain with a castle" fairytale that cannot be supported with any documentary evidence of any kind. All of that evidence points to a SW Lowlands origin, with the surname developing as one (from earlier literal patronymic usage) in the 17th century or perhaps a bit earlier. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:58, 27 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::::::::You certainly got my attention when you began speaking of a demonym! Never heard that word before. All kinds of scary imagery ran through my mind after I saw it, but of course my fears were allayed when I looked up the meaning of the word. 
::::::::::As for applying WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to the artist and nature educators Joseph Cornells, the artist wins the contest on the basis of third-party publications ... but if we could line up everyone in the world who'd simply ever heard of the two of them, I think the nature educator might win. Unfortunately, though, there doesn't seem to be as much published about him in the conventual places Wikipedians have to look. This conversation has made me begin thinking in turn about a side effect of Wikipedia's appearance and ever-increasing popularity in today's world: that if you're into promotional work — whether for yourself or someone else — you need to get as much as possible written by others about you or whoever you're promoting so that person can qualify for a Wiki article! 
::::::::::<big>🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿</big>  This conversation has been a delightful way to rekindle interest in my family's Scottish roots! Our family name is Kirby. I just made a quick side trip on the Web to see if I could find the part of Scotland we're likely from, as I didn't recall — if I ever knew. Although I still don't, I found the name is actually of Nordic origin because of the ''-by'' at the end and that many of us came over in the Norman invasion. Now I too am likely to get distracted .... [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 01:17, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::People (especially in "infotainment" circles) approaching Wikipedia as something to try to "qualify for" is itself a mistake. This is not promotional vehicle for "creators", but an information service for users who need to find out basic facts about topics of global significance. If your website or band is not already self-evidently of global significance by having received in-depth coverage in multiple independent reliable sources (the [[WP:Notability]] criterion), then it should not have an article here. It will not serve the interests of our readers, and will not really serve the interests of the "creator", because a skeletal article here will not have an impressive, promotional effect, and will not provide any more information that readers would already get by just Googling the name of whatever the person or project is. Meanwhile, if there has been any controversy of any kind about that person or project, our editors will find it and probably include it, even if it is from a long time ago, leading to quite the opposite of the "whitewashed promo" that a self-marketer would hope to see. A large number of invididuals and organizational entities wish they did not have an article here, because they have risen to significant notoriety or controversy that they have coverage here that, based on the coverage in the "real world", is far from flattering. The average person or group is vastly better off putting up their own website and just going about their business. WP will notice you when you need to be noticed, according to our readership needs, and you might wish that that point had not been reached.<p>As for the general background point: "if we could line up everyone in the world who'd simply ever heard of the two of them, I think the nature educator might win" isn't something that's {{em|directly}} testable, but the gist of it is for our practical purposes actually demonstrable as true or false: What we can do is see what the long-term focus is for such a name when it comes to which pages our readership in the aggregate end up going to (after the pages have existed for a while). This statistical analysis is frequently done as part of [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC]] determination when there is doubt. Beware of the inverse form of the [[Dunning–Kruger effect]], in which those steeped in a particular topic have an inflated sense of the understanding of the topic, and its details and terms and key figures, among the general populace (the "Surely {{em|every}}one knows [insert obscurity here]" assumption problem). Much of the challenge of writing an encyclopedia well is coming to learn how one is making such assumptions and avoid making more of them. Aside from article titles and decisions of what should be covered and how, it also has a great deal to do with how to write effectively for a totally generalized audience at all. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 02:43, 1 February 2025 (UTC)</p>
:::::::::PS: The fact that you've found this useful is good feedback. I've run with your "add it to the documentation" idea, and created a section [[Template:Edit COI/doc#Why to use]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 18:42, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::Congratulations! I went and checked it out. A wonderful addition. May your Wiki documentation career take off now, and dissipate your misplaced concern about not being photogenic enough to make "how-to videos." [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 01:21, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::Oh, I've been doing documentation here forever and ever. LOL I've been a [[WP:TemplateEditor]] for over a decade (which involves a great deal of documentation), and am one of the longest-term [[WP:MOS]] shepherds; see also [[User:SMcCandlish/Essays]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 02:22, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::::I see. Somehow I'd picked up that you'd been thinking about doing documentation but had held back, just as you mentioned that you had on appearing in training videos. Still, my congratulations are not misplaced; they're just not in quite the same context as I'd thought. Do please, as a good shepherd, keep helping to give us editor sheep nice clear documentation and training materials — ideally with lots of practice and targeted feedback. 
::::::::::::In a similar vein, Mathglot has been encouraging me to document what he calls my "pain points" before I get too far along the Wiki editor path and forget what they were. That's because he found out somewhere along the line that I'm actually an instructional designer in real life, and realized I'm approaching the Wiki learning curve from both perspectives. Frankly, I don't think I'll ever forget those pain points! 🙂 [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 13:30, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

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== Books & Bytes – Issue 66 ==

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<span style="font-size: 2em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif">'''The Wikipedia Library''': ''Books & Bytes''</span><br />
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== A barnstar for you ==

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|style="font-size: large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | '''The Redirect Barnstar'''
|-
|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" |  To SMcCandlish with much gratitude for redirecting a complex editing situation involving redirects. Happy to add this to your amazing collection of barnstars. It's not only the most fitting choice for your help with this situation but also one I don't think I saw on the wall at your User page. Careful, though ... you're running out of space! 

Oops, this version of the barnstar doesn't look like the updated one, but I copied and pasted what was there for the 2nd version. Perhaps the code itself needs redirecting.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 18:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC) [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 18:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
|}<!-- This is Template:The Redirect Barnstar. -->
:Thank you. :-) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

== Next up ... BLPSPSs ==

— What I read at WP:BLPSPS sounds a little circular. It starts off by saying we should never use self-published sources, unless written by the subject of the article. I know personal websites are okay to cite, but the above guidance came as a surprise. So, then, anything else self-published is okay, like a web site about the work of the subject of an article (example: Sharing Nature, a foundation set up by Joseph Cornell about his programs, which I view as a very well-done and informative website)? 

— Then WP:BLPSPS goes on to say, "it does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example." So, then, employee information like a list of professors and their years of service or professional contributions plus awards they've received is okay?  

— Continuing, WP:BLPSPS says that blogs "may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control." This  would presumably cover book companies that provide information about authors they publish, of which there are quite a few with useful information about Ramendra Kumar (example: Learning And Creativity Desk. “ParentEdge Magazine Lauds Effective Parenting: A New Paradigm.” ''Learning & Creativity'', Sept. 28, 2016. https://learningandcreativity.com/parentedge-magazine-reviews-effective-parenting/) So, then, I can use it for the RK article (and other similar sources)?

— Assuming that sources like the above count as acceptable, might I still be questioned by other editors if I use them?

— And if I have any doubts that an editor would question any of my BLPSPS type of sources, is there a way I can write an explanation of the reliability of such sources that the editor would see but would be hidden from public view? (in other words, to head off a deletion or revert before it happens) [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 12:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:Better asked at [[WT:BLP]], as that's a hardcore policy not a guideline. The gist is that, per [[WP:ABOUTSELF]] policy, self-published sources can sometimes be used for certain sorts of claims made by the subject about the subject, but {{em|only}} if they are utterly non-controversial claims and there is no doubt as to their veracity. E.g., we can use Microsoft's website to source the claim that Windows 10 will stop receiving security updates on {{var|X}} date, because MS is the most reliable source for MS's own schedule, and we have no reason to believe they are lying. We can use Taylor Swift's social media posts as a source for what she claims as her strongest musical influences, since she'd know that better than anyone else could, and doesn't have a history of making up nonsense. We can't use any statement by Donald Trump or [[Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone]] about their personal background, accomplishments, beliefs, etc., because both of these figures have well-documented and extensive histories of bullshitting about everything all the time. We can use Trump's Xitter posts as sources for what he claims his political plans are, since he does tend to kinda-sorta attempt to follow up on a lot of them. With regard to a writer or other content provider, we can't use self-published materials for anything that smacks of promotionalism: they are not reliable sources for sales records, for awards won, for positive reviews or other accolades, for influence or reception or importance, etc., etc. But would be a reliable source for something like "This book was published in 2017". Such sources do not count in any way toward establishing notability. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:37, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
:More specifically with regard to the above, the self-published blog of a publishing company is a reliable source in most circumstances for bare-fact details of something they've published (what the title is, who the author is, the general scope of the contents, etc.), but nothing promotional (claims of influence, importance, reception, sales, etc.). Whether such a source can be used for claims about the author (where they are from, what their educational background is, etc.), has been subject to renewed debate, which is why to ask about this on the policy's talk page. I've not been personally tracking that debate, which has been ongoing for about 2 years or so sporadically. Whether a self-published site is "very well-done and informative" is irrelevant; that's a judge of web-development competence, not source reliability. Sharing Nature doesn't qualify as "a reputable organisation" in this meaning, since it is obscure (i.e. doesn't really have much of a reputation at all). "employee information like a list of professors and their years of service or professional contributions plus awards they've received is okay?" Probably the first half of that, "a list of professors and their years of service", but not "professional contributions plus awards", which is promotional/aggrandizing in nature; the organizations granting the awards are the reliable sources for that (as would also be any independent coverage of the awards, like a newspaper or journal article). "professional contributions" is something judged by independent sources, like biographical material written by journals and other publishers that have no connection to the person they are writing about. LearningAndCreativity.com isn't somehow forbidden from use for anything as a general matter (e.g., I don't find it listed as categorically unreliable at [[WP:RSN]]), though it does not seem to have much of a reputation as a source/publisher. However, not only is the linked "article" above extremely trivial (summarizing someone else's review), it is certainly not independent of the subject: Kumar is one of L&C's most prolific staff writers [https://learningandcreativity.com/contributors/?alpla=r][https://learningandcreativity.com/ramendrakumar/]! The piece in question is assigned to a role account, "Learning And Creativity Desk", instead of a person, so it is very probable that Kumar wrote it himself, or had a friend at the site do it. The thing to do here would be to find the original ''ParentEdge'' review and cite that instead. There is no point of any kind in citing a pseudo-article that just claims a review exists and parrots from it a little. Go to the actual source not self-serving clickbait about the source. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 18:16, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
:PS: In all matters like this, ask yourself not "What can I get away with – what comes up just short of transgressing a rule?", but ask instead "What is best for readers – what most ensures the encyclopedic quality of the material?" <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 18:19, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
::SMcC …
::I completely agree with you about not trying to aim low at "what can I get away with" but for the highest quality all around. 
::What I'm finding somewhat challenging is that on occasion there are different interpretations even among senior editors about the interpretation of what's okay to do vis a vis Wiki policy and guidelines.
:: [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 12:24, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
::: It's always been that way. It's more of a continual community negotiation than something like a legal system. This is why I suggest asking about BLP policy questions at [[WT:BLP]]; you'll get a good slice of current community thinking. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:35, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment ==
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== 2025 ==
{{User QAIbox
| image = Ehrenbach icicles.jpg
| image_upright = 0.8
| bold = [[User:Gerda Arendt/Top|story]] · [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music|music]] · [[User:Gerda Arendt/Places and songs 2025#16 Jan|places]]
}}
2025 opened with [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#1 Jan|trumpet fanfares]] that first sounded OTD in 1725 (as the Main page had). Today I had [[Elgar Howarth|a composer]] (trumpeter, conductor) on the main page who worked closely with [[Alexander Goehr|another]] who just became GA, - small world! To celebrate: mostly flowers pics from vacation ;) - How are you? -- [[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 10:10, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
:Mostly just kind of swamped with off-site projects. Trying to overhaul a promising but malfunctional phpBB extension, cleaning up a genealogy database, and various other stuffs that keep me busy enough to not be around here much lately. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:50, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

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== MOS and [[Eldridge Cleaver]] ==

I am reaching out to you because you understand the intricacies of the Manual of Style much better than I do. I remember learning or being advised a long time ago that direct quotations should not include wikilinks. If I remember that advice correctly, that made sense to me then, since the selection of a wikilink might change to a greater or lesser extent the intended meaning of the author of the direct quote. On to the substantive issue: The current lead of [[Eldridge Cleaver]] quotes Cleaver as saying: {{tpq|If a man like [[Malcolm X]] could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former [[Nation of Islam|Muslims]] can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.}} Inclusion in the lead indicates that this quote is important to understanding Cleaver.  So, there are two wikilinks. If they  are acceptable, then the first to [[Malcolm X]] is not a problem since that is obviously the person that Cleaver refers to. On the other hand, I do not believe that Cleaver's mention of "Muslims" unambiguously refers to the [[Nation of Islam]]. I certainly acknowledge that NOI was the largest Muslim group among African-Americans at that time, but there were many smaller groups such as the [[Muslim Mosque, Inc.]] founded by Malcolm X himself in 1965, and other African-Americans found their own path into more mainstream Muslim communities. Plus there were many smaller fringe Muslim groups. I think that there was increased diversity among African-American Muslims in the 1964-1968 time period and I am concerned that this piped link within this Malcolm X quotation creates a false impression. I removed the wikilink and got reverted. So, there is in my view a MoS issue and a content issue, and I would appreciate your input on either or both. [[User:Cullen328|Cullen328]] ([[User talk:Cullen328|talk]]) 06:32, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
:The "don't link in direct quotations" rule got abandoned about 5 years back, via an RfC. That was probably at WT:MOS, but maybe at WP:VPPOL. As a rule, virtually no one obeyed it, and it didn't produce good results when we did, causing us to wordily re-explain things with additional text before or after the quotation instead of just providing a link. Agree with your take on "Muslims" in this case; unless there are RS that tell us with certainty that this was the exact contextual meaning, an editor making that assumption is engaging in [[WP:OR]] and potentially misrepresenting the material. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 17:12, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
::Thank you. I appreciate your input. [[User:Cullen328|Cullen328]] ([[User talk:Cullen328|talk]]) 19:20, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

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== Bierce ==

If you've never read Ambrose Bierce's "Write it Right", then I have found it (and some other old gems) in the appendix of https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/4376992/16 through [[Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library]]. [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]] ([[User talk:WhatamIdoing|talk]]) 00:01, 26 January 2025 (UTC)
:No login needed for it here: https://archive.org/details/writeitrightlitt00bierrich or here https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12474<nowiki />.<p>I'm generally a fan of his (especially ''The Devil's Dictionary''), though not all of his advice has aged gracefully, even in the first few entries: His demand for ''an hotel'' and ''an heroic'' has not really survived much except in the most pretentious modern usage (and in informal speech in dialects with a silent leading-''h'', like Cockney). Likewise, his preference for ''about'' instead of ''around'' in "The debris of battle lay about them" hasn't fared well, either, and contradicts much of his other advice (which returns again and again to avoiding terms that have other, conflicting meanings and may be confusing); his rationale isn't even right, as the ''round'' in ''around'' is not synonymous with ''circular'' (e.g. oblongs are also round).</p><p>But probably 80% of that material is still good advice, at least in a formal register.</p><p>Some bits of it are curmudgeonly, logical resistance that I subjectively like but which aren't having any real-world effect. A good example is the entry on ''laundry'', which also has implications for the British insistence on spelling ''jewelry'' as ''jewellery''; the latter is properly the working establishment of a jeweller, as a bakery is that of a baker and a smithy that of a smith. That stuff reminds me tangentially of the nonsensical shift in meaning of ''cat litter'' from 'cat scat' to 'sandy stuff in which cats leave their scat', a change that happened some time before I was born but which still makes me chuckle. Why would anyone want to pay money for "cat litter"?<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:00, 27 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
:PS: Bierce features prominently in my email sig over the last year or two:
:<div style="background-color: #EEE;"><div style="margin-left: 2em;">"'''History''', n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,<br /><!--
-->which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools."<br /><!--
-->—Ambrose Bierce, ''The Devil's Dictionary'' (1911)</div><div style="text-align: right; margin-right: 2em;">"When you're born in this world, you're given a ticket to the freak show.<br /><!--
-->And when you're born in America, you're given a front row seat.<br /><!--
-->And some of us get to sit there with notebooks."<br /><!--
-->—George Carlin, ''Archive of American Television'' interview (2008)</div></div>
:<span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:54, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
::There are others I disagree with, e.g., "''Substantiate'' for ''Prove''. Why?"  Because the former doesn't imply that the evidence was accepted as proof.  But it's still a fun read.  There are others in that book that might equally amuse you.  There is a list of words/meanings that [[William Cullen Bryant]] banned from his newspaper:  ''casket'' when ''coffin'' was meant, ''day before yesterday'' without a preceding definite article, even ''reliable'' when ''trustworthy'' is meant, and a style guide from [[James Gordon Bennett Jr.]] as well. [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]] ([[User talk:WhatamIdoing|talk]]) 20:15, 27 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I probably would have agreed with the ''casket'' point back in that era, but today they've taken on distinct meanings. A casket is the modern rectangular sort, while a coffin is the historical tapered sort (the Halloween-decorations traditional shape). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:32, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

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== Miscellaneous ==

Hi, SMcC,

We've been conversing about several different facets of Wiki style and procedures over the past month or so, and I'd really like to follow up on a few but without going back to add more length to those already lengthy threads. 

— One thing I wanted to do was thank you for taking care of a number of formatting issues in the Joseph Cornell article, especially removing the quotation marks around titles of publications and then italicizing the titles. I'd purposely left them along to focus on taking care of more basic things, like citations to make more of a case for Cornell's notability. 

— Then, thinking how you may well be on the cusp of a new expansion of your role as a Wiki style guru, I thought to call your attention to a recent Teahouse discussion in which an editor asked how to edit articles for which the expert sources diverged on important facts like dates of events or numbers of people involved. In responding to the questioner, one of the senior staff suggested he read [[WP:When sources are wrong]]. Because I'd run into a somewhat similar situation in an article — one that you and I hadn't discussed — I consulted that source too. I found it really valuable not just about "when sources are wrong" but also what it could offer as a model for Wiki style documentation to cover situations because it provided:

: — Alternative methods editors can use to address a challenging situation, clearly described and enumerated
: — Great case studies in which editors can see the value of applying those alternatives 

Like, for instance, to help us decide which of several legitimate choices we have in handling different situations involving the subject matter and length of the article such as ways we might subdivide different articles ... decisions about ways we might create citations ... and ways we might title the footnotes and reference sections. Your recent contribution to the COI documentation was just a glimmer of what else you could do along those lines. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 13:26, 30 January 2025 (UTC)
:I don't entirely agree with that essay, because it is nearly missing, and definitely hiding and discounting, the most obvious and most common approach, one that we use constantly: When sources that otherwise seem reliable are in disagreement about a claimed fact, we present that as a real-world disagreement, and describe both (or more) positions, giving them [[WP:DUE|due weight]]. The central problem with the essay is that it mentions this approach only in passing, as if it's something we rarely need to do, and even suggests that it only be done when "there is strong reason to think many or most sources are wrong or there is nothing approaching a consensus of sources". As a policy matter, that is simply flat-out wrong. What we do by default per [[WP:DUE]] policy is present all encyclopedically-worth-noting viewpoints on the subject at issue, weight them according to their support level in the sources (and there is usually a strongly dominant one verging on a consensus of sources, to which we give the most weight).<!--
--><p>To the extent the rest of the essay has ideas that are sometimes applicable, I agree with the gist of it, as to the techniques that can be used when certain sources are provably full of crap, or when the preponderance of other sources' evidence suggests in the aggregate that another source is full of crap, or when a writer, otherwise reputable, makes extraordinary claims not backed up by extraordinarily good evidence (all of which are somewhat different cases). Despite never having read that essay before (that I recall), I actually already employ most of those techniques, as needed. That suggests that they generally are in keeping with community practices (since I didn't make up my own solutions to such things, but absorbed them from WP existing practice). The only place the essay seems to be going wrong is the one I highlighted.</p><p>Anyway, most of its techniques are ones that I employed in [[Tartan]] and the split-off articles I'm slowly working on (the Tartan article itself is at least 5× too long; the material is encyclopedically comprehensive and researched with very nearly every available source on the topic (which I've been amassing for 30 years), but is far too much to have in a single article. I've already split off [[Regimental tartan]], and am almost done with [[User:SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tartan design and weaving]], and will next probably make [[Clan tartan]] into article instead of a sectional redirect, then do [[History of Tartan]], and we'll see from there). The on-topic point is that many tartan-related sources, especially those from before about 1950, are reliable for certain basic facts but grossly unreliable for others, the more so the more historico-analytic the claims are and the more so the older the source is, with the Georgian–Victorian ones veering from romanticist fantasy to cynical commercial exploitation to outright proven forgery. Yet many of these unreliable sources will be quoted by later writers and believed by members of the general public, so the bullshit in them has to be addressed head-on, sometimes directly in the prose, more often in footnotes, and these WP-editorial decisions backed up with citation to more reliable actual research that can demonstrate the claims it is making instead of blowing Celtic Twilight smoke. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 02:19, 1 February 2025 (UTC)</p>
::I'll have to re-read [[WP:When sources are wrong]] with your critique in mind. It didn't hit me as I was going through it the first time, perhaps because I was so ecstatic to find Wiki documentation (an essay, at least) set up so well for training. The lack of it has really been an ongoing "pain point" for me as the instructional designer confronts the agonized and frustrated toddler Wiki editor or vice versa. 
::I think my recent experience in trying to "follow suit" in footnotes and bibliographies (or similarly termed references) in an article previously set up using ''sfn'' templates and reflists, trying to use Wiki documentation and even when seeking direct help from senior editors, may forever occupy the highest notch on my pain point scale — we'll see.
::That [[Tartan]] article is probably the longest I've ever seen in Wikipedia. It does feel unwieldy at its current length, but I'll be interested how you finally slice it because I sometimes worry that doing that can make topics seem less unified way. For example, when I did some editing on the [[Houseboat]] article, I was amazed to discover another article entitled [[Houseboats in New York City]], which to me made absolutely no sense to be a separate article —&nbsp;and frankly still does, considering that the article I edited isn't what I think of as very long. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 14:22, 7 February 2025 (UTC)
:::{{ping|Augnablik}} You may find my crash course at [[User:SMcCandlish/How to use the sfnp family of templates]] helpful. Even I didn't fully understand these templates, for years (and this is reflected in the half-assed citation formatting job I did at [[Tartan]] and haven't cleaned up yet, but you can see the same sort of cleanup I did just recently do at the draft split-off article here). After working on the tartan article, I actually learned in-depth how to use these templates and what a concision and easy-of-use benefit they provide once they're understood properly, but I found the formal template documentation of them obtuse (and missing some salient details), which is why I wrote that essay. Slicing up the tartan subject: It's a great deal of work, especially because citations have to be ported from the original article into the "child" piece seamlessly, the material rewritten to flow as a stand-alone article and to have appropriate depth for the sub-topic, and then the original material in the first article replaced with a [[WP:SUMMARYSTYLE]] {{lang|fr|précis}}, again with citations adjusted. Doing each of the two split-offs I've done (regimental and design/manufacture) was several days of full-time work. As for "[narrow topic] in [place]" articles, they rarely make sense unless there is something unique about the intersection. Yet editors (especially newer ones, and one with a "local/regional pride" motivation) can be incredibly insistent about creating and defending them. Deflating such a quasi-promotional endeavor can be almost more work than it is worth. See, e.g., [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Internet meme trolls in Kerala]], in which I had to do about 10x as much source research and analysis as the person trying to defend the "article" (collection of largely unrelated local-interest trivia that coincidentally had something to do with the Internet, as does pretty much everything today). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 23:37, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment ==
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== [[MOS:NICKNAME]] ==
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Hi. I see in [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography/2017_archive#Toward_a_MOS%3ANICKNAME]] that you are the original author of this guideline, at least the earliest form. We're not clear on whether the suggested form applies to all nicknames or just the ones that are the article title. Can you weigh in on [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography#How_should_we_interpret_MOS:NICKNAME?]] We'll probably want a clarifying sentence in the guideline whichever way. Thank you. --[[User:GRuban|GRuban]] ([[User talk:GRuban|talk]]) 20:35, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

== Redirect listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] ==
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== Subsequent references to the same person ==

SMcC, I'd really appreciate your take on three style issues:

#I'm editing an article in which the first occurrence of someone's name (other than the subject of the article) gets linked to either a Wikipedia article or some outside source, but re-linked almost every later time it's used. To me, this seems overkill ... but as I thought about it, I could see that perhaps the thinking is that this avoids concern about some readers skipping over the link the first time. Is there a Wiki preference one way or the other?
#Some articles, when mentioning a famous city like Tokyo or New York, also provide the name of the country or state as well. Again it seems overkill to me. But is it a Wiki preference?
#Lastly, some articles use links on even common things like '''cab''' or '''pepper''' to a dictionary definition. I can't believe anyone reading Wikipedia would need help on that basic a level. But is this sort of linkage something that Wikipedia prefers we should just leave alone when we see it?

[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 20:11, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

:In the same order:
:#It {{em|might}} be overkill, but I'd have to see the article to be sure. We formerly had a "link once per article" provision, but this was changed by RfC several years ago to "Link once per major section". See [[MOS:DUPLINK]]. And we are not to use links to other websites directly in article text per [[WP:EL]]; if some external link is needed with regard to some subject like a biographical figure, it goes in a citation. If you ever see something like "According to an interview with Smith on YouTube with <code><nowiki>[https://www.youtube.com/@dylan_anderson Dylan Anderson]</nowiki></code> ..." ({{em|not}} the [[Dylan Anderson]] we have encyclopedia material about, so <code><nowiki>[[Dylan Anderson]]</nowiki></code> can't be used for this), that needs to get replaced with "According to an interview with Smith on YouTube with Dylan Anderson<code><nowiki><ref>{{cite web | ... cite the actual interview here, not the profile of the interviewer ...}}</ref></nowiki></code> ...". If it's something like "McNabb became CTO of <code><nowiki>[https://example.com/ BigBizCorp]</nowiki></code> in 2013", that needs to be "McNabb became CTO of <code><nowiki>[[BigBizCorp]]</nowiki></code> in 2013", or simply "McNabb became CTO of BigBizCorp in 2013" if BigBizCorp is not notable and doesn't have an article here.
:#After the name of major city (one globally recognizable by English-speakers), it is usually overkill and undesirable to also name (much less link) the country and/or a subnational unit like a US state or a Canadian province or a UK county or whatever, unless either:
:#*The name is encyclopedically ambiguous: Portland, Maine, vs. Portland, Oregon. But not London, UK, vs. London, Ontario, the latter being rather unfamiliar to everyone but Canadians; even Canadians say/write "London, Ontario" unless the context makes is absolutely clear that the local one is meant, e.g. "I'm stopping in London on my drive from Toronto to Port Huron." Which place came first doesn't matter; Birmingham, England, and Birmingham, Alabama, are about equally well known, if you average it all out. But Boston, Massachusetts, is {{em|the}} Boston, and hardly anyone outside of England has ever heard of its original namesake, [[Boston, Lincolnshire]], a town of only 45,000. By contrast, [[Cambridge]], England, is vastly better known than [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] (named after the former), despite the latter being home to Harvard University and MIT, among other institutions.
:#*Or, there's a contextually specific reason to include that additional information (e.g. in a table, to have consistently formatted entries; and we also often do it in infoboxes, on the first line in which a country would appear (usually birthplace in a bio). This is covered at [[MOS:OVERLINK]].
:#Linking everyday words should not be done (per MOS:OVERLINK again), unless there's a contextually specific reason to do it, e.g. in an article on botany, trade, or spices, it might be pertinent to link to [[black pepper]] or to [[chili pepper]] depending on which kind is meant. For "cab" meaning 'taxicab', there would pretty much never be a reason to link that. If an article about transit/transport, it might make sense to link something like "[[ridesharing companies]] versus the traditional [[taxicab]] industry", because they are contextually important and the reader may need to compare/contrast them in detail for full understanding. But in "Jones was last seen entering a cab [or taxi, or taxicab, whatever the wording] on 17 April 2022", there is no reason to link "cab" (or either of the alternative words). Similar rationales are likely to apply to other meanings of the word "cab". In a bio, use no "cab" link in "Smith's cell phone was hacked after it was left behind in the cab of a limo". But in an article on automotive wiring, it might make sense (at first occurrence of these terms) to do: "The [[Automotive fuse|fuse]] box in most modern automobiles is within the [[List of auto parts#Interior|cab]], usually on the lower part or underside of the [[dashboard]], but in some older or specialty vehicles way be within the [[Automotive engine|engine]] compartment or even in the [[Trunk (car)|trunk/boot]]", because the reader needs to understand precisely what these terms refer to, might be a non-native English speaker or a child unfamiliar with the terms, and car-part terms vary by regional dialect a lot anyway.
:Figuring out when to add/keep/remove a link takes some absorption of encyclopedia writing skill over time. The basic question to ask is whether the reader is likely to need, in this particular context, some of the information in the linked article or not. No one reading up about a missing person or phone-hacked celeb has any need of details about what a taxi is or a car interior and its parts are. But someone learning about politico-economic disputation about transport options is likely to need to know how to distinguish taxis from rideshares in various ways. And someone trying to figure out why their car went dead after a popping noise when they tried to start it this morning may need basic car-parts terminology info. (Even if WP isn't the best place for them to get it, it is in the top 10 websites in the world and probably is still no. 1 for informational sites, so many people will start here whether they should for a particular need or not; same applies to medical and legal as well as technical information.) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 04:03, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

== "[[:Template:R from style]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] ==
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== [[:MOS:INITIALS]] has an [[WP:RFC|RfC]]==
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== Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment ==
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== February thanks ==
{{User QAIbox
| image = Bed of crocus, Ehrenbach.jpg
| image_upright = 1.3
| bold = [[User:Gerda Arendt/Top|story]] · [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music|music]] · [[User:Gerda Arendt/Places and songs 2025#23 Feb|places]]
}}
Thank you for improving article quality in February! - I point at [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#20 Feb|a composer today]], as the main page does. -- [[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 23:52, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for clarification about what a main editor is! - I face the same problem where I didn't expect it, for infobox opera that is, the standard for operas, present in 1720 opera articles (as of today), including most FAs ([[Carmen]], [[L'Orfeo]] ...) but not [[Rinaldo (opera)|Rinaldo]]. History: the "main autor" died. Before, he had reverted an infobox for Rinaldo because another main editor had threatened to leave Wikipedia if Handel's operas had infoboxes instead of the sidebar (of - old - Handel pictured and links to his other operas and oratorios, - I can't show you because it has been deleted as the community wished). That editor left anyway. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 14:00, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
:This kind of "I'm going to quit Wikipedia if I don't get my way about infoboxes on articles me and my friends [[WP:OWN]]" grandstanding and hold-the-community-hostage behavior coming from the composer/classical/opera project-circle is another example of why yet another ArbCom case about F'ing infoboxes is probably inevitable. [sigh] <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:32, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
:: I don't think it takes an arbcase. - I was trained not to tell people whose memory is fading that this is so. Did you notice that all three opera articles were written by the same, only in this one - see above. He also wrote [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-07-10/Dispatches|an essay]]. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 22:07, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
:: "companion piece" - the belief that its author argued against infoboxes is widespread, but I don't share it. He came up, during the end of the infobox arbcase and during FAC preparations for the article, with {{diff|L'Arianna|572230188||this experiment}} for a compromise, DYK? --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 10:38, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
:::I did not, so will moderate that claim. I remember him as consistently anti-i'box, but I clearly missed some discussions in which he was not. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:56, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
:::: Thank you. A discussion with him, about infobox opera for [[Carmen]], has been copied to the the talk of {{tl|infobox opera}}, DYK? April 2013: "In summary, subject to further discussion on the outstanding points, I can't think that anyone would have much objection to an opera infobox using a template along such lines." (archived, of course) There was an infobox for Carmen, soon after the first main page appearance (for which they were afraid of protests) for as long as he lived, without any problems (besides debates about the image), and after his death through a second TFA show. And on that background look at Rinaldo, perhaps ;) --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 13:02, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
::::: "afraid of protests" is entirely the issue. The very fact that there has been a miasma of editorial fear in a particular tripartite but interrelated topic sector, causing people to tip-toe around the often unreasonable demands of a vanishingly small number of editors simply because the latter behave [[WP:VESTED]] with regard to "[[WP:OWN|their own]]" articles, and that this continues after multiple ArbCom cases, is a serious issue. The community needs to break the back of this problem. It is not okay for a gaggle of topic-devoted editors to lord it over at least three vast categories of articles and browbeat every other editor on the system into obeying their demands. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 13:45, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
:::::: you are right, and thank you for your part in the breaking of the back of the problem! - I noticed that you may want to correct one more thing in your "companion piece", perhaps even the title. The so-called report came in October, after the case, and the "fresh look" in July, during the case, and before the opera initiative (also during the case), followed by a similar one for a composer, [[Percy Grainger]], {{diff|Percy Grainger|579193399||after the case}} (check my 2013 archive). --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 15:46, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
::::::: Fixed; I just misread which preceded the other. However, I see even more disturbing stuff in there: "It looks like an infobox was in this article continuously from May 2010 until August 2019, when it was boldly removed by an editor "per [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Style guidelines#Biographical infoboxes]]" (an unenforceable WikiProject advice page).  It has since been re-added in (that I could easily find in the history) May 2020, May 2024, and February 2025, and re-removed as many times." [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Erik_Satie&diff=prev&oldid=1278030964] If you ask me, this is {{em|already}} grounds for another ArbCom case, seeking topic-bans from infoboxes, because this is some particular people from a particular wikiproject abusing long-term "slow edit-war" and stonewall tactics against all comers, to try to "enforce" a [[WP:PROJPAGE]] essay as if policy, directly against prior rulings of ArbCom on such matters, against [[WP:CONLEVEL]] policy, against community consensus in an RfC examining the exact PROJPAGE in question, and against the very long-term {{lang|la|status quo}} at that article and various editors' attempts to restore it to that state, which is what we do when an impasse is happening (though I don't think this really is an impasse, because the arguments against an i'box in that article are very weak). This has to stop. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:32, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
:::::::: good plan --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 23:41, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
:::::::: Tomorrow is Chopin's birthday. {{diff|Frédéric Chopin|647896917||look}}, 2015, per consensus - some seem to have missed that. (reverted soon by Francis Schonken - later banned - and returned in 2023) --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 00:02, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
::::::::: Oh, it won't be me pursuing any such ArbCom or AE activity. I'm allergic to that sort of drama. But if a "try to derail every composer/opera/classical infobox we possibly can" behavior pattern continues, then others with more tolerance for the dramaboards should take that approach and just put the matter to properly to bed. Even as a matter of core [[WP:EDITING]] policy it's wrong; if editors want to add well-accepted, standardized features to any article, they are free to do so; the onus is on someone who's opposed to the idea to demonstrate that there's objectively (not just in their subjective opinion) an unsurmountable problem in a particular article's case that makes for exceptional treatment. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:40, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::: It's not "every composer", only those by the handful FA writers. Infoboxes - sometimes with, often without discussion - are present for [[Bach]], [[Handel]], [[Mozart]], [[Beethoven]], ... even most recent FAs, [[Schumann]], [[Stravinsky]], ... - What really should go is the hidden notice about obtaining permission on the talk before adding an infobox, - that's not WP style of editing boldly, among adults. - Opera: almost all major operas have an infobox, and many of the others, 1720 inclusions when I looked last, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox_opera see here], - many will not believe that so many even exist. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 12:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::: Just for fun: the DYK hooks on my user page right now mention 18 composers, of which 3 have no infobox (Bizet, Mahler and Britten.) --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 12:27, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::: Yes, I'm aware of the sea change over the last decade. The very fact that the community has collectively changed these subjects from a walled garden in which some wikiprojects were formerly asserting that infoboxes were not permitted at all without getting "permission" first, to now being subjects in which infoboxes are the default as with all other categories, is simply further indication that the article-by-article resistance still being offered by some holdout editors in these subjects is disruptive and a failure to [[WP:DROPTHESTICK]]. As for "the hidden notice about obtaining permission", any such should just be removed as violating [[WP:OWN]] policy. At most, a notice might pertinently suggesting getting an affirmative consensus first at the article talk page, {{em|[[iff]]}} the matter has already been debated in recent years (i.e. postdating the pertinent ArbCom cases) at that particular article's talk page already and failed to come to a consensus or come to a consensus against one. In short, this is not FightEveryoneUntilTheEndOfTimeToGetWhatIWantPedia. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
::::::::: PS: If by  "returned in 2023" you mean Francis, rather than an infobox at Chopin or whatever, then good. I'd had my issues with him now and then, but he was remarkably productive in his main areas of interest, and I thought an indef was a bit unreasonable (I feel that way about several other lately absent parties like BHG, too.) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 13:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ==
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==Coloured vs coloured in South Africa==

Hi SMcCandlish :) I dug around in the MOS talk archives and saw you were present in and central to basically all of the relevant conversations. I was wondering whether you'd be open to discussing the capitalization of the word "coloured", both in the MOS and in the articles affected by it. I see you seem to understand the C to be capitalized, but (I am South African) we use white, black, and coloured without a capital letter. 

Despite my account age I am new to contributing to Wikipedia (currently reading the MOS) so I don't know what the right jargon or process is to make this case. To better understand your stance I searched for sources as I imagine you might have and found a lot of non-South African sources which capitalize the C, presumably as a well-intentioned mark of respect. Respectfully, they are wrong; they are perhaps a unilateral exoticization which does not represent reality in SA.

You might be interested in the [https://www.gcis.gov.za/sites/default/files/docs/resourcecentre/guidelines/Editorial_Style_Guide.pdf South African GCIS editorial style guide] which I digested when I worked as an editor in SA.
{{blockquote |text='''''coloured people, coloureds''' (lowercase initials).'' |sign= }}

You can also look at any post-94 newspaper article [https://mg.co.za/article/2018-08-02-stop-calling-us-coloured-and-denying-us-our-diverse-african-identities/ 1] [https://mg.co.za/article/2018-06-13-00-the-limits-of-coloured-nationalism/ 2] [https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2016-09-20-clint-brink-goes-on-a-race-rant-coloured-people-dont-support-each-other/ 3] [https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/insight/2023-06-18-its-a-coloured-protest-so-who-cares/ 4] [https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-coloured-identity-2058521 5] [https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/we-need-to-do-right-by-the-coloured-community-given-mkhari-f735237e-a31c-4bb1-8c47-504ef4db3320 6], all of which will follow modern convention. You do start seeing the capital C pre 1994, it's more of an apartheid relic (the apartheid regime's specific jargon for the ethnic group was Cape Coloured, a subset of Coloured), but it has minimal real-world representation after that. You will also occasionally see stuff like [https://www.iol.co.za/ios/arts/colouring-outside-the-laws-and-why-trevor-noah-isnt-coloured-76facc66-998b-41d8-8d79-3a17759b955a 7], but note that this author is also capitalizing white and black against SA norms; I would guess that they have consumed a lot of US media. Finally, I also found someone else making the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cape_Coloureds#c-Totorotroll-2011-09-06T19:57:00.000Z-Gk_sa-2011-09-05T14:46:00.000Z same case] into the void (lol).

I am profoundly uninterested in fighting, so if you tell me you think I am wrong I will leave it at that, but this is a meaningful divergence from reality for Wikipedia and I thought you might be the right person to flag it to (having both the interest and relevant experience to do the necessary to fix it). Or if you are indifferent, I would appreciate your perspective in how to approach a fix (start with the MOS, right?)

Thanks for your time. [[User:Emberfiend|Emberfiend]] ([[User talk:Emberfiend|talk]]) 12:57, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
:Well, I will actually put in some time, since this is worth digging into in detail with some aggregate source analysis. (Not because of any interest in fighting, but because we need to take this stuff seriously, especially when dealing with names or labels of ethnic and other social groups.) The short version is that I doubt that lower-casing "Coloured" would go over well here, at least in the modern sense used as an identifier of a mixed-ethnic population (one similar in many way so the concept of [[African American]], virtually all of whom are ancestrally blended, not solely African). Lower-casing it in historical senses as a politico-legal classification during the apartheid (or Apartheid if you prefer) era and earlier as a loose epithet used by colonial settlers, would more properly be lowercase. But the modern ethnic identifier probably not, because lowercasing it will be singling out a particular ethno-cultural group for very noticeable de-emphasis, apt to be felt as denigrating. Sensitivity to matters of this sort is something that has shifted markedly within my own lifetime, and really come to head since the 2010s. I.e., there is a shift in usage underway (not one that will necessarily be long-term successful; I can't predict the future, and the wave of jingoistic hyper-conservatism sweeping the Western world is not to be underestimated). This relates strongly, of course, to a recent-ish shift to capitalize (or capitalise, if you prefer) "Black" in such a sense, and follow-on moves to capitalize "White" and the more catch-all "Brown" in the same way. (That last is primarily an Americanism or at least a North Americanism, inclusive of pretty much everyone outside the "White" and "Black" categories, and the latter rather loosely defined – someone with, say, a single African-American grandparent might be still called "Black" in American English if they have some African phenotypic features, and British usage appears to me to lean in this direction as well, as does Canadian) <small>&#91;Edit: Actually, "brown" has been used a similar non-specific way in the context of SA ethnic groups; CCHDC activist Joseph Little in in 1997 at the Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage Conference, on changing post-apartheid affirmative action policies: "under the previous dispensation we weren’t white enough, with the next we weren’t brown enough".[https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/31443/1/628130.pdf#page=178]&#93;</small><!--
--><p>Where this will end up (in general English usage) is an open question. Because of the psychosocial effect of lowercasing, especially in the presence of other such terms (notice what stands out in "The longevity statistics of Asian, black, Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific, and Semitic study participants ..."), I suspect that the result is going to be to treat "Black", "White", and "Coloured" as (or "as if", depending on [[WP:PNPN|how you like to think of such matters]]) proper names AKA proper-noun phrases, at least when such terms are accepted names for ethno-cultural groups in particular. Not so with attempts to capitalize things like "deaf", "lesbian", and other groupings of others sorts. This is also related to capitalizing "Indigenous", "Native", and "Aboriginal" in regards to groups who use those terms as official or widely-adopted designations. (Various activists push this too far and seek to capitalize them literally any time they have human referents, but the real world is clearly not adopting this practice; you are only very rarely going to encounter something like "Scots and then English began to supplant the Gaelic that was the predominant <u>N</u>ative language in south-west Scotland by the 15th century, and Gaelic was extinct there by the 18th century, or perhaps surviving in isolated pockets until the early 19th." The "Native" is just pretentious and brow-beating at best.)</p><!--
--><p>Back to "Coloured" in particular: I don't wallow in SA media, and I'm hard-pressed to find a searchable modern corpus of SA English publications (Google Ngrams provides US and UK, and a general English one). So, it's hard for me to assess what the present-day norms might be across all sorts of publishing. News is low-hanging fruit, though it has style divergent in many ways from other forms of publishing. I'm not finding a good, searchable SA news aggregator, so just went site by site manually. I find that lowercase for these terms dominates in SA news, but is hardly the the exclusive usage, even in the top 20 or so sites provided by one index of SA news: ''eNews Channel Africa'' ([[eNCA]].com) regularly capitalizes "Coloured", e.g. in constructions like "tackling the issues facing the Coloured community nationwide"[https://www.enca.com/videos/national-coloured-congress-giving-new-voice-ennerdale-community] and "issues within the Coloured community continue"[https://www.enca.com/videos/national-coloured-congress-partys-big-plans-meets-small-crowds-gauteng]. ''The South African'' uses both styles (probably a result of leaving some style decisions to individual writers): "Tensions brew between coloured and black communities in Nigel over housing occupation"[https://www.thesouthafrican.com/johannesburg/tensions-brew-between-coloured-and-black-communities-in-nigel-breaking-24-march-2023/], but "ActionSA demands answers over exclusion of Coloured applicants in traffic wardens posts"[&#91;{{lang|la|sic}}&#93;[https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/actionsa-demands-answers-over-exclusion-of-coloured-applicants-in-traffic-wardens-posts-breaking-1-october-2023/]. Same with ''The Bullrushes'' (of Johannesburg): "...in the old cemetery ... English graves were separated from Afrikaans graves. Whites were buried on one side, and blacks, Indians and coloureds on the other side."[https://thebulrushes.com/2022/04/27/ramaphosa-speaks-on-gains-migrants-lgbtqi-rights-on-freedom-day/], yet "Africans, Asians, Coloureds, and Whites all received their distinct forms of education ..."[https://thebulrushes.com/2023/05/10/dr-tshepo-mvulane-moloi-writes-a-letter-to-fellow-feesmustfall-fallists/]. Perhaps this is representing a different sensibility for historical usage as an imposed label versus modern usage as a self-identifier or at least a broadly accepted one. From the same publication: "Section 1 of the B-BBEE Act limits benefits to black people, which includes Africans, Coloureds and Indians that are South African citizens by birth or descent, or by naturalisation prior to 27 April 1994."[https://thebulrushes.com/2021/09/20/vicky-adey-tv-interview-exposes-b-bbee-lie/] (quoting an official statement from a B-BBEE commissioner; and note the curious legal redefinition, and lowercase, of "black" in this particular context, to mean something other than it usually does in SA English and be inclusive even of SA Indians – to mean basically what "people of color", "Black and Brown people", or "[[BIPOC]]" mean in [left-leaning] American English (or a bit narrower with a citizenship requirement in that particular legal sense). Some Xitter and other social-media usage I've skimmed is a mixture, and not all of the capital-C "Coloured" is coming from the left; I thought to look because ''African Insider'', out of Joburg, quotes what seems like a racist or at least racialist rant on X that capitalizes it.[https://www.africaninsider.com/arts-and-leisure/see-such-a-bunch-of-bs-sachas-dad-calls-out-race-classification/] The same paper again quotes a left activist (and former Public Protector) using it (and "white") lowercase, jarringly mixed with uppercase ethnonyms: "through the Group Areas Act of 1950 the government stole land and other movable property from Indians, coloureds and Africans and gave it to whites".[https://www.africaninsider.com/news/former-public-protector-madonsela-responds-to-comments-over-land-theft/] That looks like someone who's just pressing the shift key at the beginning of every other word as some kind of game, heh. Left to its own devices, ''African Insider'' seems to prefer lower case (e.g. lots of it [https://www.africaninsider.com/politics/anc-controls-8-of-9-provinces-why-the-western-cape-will-remain-elusive-in-the-2024-elections/ here]). ''iAfrica'' (a [[Primedia]] masthead, out of Joburg again): "the low number of registered [organ] donors from Black, Coloured and Indian population groups"[https://iafrica.com/give-oreokame-9-a-chance-to-survive-and-thrive/] (also used "people of colour", adapting American jargon), but "The Khoisan ... demand the abolition of the 'coloured' classification—a legacy of apartheid—and the return of ancestral lands ...."[https://iafrica.com/a-six-year-protest-ends-the-khoisans-fight-for-recognition-and-justice/], then "One of the largest and most established communities (classified 'Coloured' under Apartheid racial classification legislation) ...."[https://iafrica.com/the-claremont-main-road-mosque-and-the-fight-for-spatial-justice-2/], but then "... an investigation into racism at schools across the Western Cape following a distressing incident. ... black students were forced into the roles of slaves, while their coloured classmates pretended to auction them off."[https://iafrica.com/anc-demands-action-racism-in-western-cape-schools-under-scrutiny/], then back to "Cape Town ... with the vast majority of poor and working-class families (who are predominantly Black and Coloured) still being confined to townships and informal settlements on the outskirts ...."[https://iafrica.com/how-the-state-can-combat-spatial-inequality-in-cape-town/]. So, that one seems to just leave it up to the writer.</p><!--
--><p>That some go uppercase but others lowercase is meaningful. And I would bet money that there's a socio-political angle. There are probably more angles, one of which I've hinted at, as have these quotations. Namely, "[c|C]oloured" really has at least three meanings in the SA context: 1) An informal and racialist colonial epithet (an exonym) invented historically by White (or white, whatever) settlers for ethnically mixed people (basically the Brito-Afrikaner version of Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/French {{lang|es|mulatto}} and [[Casta|similar]] "[[hypodescent]]" ancestry-labeling terms in the colonial Americas – which seem virtually never capitalized by anyone). 2) An apartheid-era legal and politico-regulatory classification (another thing usually not capitalized) that included some African or mostly-African descendant people, especially the Khoisan – who are actually the oldest group in the area, according to anthropologists. (That said, there's been some "neo-Khoisan" disputation, about allegedly rather random Coloured groups forming and claiming to be Khoisan or some other tribal group to claim benefits and even take over land. There have been some "fake Indian tribe" issues in the US occasionally, too.) The apartheid-period definition even lumped mainland-Chinese immigrants into "coloured" for some reason. 3) A largely post-apartheid ethnonym used by many people (this sort of term is usually capitalized, at least in modern material). That last is rejected by some to whom it could pertain, often on an individual basis, but there is certainly a "Coloured[s]" identity group well-established, including with advocacy organizations, like the Cape Cultural Heritage Development Council, and even a political party, [[National Coloured Congress]]. There are probably additional nuanced meanings; there's a paper about it [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10098896312576068597&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5], but I don't have full text right now; could probably get the EBSCOHost copy, via [[WP:TWL]]. There even seems to be a book[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Coloured/mLzYEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0] about (in part) the transition of this term from a legalistic classification to an enthno-cultural group identity.</p><!--
--><p>How much does SA news usage (reflecting probably predominantly White SA vernacular usage) matter? I'm not entirely sure, but lean toward "not much", other than it demonstrates lack of uniformity. This isn't SouthAfricaPedia, and we do not write articles which are on regionally-confined or -significant topics to appeal to the sensibilities of a particular element of the societies in those places, but for a much broader audience. [[MOS:ENGVAR]] turns out not to be factor, because it cannot actually be shown that lowercase-c is a "rule" in SA English, like the ''-our'' versus American ''-or'' spelling in that an similar words ("neighbour", "honour") is, or the ''-re'' versus ''-er'' in "theatre" is. In that wider regard, what is of primary importance is broader usage outside of SA-local popular media, and instead in high-quality publications that are closer to an encyclopedic [[Register (sociolinguistics)|register]], than to lowest-common-denominator news blather (which is always written to expediency-driven stylesheets). So, Google Books Ngrams is our next stop. It indexes scanned book content. It does contain some lower-quality material (especially for results after 2019), but overall it's a good indicator of usage in professionally written material. Here are some pretty carefully scoped searches: [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Coloured+South+Africans%2Ccoloured+South+Africans%2CSouth+African+Coloured%2CSouth+African+coloured&year_start=1980&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false][https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Coloureds+of+South+Africa%2Ccoloureds+of+South+Africa%2CSouth+African+Coloureds%2CSouth+African+coloureds&year_start=1980&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3][https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Coloureds+in+South+Africa%2Ccoloureds+in+South+Africa%2Cthe+Coloureds%2Cthe+coloureds%2CAfrican+Coloured%2CAfrican+coloured&year_start=1980&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3] These generally show that, in English across the world, "Coloured" in the South African sense[s] is capitalized more often than lowercased, despite the somewhat majority preference in SA newspapers and their e-equivalents for lowercase (perhaps also among some other groups of SA writers; it is hard to tell with the materials so far). These results are not perfect, since they can't tease out title-case usage in titles and headings, and cannot rule out occasionally irrelevancies like "South African coloured wigs" or whatever, but it's not really credible that gaps this wide could be caused by such false positives.</p><!--
--><p>Next, let's try a Google Scholar search, indexing primarily academic journal articles (there are some magazines and even some books in here, but the vast majority of the results are identifiably RS material) [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Coloured+OR+Coloured+%22South+Africa%22&btnG=]. There's a significant amount of capital-C in this, though it is the minority usage. Looking over specific results (tediously), I was mystified at first, because in looking at every hit in the first 5 pages of search results, I found: 21 sources using lowercase, 11 using uppercase, 14 using a mixture, and 1 indeterminate (too little text freely available, and original title in allcaps). The mixed ones mostly formed a very strange pattern, of lowercase in the title, but uppercase in the displayed body text (rather the opposite of what one would expect). For those, I took the time to examine the originals when available (or at least the original journal database entries Google was scraping). Of these, I found that 10 were Google misrepresenting lowercase in the title, 2 really did seem to be that way (but might be the journal dbs misrepresenting the title – for neither of those was a PDF or other image available, though uppercase was clearly used in the article body), 1 had a curious habit of uppercasing it as a noun and lowercasing adjectival uses, and 1 even more narrowly lowercased only derivational use like "coloured blindness" in SA politics, but both noun and adj. in direct reference to the population group was capitalized. So what this really amounts to is 21 lowercase, 25 entirely or almost entirely uppercase, and 1 unknown. So, uppercase proved to dominate. There's a slight trend toward capitalizing in the sense of an ethnonym for a present-day population or populations, and if it's more specific (e.g. "Cape Coloured") it is even more likely to be capitalized; but to lowercases it as a politico-legalism or as a historical epithet. Definitely not a clear-cut line, though. Plenty of the lowercase use is in the modern-population-identifier sense, and those prone to capitalizing it probably do so regardless. Two things in noticed while going over this material is that if the writer is Coloured or Black they are more likely to capitalize, and if the writer is not self-identifying that way the more likely to lowercase (especially if a critic or polemicist, e.g. a real gem from ''South African Journal of Philosophy'' with ranty stuff like "... among so-called coloureds in South Africa ..." and "... the cacophonic plurality of so-called coloured ...." This has some implications.) At any rate, I submit that all the above is pretty conclusive evidence that capital-C on this is not a Wikipedia "unilateral exoticization". If it is an exoticization [I'm surprised you'd prefer a ''z'' in that], and really nearly all SA publisher including academic ones lean heavily lowercase, it's an exoticization being imposed by the rest of the English-language publishing world (increasingly over time), and which WP has simply gone along with, as more consistent with other proper naming and with a majority (though not an overwhelming one) of the RS material.</p><!--
--><p>One interesting bit I found in passing while digging through sources found in that GScholar search: Whether to capitalize the "c" has been somewhat politically debated, even {{em|among the population to whom the term pertains}} since at least 1994, in the development of a post-apartheid "coloured consciousness and ... [then-]emerging coloured identity" according to a paper in an edited academic volume: {{cite book |last=Rasool |first=Ebrahim |contribution=Unveiling the heart of fear |editor1-last=James |editor1-first=Wilmot |editor2-last=Caliguire |editor2-first=Daria |editor3-last=Cullian |editor3-first=Kerry |editor4-last=Levy |editor4-first=Janet |editor5-last=Westcott |editor5-first=Shauna |title=Now That We Are Free: Coloured Communities in a Democratic South Africa |date=1996 |pages=54–55 |publisher=IDASA/FNS, Lynne Rienner Publishers |isbn=9781555876937 |ref=none}} (FWIW, the book uniformly lowercases the term, along with "black" and "white", but it's also just a hair short of 30 years old. In a new book of this sort written today, I would expect that it would be capitalized, at least in this latter-day sense, by at least some of the authors. This later paper[https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/31443/1/628130.pdf#page=137] in a similar vein does so.) Another side point is that "Black" in the SA sense actually often has a narrower meaning than it does anywhere else, inclusive only of particular native/indigenous African ethno-cultural groups, but exclusive of others, including the Khoisan. So for that narrowed sense of the name, there's actually a stronger argument to capitalize it than there would be in the North American and British very generalized sense which basically equates to "noticeably of sub-Saharan African descent of any kind". Rather in the middle are terms like "Native American" and Canadian "First Nations",  inclusive of unrelated ethnic groups, multiple language families, and gene pools that are very distinct (even if ultimately of north Asian origin toward the end of the last Ice Age). A third passing point is that capitalization of "Coloured[s]" in an ethic sense seems to go back quite away; a major article (cited at by at least 22 later works) on the subject of them in an anthropological not politico-legal sense, has capital-C throughout and dates to 1950 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/211217]. This one[https://www.jstor.org/stable/273553] from 1967 has been cited even more. I can't presently very well evaluate whether there was a marked shift in or immediately after 1994 toward lowercase (at least in SA publications; I would need to find some way to examine a boatload of them from the 1948–1994 range), but I'm not sure it matters much, since the capitalization (even if it slumped for a while) is on the rise, at least for "sense 3". The immediate evidence is this: If we re-do the above GScholar search but constrained to the last 5 years worth of articles only [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=Coloured+OR+Coloured+%22South+Africa%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2020&as_yhi=2025], then the capitalization rate increases markedly (though I'm not going to do another one-by-one count; that took a while).</p><!--
--><p>My default (I'm rather notorious for it) is to lowercase pretty much anything WP can get away with lowercasing. But there's a logic problem with doing it in this kind of case, specifically because these terms are serving as ethno-cultural or [[WP:RACE|so-called "race"]] {{em|names}} (not descriptions or classifiers), thus are serving the function of proper names, regardless how they originated. (Really, virtually all names ultimately have a traceable linguistic meaning, except when they are invented silliness, like [[Mxyzptlk]], though some real ones are uncertain/debated, [https://Cuindlis.org/ including my own surname], which I've been researching for 30-odd years.) It's ultimately the [[etymological fallacy]] to decide that because such a term a has/had another more prosaic, common-noun meaning that it cannot be a proper name when used as one. (By that "reasoning", the [[Blackfoot Confederacy|Blackfoot Indians]] are really "blackfoot", and even Pacific peoples would have to "pacific". The brainfart there is obviously that these are not literal description, but metaphor; the Blackfoots don't have dark extremities, Polynesians are not unusually placid, and the Coloureds do not display rainbows of hues like bird plumage nor were they coloured in by anyone.) The variable use in SA is pretty clearly indicative that some simply do not want to capitalize "black", "coloured", and "white" because they are also, in other contexts, everyday words, and some are probably resistant to do it simply because of [[Linguistic prescription|prescriptive notions]] they grew up with about the "right" way to write, and a habit of language preservationism/traditionalism. (There are habits I'm not entirely immune to, but they aren't much affecting me on this particular matter because the logic of applying the same capitalization to all ethnic names, as a proper-name class by definition, is much more compelling.)</p><!--
--><p>In closing, the question is whether MoS's rather blanket statement on this (to use capital-C "Coloured" in reference to the South African population) should be changed. I think it's not problematic as it is, really. Nothing has "broken" as a result of it. From a [[WP:P&G]] perspective, we have some rules that interact complicatedly. The lead of [[MOS:CAPS]] has us lowercase, by default, anything that is not "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources" (and "coloured", like "black" and "white", is not). However, further down the guideline, at [[MOS:PN]], we have an instruction to always capitalize a proper name, except for rare exceptions (usually trademarks like iPod and a few artiste names like k.d. lang) that begin lowercase {{em|and}} the majority of sources go along with that lowercase stylization in that case. "Coloured" as an ethnonym, in its modern usage, qualifies as such a proper name by most sensible measure, but doesn't qualify for lowercasing since sources do not uniformly lowercase it. We also have a {{lang|la|de facto}} principle to consider [[WP:ABOUTSELF]]: The subject (even a group one) can be a reliable source for its own name, so the more Coloureds prefer that name and capitalize it (and the number seems to be growing not shrinking), the stronger the pressure on us to do so. Altogether, this suggests that if the rule were to change, it should be to capitalize it as an ethno-cultural name, but lowercase it as an apartheid and earlier politico-legal classification (especially since that included people from disparate actual ethnic groups). Do we {{em|need}} to make that change? [[WP:MOSBLOAT]] suggests "no": If we have gotten along fine for 20+ years without a rule, then we do not need that rule, and if we do not need it, we have an active need to {{em|not}} have it, because MoS is over-complicated and lengthy already. You might or might not have already known this, but I have been one of the principal shepherds of MoS for 18 years or so (which should explain why I've cared to go into this much analysis on a style question). The experience has taught me the heard way that a complex, hair-splitting rule tends to cause more trouble than it is worth. We have this problem, long term, with several matters of constant confusion and dispute, such as when to capitalize a job/office/role title, and when to use which kind of dash and how to space it, among several other perennial thorns in the collective side. Simplicity has its merits, even when it cannot please everyone on every matter. 21:25, 26 February 2025 (UTC)</p><!--
--><p>PS: See also [[WT:Manual of Style#RfC: Gentilic form of Botswana]] as potentially of interest, though not directly related to this. PPS: Thanks for the SA govt. ''Editorial Style Guide''. That one somehow had escaped my collection, and just in the first few pages it has proven useful for some unrelated purposes. (E.g. it is evidence against the oft-bandied-about claim that dotted abbreviations like "e.g." and "Prof." are Americanisms and that everyone else follows the alleged "British practice" of writing "eg" and "Prof" without the punctuation. I already knew that was nonsense, since even major British style guides that are not news-journalism ones do not advise that; but it's additional evidence to cite next time that comes up.)<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:25, 26 February 2025 (UTC)</p>
::Well, I meant what I said about not wanting to fight, but equally I want to respect the thoroughness of your response by giving you more detailed feedback than "okay".
::Your first two paragraphs represent an extremely American perspective. Reality is close to the opposite in SA, the capital C is seen as racist (at least in the circles in which I have spent my life) because it's how all the apartheid regime's language referred to coloured people. For my part, I am going to spend the next few weeks asking around my social circles for other perspectives, to check that I didn't invent this and then start treating it as true at some point.
::Before this conversation, my only awareness of its capitalized use (outside this outdated, racist sense) was in specific, very academic circles where things settled differently, and certainly not in any common or everyday usage.
::I completely accept that this is probably a generational thing and that (as you say) younger people are picking up the American Black, White, etc. thing, but it is pretty clearly not a majority position yet (as you recognize).
::Let me give you that list (with black "standing out") from an SA perspective: black, coloured, Indian/Asian, white. Our conundrum is not the present (or indeed the future) of American English, but of South African English.
::(Or maybe my assumption is wrong here, and SA English is deserving of less respect than, for example, UK English on Wikipedia.)
::"I doubt that lower-casing "Coloured" would go over well here" is perceptive and valid, as in, convincing a bunch of Americans of this cultural difference isn't worth the energy. The unspoken baseline seems to be "the US has cultural hegemony here on Wikipedia, you must accept our language norms", which I may not enjoy but is obviously a practical operating mode.
::Paragraph three: I really appreciate the earnest and thorough source review. It exposed me to a lot more of the capitalization than I was aware of. You've effectively shifted my view from "lowercase c is correct" to "either is fine".
::Four (the angles you identify): 1) and 2) are functionally the same thing, because the white immigrants were the ones inventing the categories. I think it is more accurate to think of 2) as those of 1) who were imbued with bureaucratic authority. You are quite far off on 2), the apartheid bureaucrats were really fond of capitalizing it as Coloured and did so in all of their screeds and laws and so on (and this is why it is offensive today, to my sensibilities). I disagree on 3) (given my life spent immersed in SA media) but recognize that the onus is on me to make that case and I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so.
::Five is about what I expected. It is really wild for me to see you quote a rule that says that "The English Wikipedia prefers no national variety over others." and then defend leaving the rule "Coloured [...] is capitalized" as written, after looking at all the material you have in researching this. Maybe ENGVAR should say "Wikipedia does not prefer US English over UK English". That said, I do think your point about SA not being sufficiently consistent on the capitalization is valid (but it is evidence for an either/or, not a must-be-capitalized rule).
::The source review towards the end of five, and in six: again, I respect the effort, and honestly can't really comment. Maybe the SA formal-literary and academic worlds are as you say (the n is a little on the low side, but I respect the limits of comprehensiveness for such a niche issue). My language exposure has been more everyday: news media, written text conversations, pulpy fiction books, business documents, and so on.
::The single example of a racist using a lower-case c is not convincing.
::South Africa is really inconsistent on -ise vs. -ize. Most style guides will say -ise, but my experience of used language leans more -ize, so I standardized my use to that. I am a devout descriptivist.
::Not much to comment on in seven. Again, I respect the effort put in.
::Eight: I happen to share that aesthetic preference (lowercasing where possible). The rest is preaching to the converted; I am also very sensitive to correct use of ethonyms and their social implications. Indeed it is the reason I brought this up to you (so I wouldn't have to type Coloured if I wanted to contribute to an article about SA).
::Ascribing the inclination to lowercase ethonyms to them being everyday words and/or absorbed prescriptivism is deeply offensive. This is simply how we use these ethonyms in South Africa. Try to understand that your perspective on capitalizing ethonyms is American.
::Nine: I tend to agree with you that simplicity and fewer words should generally be the compass for something like articulating a MOS. But I think it is disingenuous to frame the potential change as you have; in the relevant sentence
::{{blockquote |text=The term Coloured in reference to a specific ethnic group of Southern Africa is not a slur, and is capitalized; person/people of colo[u]r is not offensive, and not capitalized. |sign= }}
::...I would simply change "and is capitalized" to "and may be capitalized", to match reality (as you found in your source review, there is a lot of lowercase c out there). A couple more sources for you: [https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Documents/2024/SU_Language_Style_Guide_%28Oct%202023%29.pdf the Stellenbosch University English style guide], [https://www.uj.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/english-style-guide-july-2015.pdf the University of Johannesburg English style guide].
::I think your ABOUTSELF point is your strongest, but I wouldn't claim to be able to aggregate the sentiment of such a broad group of people with, frankly, inadequate representation in the kinds of media we have easy online access to for sourcing.
::Finally, I want to give you some human perspective on what it feels like to engage in conversations like this. I very strongly respect everything you've done in terms of going to sources and trying to look at the state of reality, and the huge amount of time you must have committed in putting that reply together, but some of your perspectives (looking at very US-specific elements of your own experience of reality and applying them to everyone else, i.e. US defaultism) are incredibly depressing to try to, um, push back against. 
::I wrote a long analogy here to try to make it easier for you to empathize, but I decided that it didn't really work so I deleted it. I think that perhaps more generally, it is not possible to share the experience of being culturally erased with someone who has not experienced it themselves. I hope you never do (experience it).
::As a specific MOS interpretation question, since [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Race it says]
::{{blockquote |text=Ethno-racial "color labels" may be given capitalized (Black and White) or lower-case (black and white). The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort [...] |sign= }}
::...does this mean that we must also capitalise black and white when they appear next to "Coloured", as they often will in SA-adjacent articles? "Will be more appropriate" is awkward language and I'm not sure how much (if any) wiggle room it offers.
::Even if I disagree with your conclusion, I do appreciate that you are well-intentioned and doing your best with the resources available to you, and acting in good faith, which is all anyone can do. Thanks for treating the question seriously and for the time you've committed to it. [[User:Emberfiend|Emberfiend]] ([[User talk:Emberfiend|talk]]) 13:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
::: I also appreciate your detail and depth (and tone). :-) At this point, I wouldn't call such matters literally an Americanism, though there is a good chance this one is an "un-South-Africanism" to some extent. That is, I see a trend (which seems to have started in the US) to capitalize terms like "Black" and "White" in an ethno-cultural sense (at least with regard to modern populations) and it is growing outside of the US. So, I think I come back to the "WP is written for English-users globally not for South African users of the language in particular" angle, at least as a default place from which to start. Since the usage patterns in SA don't form an overwhelmingly consistent pattern, there doesn't really seem to be a [[MOS:ENGVAR]] argument. But there could be something of a population [[WP:ABOUTSELF]] one to consider.<!--
--><p>The possibility that capital-C ''Coloured'' has latterly come to be taken as offensive by persons to whom it might pertain (or to a large subset of them) is worth further investigation. I would not want to be in the position of insisting on something for consistency's sake if it was actually offensive to the subjects. (E.g., the fact that "Afro-Brazilian", "Afro-Cuban" and the like remain common usage, both in academic RS and in vernacular usage, doesn't mean that "Afro-American" should be imposed, when the persons to whom it refers have largely denigrated the term since the 1980s.)</p><!--
--><p>I did think to use GScholar's ability to constrain results to a particular period, and limited it to the 1948–1994 apartheid span [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Coloured+OR+Coloureds+%22South+Africa%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=1948&as_yhi=1994]. The results do show a bit more capitalization than in an unconstrained search with all results included. But it's not actually a very strong difference, especially if you look through 5 or so pages of results (and as with the original searching, discard false positives along with capitalization that only appears in titles but not body text; certain political terms-of-art from that era, like "the Coloured Vote" in a narrow sense, tend to always be capitalized, and I ruled them out as general evidence of capitalization in my original review above). This is kind of a difficult matter to assess more closely, in the absence of much RS material that's specifically focused on this term and its usage.</p><!--
--><p>On the numbered (1, 2, 3) bits, I'm of course aware of the 1→2 relationship. But I was not trying to imply anything about apartheid-era bureaucratese; rather, I meant that independent RS rarely capitalize "coloured" as a legal/regulatory label, especially in modern publications. The capitalization pattern in recent sources seems to lean towards the usage as an ethno-cultural designation, especially for present-day groups.</p><!--
--><p>Generational: I would think so, too. I was initially strongly resistant to "Black", "White", etc. (and to "Indigenous", "Aboriginal", "Native", etc., outside of a handful of constructions universally capitalized like "Native Americans" and "Aboriginal Australians"). Over time, I recognized that real-world usage was changing whether I liked it or not, and have re-approached with a different logic. Namely: is the term serving the function of a proper name, or simply descriptive? If the latter, as in "indigenous populations of the Eurasian steppe regions in the Bronze Age", or "native to the {{lang|ga|Gaeltacht}} areas of Ireland", then lowercase it. But "Black", "White", and "Coloured" as ethnic terms are not descriptions, but metaphoric/evocative names. (No one, even with OCA-2 albinism, is actually "white", but pale pinkish at most, and even the most melanin-heavy individuals on earth are dark brown not literally "black"). But all that logic would also have to give way to "This term is broadly taken as offensive by those to whom it refers" facts, if established.</p><!--
--><p>"given my life spent immersed in SA media": I respect that (and it's part of why I've taken all this so seriously; if you were from Indiana or Hong Kong, I would have been far more skeptical that you had any basis for these concerns). I should be clear that I'm not trying to approach this from an "America knows best" angle (or an "SMcCandlish knows best" one). Just analyzing the available material I can find so far, and applying various logical arguments in the materials' interpretation. I've tried to include more than one such argument, even if one is more appealing to me. I should also mention that my edu. background is in cultural anthropology and linguistics, which makes me very much a relativist and descriptivist versus a prescriptivist about such matters (in simple terms, it results in conclusions like "the usage pattern looks like X, except in this area where it leans toward Y", versus "X is right, except in this dialect, where only Y is correct"). This approach can self-conflictingly produce general results that are more culturally sensitive than average but which turn out culturally less sensitive in a particular instance, especially if an advocacy position underlies perception in the latter case.</p><!--
--><p>Re, "The capitalized form will be more appropriate in the company of other upper-case terms of this sort": That would, yes, suggest "the Black, Coloured, Indian, and White population groups in the Cape Town Area", versus "black, Coloured, Indian, and white" or "black, coloured, Indian, and white". But if it becomes clear that capitalizing all three of those labels (skipping "Indian", which is obviously a proper name no matter what) demonstrably have an offensiveness level to a significant number of South Africans, then it might be something to make an exception for in an MoS footnote. Regardless, "black, Coloured, Indian, and white" would surely be an PoV-undesirable result.</p><!--
--><p>[A lengthy wiki-historical aside: This sort of disputation has most come up since the mid-2010s, again originating in American English usage but spreading much further since. It started up because an advocacy camp (which even some news publishers have joined, though the majority have not), including some editors here, wants to capitalize "Black" but lowercase "white", just to make a socio-political point, with results like "the Black, East Asian, Hispanic, Indic, Native American, Pacific, Semitic, and white demographics of New York", and of course this has not gone over well. The last big discussion of this (that I recall) is how we ended up with the current guideline to use either "Black and White" or "black and white" consistently within the same piece, and to use the capitalization for consistency if other such terms like "Asian" or whatever are in the same material. This seems to be a pretty stable compromise, so far. The two goofy arguments that are presented against "White" in particular are: A) That it's not really an ethnic categorization or discrete population; and B) that we don't want to lend ammo to white (or White) supremacists. Argument A is silly for a number of reasons, most obviously that Europeans, or western Eurasians since "White" often includes groups from west-central Asia, are closer inter-related to each other genetically and usually culturally than even some directly neighboring autochthonous ethnic groups in Africa, and also far less diverse than "Asian" (even in a sense exclusive of west-Asian "White" people) as a label, so if "African" and "Asian" are broad ethno-cultural or "racial" names, then necessarily so is "White"; and it could not be possible for "White people" (or "Caucasians" or "people of European descent") to have a problematic hegemony on assets and influence in the West and in areas of its historical colonialism if no such group could even be identified and named. Argument B is even more silly; if one were critical of "fundamentalist Islamist terrorist activity", or "pro-Franco political violence in dictatorial Spain", or for that matter "the Nazi party in mid-20th-century Germany", one would not write these things as "islamist", "pro-franco", or "nazi" simply to denigrate them, no matter how valid the criticisms might be. People on Wikipedia have to get away from the idea of [[MOS:SIGCAPS|abusing capitalization (or stand-out lowercasing) as a "signifier"]] (and mostly have, because of the guideline linked there, though we have a few holdouts who frequently are tendentious at [[WP:RM]] discussions).]</p><!--
--><p>Not sure where to go from here. It seems reasonable to suppose that some linguistics, political science, sociology and other journals and books will have included articles/chapters on use of the term "[c|C]oloured" in South Africa and its perceptions over time, probably also inclusive of some capitalization analysis; and that if significant numbers of people in SA care about this typography that advocacy pieces and more journalism-level material on the question should exist somewhere. Regardless what such material if/when found and given [[WP:DUE]] analsysis might tell us, 'simply change "and is capitalized" to "and may be capitalized{{"'}} would not work, because it sets up a choice with no reasons provided, which means people would simply fight over it emotively per their personal PoV without anything to shortcircuit that squabbling (something else we've learned over time about MoS and how it gets written). We'd need a rationale given, even if just in a footnote, that could be relied upon to decide and to end or forestall "style-war" disputation.</p><!--
--><p>In closing, I should mention that while I'm an American citizen, I learned to read and write in England and spent formative years there, and have also lived in Canada. I'm not prescribing an American viewpoint (though I'm likely to have been influenced by one, since I've lived in Yankeelandia longer than elsewhere). Your concern that WP writing primarily revolves around US vs. UK English style choices is valid; things lean this direction simply because of the editorial and reader demographics. My engagement in this in such depth is out of concern that we really {{em|could}} be making a mistake here. (Plus I'm also full of coffee, can type very fast, and have near-endless patience for sociolinguistics.) Nevertheless, my "capitalize, as proper names, terms that are used as names for and by ethno-cultural groups" logic is self-contained and based on [[MOS:PN]]; if in this case it happens to agree with more American publishers' output, that's entirely incidental (correlation not causation). I reality, I read more British than American non-fiction, due to my research interests.<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:50, 28 February 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::Thanks for the response. I digested it all but I'm out of bandwidth for more meaningful replies. I think I'll just avoid SA articles so I don't have to deal with this rule. Again, I appreciate your time, I learned a lot. [[User:Emberfiend|Emberfiend]] ([[User talk:Emberfiend|talk]]) 11:11, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
:::::Well, buried in the above is increased concern on my part that you might actually be right. It's just a hard matter to prove documentarily without more published material directly addressing modern usage/spelling of the term. It's now something much more on my radar, though I'm not certain where the best places are to look for such material (perhaps JSTOR and EBSCOHost searches via a [[WP:The Wikipedia Library]] account (i.e., to get full access to article texts) is the route. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

== March music ==
{{User QAIbox
| image = Coltsfoot, Tegernsee.jpg
| image_upright = 1.13
| bold = [[User:Gerda Arendt/Top|story]] · [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music|music]] · [[User:Gerda Arendt/Places and songs 2025#14 Mar|places]]
}}
New month: today is the birthday of [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]] and [[Ricardo Kanji]], see my stories of [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#28 Feb|today and yesterday]], with [[Berceuse (Chopin)|dream music]] by the first and [[Bach]] played by the other. -- [[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 11:14, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Today: [[Carmen]] turns 150, as the main page and [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#3 Mar|my story]] tell you. I chose a 1962 concert of the Habanera, - enjoy! --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 17:34, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

On [[Maurice Ravel|Ravel]]'s [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#7 March 2025, Ravel’s 150th anniversary|birthday]], we also think of a conductor and five more composers ;) --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 19:58, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
:Maybe you do. I can't keep track of my own relatives' birthdays! Heh. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:18, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
:: I do, thanks to WP's lists of events ;) - Today I could have written five stories [[Wikipedia:Main Page history/2025 March 16b|off the main page]], and chose [[Sofia Gubaidulina]]. I find the TFA also interesting, and two DYK, and a birthday OTD. How about you? --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 22:28, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
:::I don't think I've touched front-page stuff in a decade. Too much wiki-politicking. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:::: I try to get culture there, and sometimes it works. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 22:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
:::: Like [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#21 Mar|today]]: an opera, 100 years old OTD, on Bach's birthday. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 15:19, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
:::: [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#25 Mar|Today]], 300 years of [[Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1]]! [[St. Martin, Idstein#Pachelbel|We sang]] works for (mostly) double choir by [[Johann Pachelbel|Pachelbel]], [[Johann Christoph Bach]], [[Johann Kuhnau|Kuhnau]]/[[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]], [[Charles Gounod|Gounod]] and [[Josef Rheinberger|Rheinberger]]! --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 11:59, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

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== (Probably) quick title case/sentence case question for you ==

Hello again, SMcCandlish ... I've recently joined the Guild of Copy Editors and have been contributing a few edits to articles in the current month's backlog reduction drive. The author of my last article, "Deer Lady," contacted me to discuss some of the editing, and mentioned that he'd changed any titles of publications, websites, etc., that were in sentence case to title case.

I think I've read somewhere that we're supposed to leave titles exactly as they appeared in their original format. For the author's sake, I hope I'm wrong, as he has a lot of references and if he's wrong, it would require a lot of work on his part in turn to get them back to the way they were. The sooner we know the answer, the better, so the GOCE folks can check off this article as completely done.

Who's right? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 09:55, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

:{{tps}} For clarity, I'm the author. The issue of some reference titles using sentence case, and others using title case, first came up to me several years ago at an FAC of mine. They generally request uniform citation titles, in either format, and I've also seen similar requests at FLC. Several months ago I came across a [[User:ZKang123/TitleCaseConverter|user script]] that helps out with this, so I've been preemptively taking care of it on articles that I write or make major contributions to as part of general cleanup, and to avoid issues if I decide to take it to FAC/FLC down the road. I believe the relevant guidelines are [[MOS:CONFORM]] and [[MOS:CT]]. {{smiley}} [[User:TheDoctorWho|<span style="color:#0000ff;">'''The'''</span><span style="color:#0000ff">'''Doctor'''</span><span style="color:#0000ff;">'''Who'''</span>]] [[User talk:TheDoctorWho|(talk)]] 18:03, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
::There's been debate about this before. The problems are that a) citation styles differ, b) any attested citation style is permissible here [at least in theory – a very unhelpful one would be likely to be replaced], c) but only one can be used in a single article, and d) for all intents and purposes [[WP:CS1]] is the default (it's used in about 95% of our material), yet e) it doesn't specify a preference in this regard.<!--
--><p>It's been my observation, both professionally and as a Wikipedian for so very long, that the most prevalent convention is that 1) the title of the major work (the thing in italics) always goes in title case; and 2) that {{em|often}} not always the title of the minor work (the part in quotation marks) goes in sentence case (but starting again with sentence case for a subtitle, whether after ":", after "–", or inside parentheses AKA round brackets), most especially if it is an article in a periodical publication (including a website). This combined style dominates (though not super-overwhelmingly) in academic journals, in chapter titling of academic books, in news publishing, and in genuinely reliable-source online publications (i.e., in the vast majority of WP's source material). So, {{strong|doing "Article name in sentence case: With subtitle" and ''Periodical or Book Name in Title Case'' is generally a reasonable default}}, especially if your goal is to normalize conflicting styles within the same article. The complications are that this pattern does not hold for minor works that have something of a stand-alone nature, which generally also receive title case (e.g. songs on an album or from a musical production; short stories gathered into an anthology; sometimes previously published papers gathered into an edited volume; episodes of a TV series; named issues or subseries of a comic book/graphic novel series; named multi-episode arcs of a TV series; and several other such cases; often also in chapters or sections of a fiction book). So, don't try to impose an artificial uniformity that doesn't match real-world usage.</p><!--
--><p>All that said, one should have absolutely no concern at all with regard to how it was formatted originally (other than for special uses of italics or lowercase, e.g. biological binominals are always properly given in the form ''Notophthalmus viridescens'' (italicized, but not above the genus level; genus and higher capitalized; species and lower not capitalized), regardless of title-case versus sentence case generalities; and trademarks conventionally (i.e. by almost all [[WP:INDY|independent]] publishers) given with leading lowercase, like ''iPhone'', are left that way). If I write a paper and submit it to one journal, it may be published as "The unbearable being of lightness", while the next journal over may run it as "The Unbearable Being of Lightness", and the next one might render it in all-caps. This is meaningless and WP simply has no reason to care. When you look for such a source via JSTOR, Google Scholar, EBSCOHost, Scholar.Archive.org, etc., how it is listed in search results often does not reflect how it was printed in the original publication – it got changed by the system doing the indexing (same goes for news searches). Plus, in title case, there are additional messes, like some academic publishers lowercase ALL prepositions, even long ones such as ''alongside'' and ''throughout'', while others follow the same five-letter rule that we do ([[MOS:5LETTER]], part of [[MOS:CT]], part in turn of [[MOS:TITLES]]), and some use the four-letter rule most favored in news journalism. But journalism isn't consistent either, and sometimes is five-letter, or sometimes three-letter, or sometimes is an in-house idiosyncrasy, like "four-letter except these exceptions"). Worse yet, as more and more publications move to online-first, and their publishing is mediated through sometimes not-very-sophisticated filtering mechanisms, you frequently run into the twin nonsense of uppercasing every single word (even "a", "an", "the", and other ones conventionally, for 200+ years now, never capitalized in title case), or lowercasing every single word that is shorter than {{var|X}} number of characters (thus "if", "no", etc. being lowercased in "broken" title case). But that's not all! There are (primarily academic) publishers who sentence case ALL titles, including of books and journals. There's even at least one (fortunately rare) academic citation style that forces the title of the major work into SCREAMING ALL-CAPS (and another one that contrarily does that crap to author names); I've also seen a super-dumb one that puts the article or other minor-work name in italics and uses no markup (italics or quotes) for the major work title (journal, book); and another that italicizes author names and no titles. Thankfully, none of those abominations has caught on here. For all I know, they might all be dead practices by now; it's stuff I encountered as an undergrad in the 1987–91 range. That brings up yet another wrinkle: Just because some journal or publisher of journals preferred some style at the time of the publication of the article doesn't mean they still do today, making the choice meaningless yet again.</p><!--
--><p>WP and, more importantly, our readers have no use for any of that kind of chaos, and should always normalize titles ([[MOS:CONFORM]]) to our five-letter rule, when title case is involved, to present a consistent approach to citations that is intuitive to read and easy to maintain.</p><!--
--><p>PS: The edge case of "artistic capitalization" (which mostly comes up in song titles and album names) should be approached from a [[MOS:TM]] perspective: Do virtually all {{em|independent}} sources, including especially any outside the sphere of entertainment journalism (which is not really independent of the media companies, but entirely dependent on their advertising dollars) go along with the unusual capitalization (or unusual lowercasing, or other unusual stylization)? Or do they mostly ignore it? Or it is a really mixed bag? If either of the latter two cases, then write it in normal English. Another thing to check in such a regard is to look at all releases of the item in question, and all promotional material from the artist/author and from the label or other publisher (and all of them, if more than one). If they themselves do not consistently use the unusual stylization, this is evidence that the style was a choice of the cover designer not of the artist or studio, and is not meaningful, so WP should not mimic it. Another telltale sign of such a case is when every title on the album (or whatever) is given in a weird format; this is a designer being cutesy, not the band (or whatever) signifying something important. There are cases where it {{em|is}} important, but it is sources not personal editorial belief or preference (or "artist deference"!) that make this the case. David Bowie's [["Heroes" (David Bowie song)|{{"'}}Heroes{{'"}}]] song and [["Heroes" (album)|''"Heroes"'']] album form the most classic case in point; Bowie used a [[Scare quotes|scare-quoted]] "Heroes" to imply skepticism/irony, and this has been sufficiently discussed in reliable sources to prove it. Another example is ''[[AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted]]'' by Ice Cube; this is a reference to the KKK ([[Ku Klux Klan]]), and should not be rendered ''Amerikkka'' as if it represents a stutter, much less "corrected" to ''America''. But sometimes stylizations that various fanbois are up in arms about are not appropriate to adopt here and get rejected by consensus after examination of usage in independent sources. This includes a large number of ALLCAPS titles that are not actually acronyms, and also includes a fad in modern Asian publishing of injecting extraneous punctuation into names when transliterated into Latin characters. The classic case in point is [[Gangsta (manga)|''Gangsta'' (manga)]], styled on its English-version cover as ''GANGSTA.'' – with all-caps and dot. But there are several others in the same vein, including some J-pop and K-pop band names and album/song titles, as well as other manga/anime cases. (I have declined to store them in my wetware RAM.)<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 23:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)</p>
:::😱 Thanks for all the time and effort you put into ''that'' reply SMcC! At times like this, I'm tempted to think you might not really be a live person but a machine into which we drop requests, like coins, and out slide full-fledged graduate-level dispensations of Wiki wisdom!
:::Looking back and trying to remember what I read by way of WP guidance on titles of references, I wonder if whatever it was might have pertained ''only'' to titles in foreign languages. I'm sure it said to leave those alone because English tends to use title case but many other languages, especially European ones, sentence case.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 03:14, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::::Happy to help. On foreign titles, the default approach is "Capitalization in non–English-language titles varies, even over time within the same language. Retain the style of the original for modern works. For historical works, follow the dominant usage in modern, English-language, reliable sources." But this doesn't somehow supersede all other concerns. E.g., we have a broader principle, applicable to everything (other than acronyms properly given in "XYZ" format) to normalize all-caps to regular writing. So, if someone copy-pasted in citation information that had a title like {{lang|es|MI GATO ES EL DIABLO}} we should put that in the default style for Spanish, {{lang|es|Mi gato es el diablo}}, and a chapter mis-rendered as "{{lang|es|italic=unset|LLEGÓ DE LAS ESTRELLAS}}" would be normalized to "{{lang|es|italic=unset|Llegó de las estrellas}}". This pattern holds for titles of books, plays, movies and similar works, and subworks like articles, chapters, scenes, episodes, etc. The exception is that it is becoming conventional to title-case the titles of newspapers and magazines, thus {{lang|es|El Diario de Nuevo Laredo}}. If it were French, then we'd use the French conventions: {{lang|fr|MON CHAT EST LE DIABLE}} would become {{lang|fr|Mon chat est le diable}}, while {{lang|fr|LE CHAT EST LE DIABLE}} would become {{lang|fr|Le Chat est le diable}} (because French capitalizes the "important" word that follows {{lang|fr|le/la/l'}} at the start of a title or subtitle), and the chapter of "{{lang|fr|italic=unset|IL EST VENU DES ÉTOILES}}" would become "{{lang|fr|italic=unset|Il est venu des étoiles}}". This pattern holds for all works, including newspapers, e.g. {{lang|fr|L'Action française}}. German is more complicated, because it capitalizes all nouns. All these languages also capitalize proper names in titles, but most languages do not have English's habit of capitalizing adjectives derived from proper nouns (''Spanish'' becomes {{lang|es|español}}; ''French'' becomes {{lang|fr|française}}). For languages that do not have capitalization, like East Asian scripts, we'd normalize a transliteration or translation to the style used for the English-language titles, thus newspaper {{lang|ja|秋田魁新報}} becomes {{lang|ja-Latn|Akita Sakigake Shimpō}} (transliteration), and {{lang|ja|東京スポーツ}} becomes ''Tokyo Sports'' (translation), and most often article titles in sentence case unless our article is consistently giving them in title case (which is decreasingly usual): "{{lang|ja|堂島米市場 — 世界における先物取引所の先駆け}}" &gt; "Dojima rice market: The world's first futures exchange". PS: In citation templates, the way to handle that sort of thing is: <code><nowiki>{{cite web |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by line.--> |title=堂島米市場 — 世界における先物取引所の先駆け |language=ja |trans-title=Dojima rice market: The world's first futures exchange |work=JPX: 日本取引所グループ |trans-work=JPX: Japan Exchange Group |publisher=[[Osaka Exchange]] |date=2020 |url= https://www.jpx.co.jp/dojima/ja/index.html |access-date=15 March 2025 |url-status=live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20240515051058/https://www.jpx.co.jp/dojima/ja/index.html |archive-date=15 May 2024}}</nowiki></code>. Anyway, a way to look at the (rather poor) "Retain the style of the original for modern works" instruction is really that it means "Use the style you found, unless it is really obviously screwed up (like ALL-CAPS) or you really know what you are doing." It's a discouragement of people who don't know what they are doing trying to "fix" things in ways that may not actually be helpful, like rendering a French book title as {{lang|fr|Les Liaisons Dangereuses}} (the correct form is {{lang|fr|[[Les Liaisons dangereuses]]}}), or a German article title as "{{lang|de|italic=unset|Die statuen des antiken Mesopotamiens}}" (with the noun {{lang|de|Statuen}} incorrectly lowercased). The [[WP:IAR]] principle applies; if you actually {{em|do}} know what you are doing, then correcting mis-formatted foreign titles would objectively be an improvement to the encyclopedia, so the erstwhile "rule" to use the title as-found should be ignored. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: History and geography request for comment ==
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== Citations in block quotes ==

According to [https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Chicago%20Style.pdf Chicago], [https://guides.library.ubc.ca/c.php?g=725315&p=5195225 MLA] and [https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations APA] style guides, they do go in the block. Do we have contrary guidance? [[User:Srnec|Srnec]] ([[User talk:Srnec|talk]]) 23:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:Yes (see [[MOS:BQ]]), and we don't care what some off-site style guides prefer; we have our own for good reasons :-). ''CMoS'', etc ., are written with typesetting on paper in mind, but [[WP:NOT#PAPER]]. The content inside the {{tag|blockquote}} element is defined by W3C and WHATWG as quoted content only, so putting citations inside that element is breaking the HTML specs, which is something we avoid doing like the plague. (This is also why {{tlx|block indent}} exists; don't abuse {{tlx|blockquote}} or its wrapped {{tag|blockquote|o}} to get visual indentation of non-quotations.) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:PS: The offsite style guides you like are also aimed at academic material in which inline-readable citations, with author and date and sometimes other details ("Harvard" or parenthetical referencing), are the norm. But that style has actually been rejected by the WP community (see [[WP:PARENTHETICAL]]). So, while it would be entirely sensible in some journal article to tack something like <code>[Johnson (1922), p. 37]</code> at the end of a block quotation, following the style of the journal publisher, that approach is no longer used here. The habit of doing this is something some academic-leaning editors have tried to "port over" to our <code><sup>[1]</sup></code> super-compressed citation approach, but that is mixing apples and oranges; the rationale for putting a citation at that spot in parenthetic style on paper (or in TeX) isn't applicable to a completely different citation approach and a markup language that forbids it. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

== A goat for you! ==

[[File:Boer Goat (8742860752).jpg|left|150px]]
Since I missed Thanksgiving through New Years holidays, this is just a reminder you are one of the people I consider to be the [[wikt:GOAT|GOAT!]]

<span style="text-shadow:3px 3px 3px lightblue">[[User:Huggums537|'''Huggums''']]<sup>'''537'''<sub>[[User:Huggums537/Poll|voted!]]</sub> ([[User:Huggums537/Guestbook|sign🖋️]]|[[User talk:Huggums537|📞talk]])</sup></span> 12:21, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
<br style="clear: both;"/>
:Wow, thank you very much! <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:02, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

== [[:Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film]] has an [[WP:RFC|RfC]]==
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<!--<div class="floatleft" style="margin-bottom:0">[[File:Ambox warning orange.svg|48px|alt=|link=]]</div>-->'''[[:Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film]]''' has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the '''[[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#RfC: Removal of links to "animated" on animated film articles|discussion page]]'''.<!-- Template:Rfc notice--> Thank you. —'''''[[User:MatthewHoobin|<span style="color:#0640e0; text-shadow:#66ff66 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;">Matthew</span>]]'''''&nbsp;&nbsp;/ <span style="font-size:80%">([[User_talk:MatthewHoobin|talk]])</span> 22:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: History and geography request for comment ==
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== Books & Bytes – Issue 67 ==

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<div style="font-size: 1.5em; margin: 0 100px;">
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<span style="font-size: 2em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif">'''The Wikipedia Library''': ''Books & Bytes''</span><br />
Issue 67, January – February 2025
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<div style="margin-top: 1.5em; border: 3px solid #ae8c55; border-radius: .5em; padding: 1em 1.5em; font-size: 1.2em;">
* East View Press and The Africa Report join the library
* Spotlight: Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention and WikiCredCon
* Tech tip: Suggest page
<big>'''[[:m:The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/January-February_2025|Read the full newsletter]]'''</big>
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<small>Sent by [[m:User:MediaWiki message delivery|MediaWiki message delivery]] on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --18:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)</small>
<!-- Message sent by User:Samwalton9 (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Wikipedia_Library/Newsletter/Recipients&oldid=28396007 -->

== Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment ==
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<!--[[File:Internet-group-chat.svg|48px|left|alt=|link=]]-->Your feedback is requested &#32;at [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Newspapers/Notability#rfc_21269D6|'''Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Newspapers/Notability'''&#32; on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment]]. Thank you for helping out!<br/><small>You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of [[WP:FRS|Feedback Request Service]] subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by [[WP:FRS|removing your name]].</small> <!-- Template:FRS notification --><div class="paragraphbreak" style="margin-top:0.5em"></div> Message delivered to you with love by [[User:Yapperbot|Yapperbot]] :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact [[User talk:Naypta|my bot operator]]. &#124; Sent at  01:31, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

== Contentious topic ==
{{Disregard|Someone involved in inbobox-related disputes since they were an ArbCom subject is already well aware of the CTOP applying to that subject, and is not to be templated in this manner.}}
<!--[[File:Commons-emblem-notice.svg|link=|25px|alt=Information icon]]-->You have recently made edits related to discussions about [[MOS:IBX|infoboxes]], and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes. This is a standard message to inform you that discussions about [[MOS:IBX|infoboxes]], and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes is a designated contentious topic. This message <em>does <strong>not</strong> imply that there are any issues with your editing</em>. For more information about the contentious topics system, please see [[Wikipedia:Contentious topics]].&nbsp;The request for comment at [[Talk:China]] involving the info box. <!-- Derived from Template:Contentious topics/alert --> [[Special:Contributions/128.193.8.125|128.193.8.125]] ([[User talk:128.193.8.125|talk]]) 20:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
:[[WP:DTTR]]. As an anon, you are not in a position to "police" registered editors' topic participation, and this template is not appropriate (as its documentation clearly says) for talk pages of people long already involved in a particular CTOPIC and thus already well aware of the CTOPIC designation of that subject. But of course you have to look into the discussion to know who that is, and you clearly didn't do that here. You should leave CTOPIC notices to admins and other regular editors. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 18:14, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment ==
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== Request For Comment - Infobox Weather Damage Estimates ==
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There is a new ongoing [[WP:RFC|request for comment]] discussion, with the goal to solve the various disputes on weather-related articles (such as [[tornado]]es or [[hurricane]]es) on how to best utilize damage estimates in the infobox. Your comments are '''highly-requested''', as the result of this discussion will affect all weather-related articles. This notice is being sent to all editors who have recently edited weather event articles.

You can view and participate in the discussion here: [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather#RFC - Weather Infobox Damages]]. '''The [[User:WeatherWriter|Weather Event Writer]]''' ([[User talk:WeatherWriter|Talk Page)]] 17:23, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment ==
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== Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment ==
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== WT:NCCAPS ==

Hi, it is not appropriate to make comments about editor conduct at a page such as WT:NCCAPS particularly in a designated CTOP.  [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(capitalization)&diff=prev&oldid=1282690298 This] edit (particularly from {{tq|Randy_Kryn's now decade+ failure, indeed {{em|[[WP:NOTGETTINGIT|abject refusal]]}} ...}} digresses from commenting on the issue and could reasonably be seen as a personal attack. I acknowledge that the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(capitalization)&diff=prev&oldid=1282676271 proceeding comment] was inflammatory but two wrongs don't make a right. I would suggest that you redact that part of your comment and subsequent comments that defend it. I have posted a similar message in respect to the proceeding comment [[User:Cinderella157|Cinderella157]] ([[User talk:Cinderella157|talk]]) 05:00, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
:{{ping|Cinderella157|Randy_Kryn}} I concede/agree that editor behavior/conduct matters aren't generally helpful in such discussions. If RK is willing to redact, then I am as well, though I'm not sure how productive that is after such a time span. Especially if anyone else has responded to that sub-thread. It might be most sensible to use {{tlx|collapse}} (or {{tlx|collapse top}} and {{tlx|collapse bottom}}) around that block of material, including any third-party chiming in about the tone. If we feel the need, we can re-make our on-topic points in a non-personalized manner in new posts. Another option is to just let it lie, but then RK and I agree to not continue such inter-editor conflict and stick to the substance of the matter. Any of these are fine by me. What wouldn't be fine is me deleting/striking/collapsing my (or much of my) material while RK's stands as-is, since that would give the false impression that his views on the question (and about other editors) have gone unchallenged. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 05:33, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
::Thanks SMcCandlish, but we were both being honest about our feelings on the issues and I don't feel insulted even though I may mention that insults have been given. My comment contains my thoughts about the continuing arguments over percentages for uppercasing/lowercasing, the subject of the discussion, as does yours. If Cinderella157 feels like policing the Wiki then that's their right, doesn't mean we have to agree with them or with ourselves. [[User:Randy Kryn|Randy Kryn]] ([[User talk:Randy Kryn|talk]]) 09:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
:::Fair enough, and kinda the same boat. Disagreement and complaint don't have to be "insulting". It's not like you said my mama was stupid or I said you look ugly. Heh.  Cinderella157's correct that it's not the right venue for the personalized complaint part from either of us. And [[WP:REFACTOR]] would let anyone collapse-box a thread chunk they thought was a distraction for everyone else. Honestly, there are bigger fish to fry right now, without me having spell that out. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:29, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
::::Bigger fish could include a smoked trout for {{u|Cinderella157}} (who may notice the 'smoked' reference). [[User:Randy Kryn|Randy Kryn]] ([[User talk:Randy Kryn|talk]]) 09:39, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::{{U|Randy Kryn}} when you comment on percentages, you are addressing the debate. When you start making comments like: {{tq|They shouldn't be editing casing discussions in my opinion}}, you digress into commenting on editors and WT:NCCAPS is not the appropriate place for that. It is comments like that which can turn a reasonable discussion into a battle ground with retaliatory comments (Stanton's). The discussion occurred with a CTOP area. The area has been designated a CTOP because it is subject to greater than usual disruption. As a CTOP a higher standard of editor conduct is expected - not a lesser standard. I am not the only one to note the exchange, even if I am the one that has taken some affirmative action. Stanton's initial response (above) acknowledged that there was an issue and has mutually agreed to refrain from similar conduct in the future. A similar acknowledgement and undertaking would resolve the matter but trivialising it is not helpful. Given this (at WT:NCCAPS) is likely the start of a protracted discussion, I would hate for this opening salvo to set the tone. If it does, I could foresee several editors arriving at ANI or WP:ARBREQ. [[User:Cinderella157|Cinderella157]] ([[User talk:Cinderella157|talk]]) 10:55, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
::::::Yes teacher. You have a good point and I will leave a pumpkin on your desk. But rather than go to the principal's office I'd rather go to WP:BARBEQUE. [[User:Randy Kryn|Randy Kryn]] ([[User talk:Randy Kryn|talk]]) 11:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
::::::All good points, C. For my part, I will plead over-stress due to my country tearing itself apart and much of the West with it. Everything everywhere has felt like a disaster and an impending war.  I can't even get on somewhere like LinkedIn without almost everything being somewhere between a disaster and a declaration of battle lines. If I go out with friends, every single conversation turns within minutes to whether half the people we know will be deported, in a concentration camp, or dead within the year. I'm fairly good at compartmentalizing when I'm on this site, but I'm not a robot, and the mood of alarm and despair is not entirely escapable. The length of time that RK and I have been going over the same things with each other also has something to do with it, but I can generally translate that into a weary rather than upset tone. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 04:50, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
<!--[[File:Internet-group-chat.svg|48px|left|alt=|link=]]-->Your feedback is requested &#32;at [[Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#rfc_D27742C|'''Wikipedia talk:Citing sources'''&#32; on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment]]. Thank you for helping out!<br/><small>You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of [[WP:FRS|Feedback Request Service]] subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by [[WP:FRS|removing your name]].</small> <!-- Template:FRS notification --><div class="paragraphbreak" style="margin-top:0.5em"></div> Message delivered to you with love by [[User:Yapperbot|Yapperbot]] :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact [[User talk:Naypta|my bot operator]]. &#124; Sent at  18:30, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

== BLP, computer software entrepreneur ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
Hi SMcCandlish, I recently posted an edit request for [[Arkady Volozh]]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arkady_Volozh#Career_section_restructure. Volozh is an entrepreneur with a computer science background - as you wrote on your userpage that you are a software engineer and computer system administrator, and you have done extensive work for [[WP:BLP]], I was hoping that you would help me reorganize his article. I have a COI and would like a neutral editor to make the changes. Thank you very much [[User:Wikigracht|Wikigracht]] ([[User talk:Wikigracht|talk]]) 14:54, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
:I might be able to take a look at it but ... "a lot is going on right now", and my WP time is limited. I'm also stuck with the flu, not have little energy and focus right at the moment. See thread immediately below this one for "general approach" comments that might be thematically pertinent to this kind of bio. It'll take a quick look at the thread you pointed to and comment there, though. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:14, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
::I did that, with a suggested re-revision. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:27, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
:::Hi SMcCandlish, I hope you're feeling better. I understand that you're busy and appreciate you taking the time with my request. [[User:Wikigracht|Wikigracht]] ([[User talk:Wikigracht|talk]]) 22:06, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
::::It's on my list, ahead of the Thoma-related request (in the thread below). There's just a lot going on right now. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 04:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

== [[Draft:Carl Thoma]] ==

Hi SMcCandlish! I saw on your userpage that you're a member of [[WP:WPNM]] and you also mention an interest in Art Nouveau - given that overlap, I wonder if you would look over my [[Draft:Carl Thoma|draft for Carl Thoma]], an art collector with a strong presence in the Sante Fe art scene (as well as an elder statesman in the private equity industry). The draft was initially declined, but I've since tightened the sourcing and the language - if you believe it's ready, would you mind publishing it? Thanks, [[User:JBarTB|JBarTB]] ([[User talk:JBarTB|talk]]) 15:36, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
:I'm not really in a position to contradict the Articles for Creation reviewers. While this is a bit on the harsh side: "It is a complete puff piece built on manufactured and paid for PR non-references. No indication of significance." – there seems to be more than grain of truth to this. "No" indication of significance isn't quite true; the "one of the deans of the buyout business" and "private-equity pioneer" quotes indicate why he might be notable, and at least seem to come from reliable sources. (''Forbes'' can be questionable; per [[WP:RSNP]], only material written by its editorial staff is usable, not material submitted by "contributors", i.e. by random bloggers). The source of the other  quote I don't know well.<!--
--><p>However, the article is not focused on his industry impact/legacy/reputation (as assessed by reliable sources). It's almost entirely a rote recitation of factoids about where he went to school, what company names were, who he worked with, etc. "There's no there there." The sourcing sometimes does seem like regurgitated press releases, or is too often primary sourcing: his or his own company's output. When it is legit news, it's almost always about a company or a corporate happening, not about him, and only mentioning him in passing, a quick name-drop.  Where are the in-depth profiles written by independent journalists in major business-news publications and major newspapers? Where's are the chapters about him in major-publisher books about private-equity and acquisitions/buyouts sub-industries, or about business in New Mexico?  Being rich and having an art-buying hobby doesn't make someone an encyclopedia subject. The real world has to be writing significant material about him (that's actually about him, not a company he's involved with) and without his or his people's "help" (spin) in writing it.</p><!--
--><p>The tone does appear to have improved from earlier draft and is reasonably neutral. But this remains written like a "Who's Who in New Mexico Business" CV, not like an encyclopedia article. I'm not sure it can be written like the latter until there is more material from publications unrelated to him but which devote a lot of page-space to industry and public perception of him, his work, and its impact.  PS: The fact that there isn't even the slightest hint of criticism or controversy is suspicious. No one becomes a billionaire without incident. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:36, 3 April 2025 (UTC)</p>
::Thanks for the thorough and helpful response. And you're right - it's clear that in my effort to avoid promotional language, I neglected to give enough attention to Thoma's significance and industry impact in the draft. Would you be able to help me integrate some of this material - which exists and is supported by RS - into the draft? 
::Specifically, when RS talk about Thoma's role as "one of private equity's founding fathers" ([https://www.pehub.com/top-fundraiser-thoma-bravo-bets-softwares-red-hot-run-is-far-from-over/ PE Hub]), they generally point to how he pioneered the "buy and build" strategy, which is now "part of the toolkit of almost every PE firm" ([https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/successful-private-equity-gps-not-in-this-for-the-fee-income-carl-thoma/ Buyouts Insider]). This is also borne out in scholarly sources, like this [[Virginia Law & Business Review]] article, which says: "In the 1980s, a small number of firms started to successfully employ an alternative strategy, 'buy and build.' Often attributed to Stanley Golder and Carl Thoma, the strategy involves making an initial 'platform acquisition' and 'adding on' complementary or competing firms by way of subsequent acquisitions." ([https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/valbr18&div=4&id=&page= VLBR]).
::I should also add, at the risk of quibbling, that "an art-buying hobby" is somewhat of an understatement - Thoma is a significant figure in the art world (see [https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2025/march/the-thoma-foundation-brings-its-private-art-collection-to-dallas/ this article] in [[D Magazine]], which isn't currently cited in the draft).
::I really appreciate you lending a hand here! Thanks again, [[User:JBarTB|JBarTB]] ([[User talk:JBarTB|talk]]) 18:47, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
:::I might be able to take an editing pass at it (and shift it toward something more likely to be accepted by [[WP:AFC]] and not deleted at [[WP:AFD]]). But I have more pressing stuff to deal with at the moment, and already something similar to this in my queue (to work over an article that already exists in mainspace not as a draft). PS: I'm not suggesting that Thoma's art collecting be suppressed from the draft; it's simply not the main reason he might be notable, so not appropriate to excessively dwell on. And one's person assertions of someone's importance (e.g. to the art world) are encyclopedically meaningless. It is reliable independent sources that tell us whether someone is important and why. It's a bare fact that not everything we personally might want to write about in our personally preferred way is going to happen at this site, because it is a tertiary-source publication, tied to reliable-source coverage, and is not an op-ed vehicle for publishing one's primary-source original opinion or research. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 04:46, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

== Some citation questions ==

Hi, SMcC, I'm about to wrap up the Ramendra Kumar article you helped me with on some earlier issues (disambiguation and See also entries being the main one). Now I have a few questions about some citation intricacies that I hope you can help me with. Here is the first, which it seems to me should also go in the See also section, even though what's there now are two names similar to Ramendra Kumar.

SITUATION: Kumar became what is popularly called a "cancer warrior" four years ago, and his oncological surgeon was so impressed with his recovery from near-death and his family support system that he made a YouTube video, in which he narrates the case as something of a story. Before asking my format-related questions, I need to tell you a few things about the video.

* The URL of the video  is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArgL7sTt9g

* The title of the video as shown on the video when it starts to play is  is "Battling Tumor with Humour."

* In the browser — which viewers following the link would see just before the video starts playing — there is other text appearing just below the photo of the video: '''Triumph Over Rectal Cancer: A Journey of Resilience. Mr. Ramendra Kumar & Dr. Sandeep Nayak'''.

* There are two pieces of information that appear at the upper left and upper right of the video: '''saMrohaNa Cancer Foundation''' (left) and '''MACS Clinic''' (right).

Now, on to the citation formatting questions. 

1- I would have expected the basic Wiki format to be something like this, which is MLA format: 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nanak, Sandeep. 'Battling Tumor with Humour.' YouTube, 21 December 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArgL7sTt9g.

But when I looked up Wiki guidance on how to cite a video, I found something that would seem to require this format (unfortunately, I didn't write down the link I'm referring to):

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Nayak, Sandeep (21 December 2023). '[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArgL7sTt9gATCH:+Battling+Tumor+with+Humour%27 WATCH: Battling Tumor with Humour'] (video). ''youtube.com.''

Your thoughts about formatting a video?

2- Since there is text below the photo of the video in the browser ('''Triumph Over Rectal Cancer: A Journey of Resilience. Mr. Ramendra Kumar & Dr. Sandeep Nayak''')—even though what usually appears there is the video title''—''should this additional text be included along with the video title in the citation somehow/somewhere?

3- May I put (Dr.) in parentheses after Nanak’s name?  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 13:53, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

4- Should '''saMrohaNa Cancer Foundation''' and '''MACS Clinic''' appear somewhere in the citation?

:"See also" is only for links to other WP articles, not off-site resources like videos. That's "External links", if the thing in question cannot reasonably be used instead as a reference citation (in which case it should usually not also appear in "External Links". See [[MOS:LAYOUT]] for what these sections are for. YouTube videos are usually not reliable sources, unless the channel author/publisher is recognized as reliable (e.g. is a well-known subject-matter expert or is a major media organization like ''Associated Press'' or ''The Guardian'' or the ''New York Times''.). MLA format doesn't have any more sway over Wikipedia than any other citation format. The default basically is the [[WP:CS1]] templates, used in about 95% of our articles. Every article should have a consistent citation format/style, and if your article is already using those templates, then continue to use them. The one you are looking for is probably {{tlx|Cite AV media}}, in which one can specify a timestamp within the video. YouTube in any such template is {{para|via|YouTube}} not {{para|publisher|YouTube}}, since YT does not exert editorial control over the content and is simply a distribution method not a publisher (nor is it even an exclusive distributor; many YT videos also are simul-posted on other video venues and on the originator's website).<!--
--><p>Additional text: Probably not, but it's a judgement call. The main purpose of {{para|title}} in a citation template is helping people find and identify the source. If adding additional text doesn't do that, then it is superfluous. "Dr.": No. WP does not do that, ever. Every author of any scientific journal paper has a doctorate, so in any science-related article, our citations would be filled with "Dr." after "Dr." after "Dr." for no reason. Again, the point of citation data is identifying and finding the source cited. It is not lauding and applauding the authors or publisher. As for your question 4, I'm not certain since I've not seen the videos. If they are the real publisher(s) of the material (have exerted editorial control over it and caused it to be produced and distributed), then yes. If they are third parties that the material is mentioning, then no. All that said, if you are attempting to cite this as some sort of source for the idea that being cheerful cures cancer, that is not okay, per [[WP:MEDRS]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 05:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)</p>
::The See also section is only for Wiki articles ... now, ''that'' is a surprise.
::Clarification: the video is not an official reference, just something the author's surgical oncologist decided to make as an inspirational video for a series he's made with other cancer patients. 
::I didn't mean that I was planning to use MLA format for references, just that because videos are not something I think I've ever cited before, I would have expected a format more like that, but instead the one I mentioned had come up somewhere in my Wiki how-to search.
::Mysteries remain, like why the placement of what we're referring to as additional words where the title of the video would normally go—under the photo of the video in the browser—and why the two logos are shown at the top of the video but not mentioned elsewhere if they're publishing facts. 
::Another basic question about citations I'm almost embarrassed to admit: I have never had to create a reference (bibliography) list from scratch in Wikipedia (though I've done it countless times in outside work, also footnotes). I was able to create footnotes in the Ramendra Kumar article, using a template in the Visual editor, but I just don't find another template to use for creating the reference list. I was thinking to copy the footnotes and do some rearranging under a new list below the footnotes, but no luck with that workaround. 
::Can you point me in the right direction of the template I need? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 09:21, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
::And lastly, any ideas for how to handle a case when excerpts from talks by one of the speakers asked to make remarks on Kumar's writing at a literature fest are incorrectly titled with the title of the event itself rather than the title we know is correct for those excerpts?
:::"something the author's surgical oncologist decided to make as an inspirational video" sounds like clearly not a proper source to cite for anything remotely like a medical claim; this is covered by [[WP:MEDRS]]. Citations inline in the article are shown at the bottom, under a heading typically named <code>==References==</code>, with the template {{tlx|reflist}}. This is a wrapper for the {{xtag|references|s}} Wiki-markup tag, and provides some additional features beyond use of {{xtag|references|s}} alone. I don't really understand your last question without being able to review the material in careful detail. But this sounds like material we would never cite in an encyclopedia article in the first place, especially not about cancer or other medical science. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:46, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
::::Thanks again for your replies to my above questions. Only two remain, after I bring further discussion about the video to an end by saying the video was never something I planned to use as an information source, rather for other reasons' but to avoid further confusion about this I'll simply omit it.
::::1- Although you gave me ''reflist'' as the template to use to create the equivalent of a bibliography, that would have to be used in the Source editor — which I'd prefer to avoid, if possible. I see that I didn't mention that to you in my question about a template. I was hoping for one I could use in the Visual editor, because I knew there was a template available there that could be used to create the equivalent of footnotes ''—'' so it seemed only logical to expect a corresponding template there to create the equivalent of a bibliography. ''Is'' ''reflist (requiring the Source editor) the only option for my needs, then?''
::::2- Now for the unusual case of the incorrect title of excerpts from a talk by one of the speakers at a conference. 
::::* Below — in small print — is the citation that I created, done in Indian/British format, and set up as best as I can figure out how to do it. I used the Basic template to create the citation, as nothing else fit the situation. 
::::* Immediately following the citation is my best shot at wording the discrepancy between the title that appears at the URL where the excerpts can be read and a flyer showing the title of the conference along with the titles of talks by various speakers. That explanation is in small print like the citation because I think either this or an alternately worded explanation is required in this unusual situation. 
::::* Immediately following the explanation is a description of how the flyer looks, since I can't attach it here for you to see.
::::__________ 
::::<small>Patil, Anand. 'Indian Children's Story World and Ramendra Kumar', 1 May 2024. Excerpts from a talk presented at a daylong seminar—Ramendra Kumar's Unique Children's Story World—on 15 April 2024, in Bengaluru, sponsored by three Karnataka literary organisations: Abhinava, Makkala Sahityasakta Geleyar Balaga, and B. M. Shri Pratishthana. https://learningandcreativity.com/ramendra-kumar-world-of-childrens-literature/.</small> 
::::''<small>Note: the above title is the correct one for Patil's talk, although it was not the one that appeared at the above link on the access date; instead, the displayed title is the title of the conference itself.</small>''
::::__________ 
::::If you follow the above link, you are taken to the excerpts of the talk by Anand Patil, one of the conference speakers. There you see the title of his talk is given as '''Ramendra Kumar’s Unique World of Children’s Literature'''.
::::But the flyer promoting the conference shows that the above is, instead, the title of the conference itself. The flyer also shows that the title of Patil’s talk is '''Indian Children’s Story world and Ramendra Kumar!'''
::::SMcC, if you can help get me out of this weird dilemma, I will happily design you a one-of-a-kind barnstar with a tartan background or perhaps a tartan Superman cape... [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 13:44, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::I don't use the Visual Editor, but I'm sure that it has the capability to insert templates; people do it all the time. I'm not able to advise about how, though, since I use the source editor 100% of the time.
:::::Your citation should work (any citation is better than none, as long as someone can make sense of it), though the "Note: ..." part doesn't actually seem important for readers, only for editors who might be doing source verification in details, so could be put inside an HTML comment. I think how I would do this, using our standardized citation templates:
::::::<code><nowiki><ref>{{cite conference |last=Patil |first=Anand |contribution=Indian Children's Story World and Ramendra Kumar |date=1 May 2024 |orig-date=15 April 2024 |title=Ramendra Kumar’s Unique World of Children’s Literature  |location=Bengaluru |publisher=Abhinava / Makkala Sahityasakta Geleyar Balaga / B. M. Shri Pratishthana |via=LearningAndCreativity.com |url= https://learningandcreativity.com/ramendra-kumar-world-of-childrens-literature/ |access-date=10 April 2025}}<!--Note: the above title is the correct one for Patil's talk, although it was not the one that appeared at the above link on the access date; instead, the displayed title is the title of the conference itself.--></ref></nowiki></code>
:::::This will look like:
::::::{{cite conference |last=Patil |first=Anand |contribution=Indian Children's Story World and Ramendra Kumar |date=1 May 2024 |orig-date=15 April 2024 |title=Ramendra Kumar’s Unique World of Children’s Literature  |location=Bengaluru |publisher=Abhinava / Makkala Sahityasakta Geleyar Balaga / B. M. Shri Pratishthana |via=LearningAndCreativity.com |url= https://learningandcreativity.com/ramendra-kumar-world-of-childrens-literature/ |access-date=10 April 2025}}
:::::Hope that helps. Even if you use the VE for most purposes, you may have to get into the source editor to do certain things. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 04:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
::::::The Visual Editor has a template for setting up references that act like traditional footnotes, although they come out formatted in bibliographic style, with author's last name preceding first name and separated by a comma ... but with page numbers like traditional footnotes. Yet I just don't find a template for doing a traditional bibliography. That said, though ...
::::::I am really confused about the wide variety of what I find in the citation area at the bottom of articles. There are always footnotes, though they seem to be not only formatted differently from traditional footnotes but also called many things, including even REFERENCES, which I also see used for a traditional bibliography in some articles. But there doesn't always seem to be a section of references apart from what are used as footnotes. I assumed articles were always supposed to have both footnotes and bibliography, whatever they might be called.
::::::Do you have a template in the Source editor to create a bibliography as apart from footnotes?
::::::Two quick questions about your suggested reformatting of the footnote I set up with the Basic template:
::::::1- Wouldn't the original date of the talk and the date of publishing the excerpts need to be more clearly identified?
::::::2- Would the three literary organizations that sponsored the event really be ''publishers''? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 19:49, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
::::::In appreciation for all your help on this and other articles, SMcC.
::::::[[File:The Tough Style Issues Fixitman Barnstar.png|thumb|For SMcCandlish the Style Fixit Superman]]
::::::[[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:13, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::::There are multiple styles of doing reference citations, and they vary from article to article. You just get used to it. For the gist, see [[MOS:REFERENCES]] and (in more detail) [[WP:CITE]]. It is generally not the case that WP articles use "a bibliography" in the exact sense that an acadeic journal article does. There are basically two WP citation models: 1) A single "References" section (that's the most common name for it, though it can have others), in which all citations appear, in the order they are cited. 2) A two-part section, most often "References" with a subheading called something like "Sources" (though there are again alternatives, like "Works cited" or even "Bibliography", though that can be problematic, either implying a particular format we don't use, like the one you happen to prefer, or in a biography implying a list of that person's works rather than independent soures we are citing). In the two-part style, the "Sources" (or whatever) subsection provides a list of works that are cited more than one time, usually alphabetically by lead author (or editor if no author); this is fairly similar to a traditional academic bibliography. Above that subsection are the inline citations, and [[WP:SFN|shortened footnotes]] are used to reference the full citations in the subsection. However, works only cited once (especially websites) are usually also in there with the shortened footnotes above the full-citations subsection. Trying to integrate every full-citation work into the subsection even if only cited once is a great deal of work for very little if any benefit. The shortened footnotes and one-off citations, above the "Sources" or "Works cited" subsection, might also themselves be put into a subsection. (See my almost-completed draft at [[User:SMcCandlish/Incubator/Tartan design and weaving]] for an example, which also clearly illustrates how shortentened footnotes are commingled with single-use full citatation at the top of the "References" section, and only multi-use full citations are in "Sources" subsection lower down. And it also illustrates the difference between narrative footnotes and citation footnotes, in separate sections.) It's also not unheard of for a two-part setup to use separate "References" and "Sources"/"Works cited" top-level headings, instead of the latter nested under the former, but that is sloppy and unhelpful.</p><!--
--><p>"Wouldn't the original date of the talk and the date of publishing the excerpts need to be more clearly identified?" No, since the purpose of our reference citations is simply helping people identify and find the sources to examine them (and secondarily to evaluate their pertinence; e.g. material from 1843 will be a poor source in most cases for anything scientific, and it would be misleading to have only {{para|date|2024}} on a recent reprint of 1843 material). Our citations are not a bibliographic database (this is why we don't include things like total page count and other claptrap). And the meaning is already clear: first released in some form on {{para|orig-date}}, while the copy we are citing was published on {{para|date}}. That said, if you feel strongly a desire to add more info, the {{para|orig-date}} parameter is actually freeform, so you could do {{para|orig-date|original presentation 15 April 2024}}. This cannot be done with {{para|date}} which is strictly limited to one of WP's recognized date formats.</p><!--
--><p>"Would the three literary organizations that sponsored the event really be ''publishers''?" For purposes of this sort of citation, yes. The material was originally part of a live presentation at a conference, not published on paper or e-paper, and those were the conference organizers (i.e. publishers, for all intents and purposes, of the conference). As far as I can tell, anyway. If one or more of them were simply commercial sponsors and were not editorially involved in creating the event, inviting speakers, approving their presentations, etc., then they should not be mentioned at all. Again, the purpose of these citations is helping people identify and find the sources, and to be able to evaluate them, not "giving credit where due" or marketing for anyone. If the event in question was created/promoted by a three-organization partnership, then these organizations are essentially integral to the citation, especially if they have some reputation (positive or otherwise) to some subset of readers. If they were not editorially involved in the conference, then they are chaff to delete. The website we happened to find an e-text copy at had nothing to do with the material editorially and is just an after-the-fact distribution mechanism, so it goes in {{para|via}}.<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:31, 13 April 2025 (UTC)</p>

{{od}}Took a look at your tartan article as you suggested to see how you set up your references ... good heavens, what an undertaking on your part ... and was intrigued by your use of "Incubator" in place of "Sandbox." I know this is off topic but I think your word should be the word adopted Wikiwide for where we work on articles. A sandbox is really for just playing around, even if we sometimes create castles. 

If you ever want to make an official proposal for that word change, you'll have at least my vote from the community. 🙂 [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 19:11, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:The tartan articles are complex with regard to footnotes; kind of a "maximal" example. They pretty much necessarily have a number of contextual narrative footnotes because of conflicts between the sources, and the citations themselves are complicated because various sources are one-shot and would clog up a traditional-style bibliography, while there are also many sources that are reused over and over again and do belong in a bibliography then referenced repeatedly only with shortened footnotes instead re-re-re-repeating full-length citations.  As for "incubator", I use that for articles in some stage of drafting progress, because I use "sandbox" for test pages and template code development. My word choice pre-dates the "Draft:" namespace or I might have gone with "draft" instead of "incubator". I like the latter anyway, as it serves as a self-reminder that they need further development. "Draft" to me feels like "stuff that's likely to be abandoned forever", LOL.  But most editors use "draft" for draft articles, and I think they tend to use "sandbox" for test pages and such, though I've seen various "User:Whoever/sandbox/Article draft name here" pages, I suppose. There's not really a reason for WP to have consistency in how people do user-space pages. [shrug] <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:41, 15 April 2025 (UTC)<!-- --><p>PS: Something you might find helpful: [[User:SMcCandlish/How to use the sfnp family of templates]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:00, 15 April 2025 (UTC)</p>
::This is in reply both to your PS above and to your April 6 message in which you commented, "Even if you use the VE for most purposes, you may have to get into the source editor to do certain things." Frankly, the more I see of the Source editor, the more I think I'll look for a fellow editor who'd be willing to work out a barter arrangement — in which I give that editor my citations to put into proper format and in exchange I proofread or edit text!
::To pick up on this a little further ... you might be interested to hear that in the Teahouse at the moment, I posted a topic in which originally I asked how editors might find other editors knowledgeable about the VE or the SE, so we could turn to them as I have to you for particularly challenging questions about your Wiki specialty (perhaps one of many): style. It was suggested that I just go ahead and post my specific question there, so I reluctantly went ahead and said — as I have to you — that although there was a template available in VE to create the equivalent of footnotes, I hadn't found one to do the equivalent of a bibliography, asking if anyone knew of such a template. An editor by the name of Asilvering picked up on it and said there wasn't one, but gave me a workaround involving using the SE that I'm trying to make work. It seems that Asilvering also likes to use the VE, but acknowledges the difficulty with this particular task. If I find the workaround does in fact work, would you like to know about it in case any other editor seems in need?
::The length of my paragraph above makes me get brave, now that we're sort of Wiki friends, and mention that there's a wonderful new invention called an Enter (Return) key that can actually break up chunky text ... 😅 (running and ducking) [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 06:16, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
:::I am curious what your VE approach is; I don't know much about VE, but might as well learn what people are doing in it for citations. As for long paragraphs, when I'm on my ultra-wide monitor they don't look so long, so it's harder to tell when one could use a paragraph break. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:17, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
::::If I can make that "VE approach" work, I'll happily share it.
::::And as for ultra-wide monitor text displays, maybe you could carry out an experiment like this: you'd copy some gibberish to create about 5 different chunks of text of varying sizes, publish it ... and then on a regular computer monitor as well as a cell phone, look at the same page to compare how the different chunks look. That would be an act of mercy on your many fans' eyesight. <big>🙂</big> [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 07:47, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::That is, of course, you'd see which size chunks begin to get a bit long when ported over to the other monitors, and use that as a guide on your ultra-wide monitor. I'm a little jealous that you have one. Maybe one day ... [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 07:50, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment ==
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== April music ==
{{User QAIbox
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[[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#7 Apr|Tout est lumière]] --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 13:28, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

[[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#20 Apr|My story]] is about music that Bach and Picander gave the world 300 years (and 19 days) ago, - listen (on the conductor's birthday) --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 15:03, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I finally managed to upload the pics I meant for Easter, see places. - Also finally, I managed a FAC, [[Easter Oratorio]]. I wanted that on the main page for Easter Sunday, but no, twice. You are invited to join [[Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries#OTD entries based on non-calendar-based recurring events|a discussion]] about what "On this day" means, day or date. --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 12:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ==
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== [[Copts]] ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
Hey, 

I wanted to ask if you'd be willing to weigh in again on the ongoing discussion in the talk page of the [[Copts]] article. Your previous input was very valuable in guiding the process the first time around, and I believe your perspective could be especially helpful now, as the current RfC seems to be getting mired in complexity and losing focus.

There’s no pressure to take a definitive position on any version, but what I’d really appreciate is your insight into how the issue might be resolved, or how the existing proposals could be improved or reframed for easier consensus.

Thanks in advance! [[User:Turnopoems|Turnopoems]] ([[User talk:Turnopoems|talk]]) 08:56, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

===[[Coptic identity]]===
{{moved discussion to|Talk:Coptic identity#April 2025}}
Hello @[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]],

Thanks again for your helpful contribution to the discussion at the [[Copts]] article. If you don't mind me picking your brain one more time: the user who introduced many of the ethnonationalist narratives into that article had also worked extensively on the [[Coptic identity]] article, introducing similar [[WP:NPOV]] issues. The other day, I spent some time applying the same roadmap we used in the main article to [[Coptic identity]], but the editor returned, rolled back much of the work, and introduced a flood of new content, some of it continuing the same problematic narrative, while some parts are constructive. I rolled back the edits for now, but I doubt that will hold for long. In your view, what would be the best way to approach this situation going forward? Based on the precedent in the [[Copts]] article, I don't see engaging in discussion with this user as a productive path toward building consensus. Shouldn't the consensus reached in that article guide us in this article as well? [[User:Turnopoems|Turnopoems]] ([[User talk:Turnopoems|talk]]) 17:13, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
:Hello @SMcCandlish,
:Yes, your valuable insight would be helpful in addressing the recent vandalism of the article [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coptic_identity&diff=1287656048&oldid=1287655245|heere] by [[User:Turnopoems]], where he/she:
:*Reinserted many references that he/she erroneously paraphrased in contradiction with what the original sources say.
:*Removed a lot of referenced material
:*Reintroduced many broken links and references
:Thank you again for your help. [[User:Epenkimi|Epenkimi]] ([[User talk:Epenkimi|talk]]) 19:51, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
::This needs more formal [[WP:DR]] at this point; see recommendations at [[Talk:Coptic identity#April 2025]]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 23:05, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

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== Punctuation of a "between" relationship between items containing spaces ==
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I just opened a discussion at [[Talk:Gulf of Mexico–America naming dispute]] that I think might benefit from your expertise. —⁠ ⁠[[User:BarrelProof|BarrelProof]] ([[User talk:BarrelProof|talk]]) 20:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

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== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ==
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== [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Hawaii-related articles]] ==
{{Moved discussion to|User talk:Turnagra#Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Hawaii-related articles}}
Talk has indeed petered out. Could you make a collapsible section with the proposed wording - nothing lined out, but something that can be copy-pasted directly into the MOS. If [[User:Turnagra]] agrees, we can paste it into the MOS. I'm fine with whatever you decide, but I'd rather one of you make the final decision so when I start changing articles I'm not enforcing my own decision. Unless you plan on making large numbers of page moves, in which case I can update the MOS so you're not in the same position. [[User:Kwamikagami|— kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami|talk]]) 06:46, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

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== VE citations ==

About 10 days ago above, I mentioned that although I knew how to use the VE to create the equivalent of footnotes, I hadn't been able to find out how to do a bibliography in VE so I'd asked how in the Teahouse and that another editor had told me he'd show me. And when I asked if you might want to see how to do all this in VE, you said you might as well because you could someday get a request. 

Well, before I go further, I need to explain that up until just a few days ago I'd completely misunderstood something important about Wiki citations: that they're set up to ''combine'' the two traditionally separate sections of footnotes and bibliography in academic writing. That discovery finally explained something that had long puzzled me, seeing a Reference section at the end of Wiki articles that looked and acted like traditional footnotes but positioned authors' surnames before their first name, as in a traditional bibliography. In other words, the Wiki Refererence section is a hybrid! Either I missed that entirely when I was trying to learn Wiki's citation documentation or it needs to be much more clearly brought out. It would certainly help avoid other flegling editors coming from traditional academic writing ending up ready to bang their heads on the wall. 

So now l'll explain how to do references in the VE. It's incredibly easy. No coding needed, except in unusual instances. Let's say you're working on your tartan article in VE and you want to cite a website about the MacSo-and-So clan. In VE editing, you see a number of symbols above the area you're working on. You'll use those to do your citation. Several of the symbols give you a variety of formatting options beyond just bold and italic. The symbol you'd use to link text to existing Wikipedia articles is ( <big>'''∞'''</big> ). You'd use ( '''Ω''' ) to see a lot of scientific, mathematical, and editing symbols as well as linguistic characters to choose from. And the symbol you'd use to create a citation is ( '''«''' ) . 

Clicking on ( '''«''' ) brings up a menu from which you choose the type of citation you need to create. ''Website'' is one of the choices, and clicking on that brings up a form you simply fill in one field at a time with the required information (title, URL, website name, retrieval date, etc.). When everything is filled in, you click on Publish and voilà, there's your reference down below with all the information correctly formatted in Wikipedia's preferred style. Re-using the same reference in the article is also painless.

For Wiki editors who might occasionally want to include a separate complete list of publications or selected references, the VE doesn't provide another simple template, as the Teahouse editor who volunteered to help me admitted. He pointed out that for that sort of task you'd have to either turn to SE coding or type from scratch — or (his discovery), you could use VE's citation template and then go back to change all the commas to periods. Although I'd still like to see a template to handle that work in the VE, at least we have a really nice template to do most of what Wikipedia expects from us and avoid what I find tough about using the SE, all the "distracting visual clutter." [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 22:37, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
:Thanks for the detailed tips. It's strange to me that the VE would be using commas at all as a field separator in citations, since various fields in a citation are apt to contain their own interior commas. I would call that a bug in VE (or in some citation add-on for it). Our default templates' use of a period/full-point for this purpose is not considered ideal by various editors (and this accounts for some lingering resistance against using the [[Help:Citation Style 1|CS1 templates]]). It would probably be best if a semi-colon were used, but that's another squabble for another time. As for the first part, I think you kind of confused yourself a bit. There is no real-world correspondence that goes something like "footnotes require first-then-given-names order, but bibliographies require last-then-given order". There are innumerable citation styles, and they vary widely by author, journal, publisher (of journals and/or books), and by organization (e.g. APA, AMA, MHRA, MLA, etc.) issuing erstwhile standards that some publishers across a field lean toward adopting. The short version is that simple WP articles just have a single section for citations, and they appear in the order in which they are cited; more complex article typically use a two-section citation system, in which the first section contains A) full citations of sources that are cited only once, and B) shortened footnotes for sourced cited multiple times, while the second section contains full citations of the sources cited multiple times. It's really that simple, at least structurally. Depending on the development level of the article and the attention to detail of those working on it, this structure may or may not followed assiduously, and the citations may or may not be consistently formatted (though they need to be eventually, per [[WP:CITESTYLE]]). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:02, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
::SMcC:
::1- About the commas as field separators, the only place I notice them is between the surname and first name of the author in a reference. I ''think—'' what the Teahouse editor meant was that to create a bibliography from a reference list, we'd copy the list to the bibliography section (whatever we named it), then go into each reference and not only delete the comma but also reposition the first name before the surname.
::2- Yes, I know there are many citation styles for footnotes; but I believe the ones that use first name and surname (not initials for first name, for instance) do position first name before surname. Although I've worked with almost all the formats in the past, it's been quite awhile since I've used some of them. At any rate, first name before last is definitely what I expected. That said, I'm delighted with VE's citation template for most of my needs. 
::3- And my biggest expectation was that there'd be both footnotes and bibliography.
::I sometimes wonder at the stamina of you SE-fanciers, dealing with all that code at the same time as you're trying to read articles you're editing or write them and at the same time keep track of the flow ... or stop for a moment to go back up in the article to check something before proceeding.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 11:17, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
:::1. There would never be a reason to do that except in the unusual case that the article already had a consistently established given-names-first citation style, which would be very unusual here. That would only happen in an article in which editors had been doing manually formatted citations and avoiding our citation templates, or outright abusing their parameters, e.g. with {{para|author|B. J. Hunnicutt}} ({{para|author}} is an alias of {{para|last}}, so that resolves to {{para|last|B. J. Hunnicutt}}, which is falsifying the content of the last-name parameter with given-name elements). If that situation is encountered, it needs to be corrected (e.g. to {{para|last|Hunnicutt}}{{para|first|B. J.}}), not mimicked in newly added citations.
:::2. Generally, no they don't. If you can find a citation style anywhere that veers back and forth between "Hunnicutt, B. J." and "Bea Jay Hunnicutt" in the same list, just based on whether initials were used by an author, I would be shocked, since that would be senseless and confusing. If such a style exists, WP has no reason to emulate it, and good reasons not to.  Regardless, you may be approaching this wrongheadedly, by seeking to imitate off-site styles, and to introduce conflicting styles between the shortened footnote citations and the longer bibliographic citations below the former, which should not happen per [[WP:CITESTYLE]]: use a consistent citation style throughout any given article.<!--
--><p>In short, I think you are making this much more difficult than it needs to be. Generally, use something like {{tlx|cite journal|last1{{=}}Hunnicutt|first1{{=}}B. J.|last2{{=}}Pierce|first2{{=}}Benjamin|date{{=}}1952|title{{=}}...|...}} for the long (bibliographic or sometimes only) citation, and when shortened footnotes are also used, then {{tlx|sfnp|Hunnicutt|Pierce|1952}} as the short version, and you don't need to manually tweak anything. For complex cases (e.g. organizational authors, or two publications by same author in same year), see the tutorial I linked for you a while back.</p> 
:::3. There {{em|generally}} will be two-sectional citations when it's helpful, but not when it's unnecessarily complicated. However, there's no means by which to {{em|force}} some editors at a long and complex article who insist on a single section to abandon that for two sections; or to force an editor who is a big fan of two sections to stop doing it that way on tiny [[WP:STUB]] articles that don't need it. The best that one could do is open a discussion on the talk page suggesting a change of citation style with rationales for the change, and see whether people go along with the idea.
:::The source editor is second nature to anyone used to it. You can see the rendered text with "Show preview", and there are also extensions/scripts for just showing any changes in a live-updated preview, though I find that rather resource-intensive, at least on long pages. For anyone frequently dealing with finer points of formatting/coding, the VE is a useless hindrance, and it is buggy enough to actually introduce additional problems. WMF developed VE to encourage content work by non-technical people, but it's always been understood that it would come at a trade-off cost, that some of that content would have to be cleaned up by technical editors later (and that they would not much use VE themselves because a lot of the technical tweaking isn't really possible in it). Most complex-content environments that offer [[WYSIWYG]] editors also have source editors, from blog content management systems like WordPress to private note-taking apps like Joplin, for similar reasons: sometimes you don't get the intended output in the WYSIWYG editor, it may lack a feature that is necessary for particular output, or something may just be much more expedient to do in a source-based editor, e.g. by copy-pasting repeately used markup. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:40, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
::::I could be wrong about this but I get the feeling that you think I'm trying to hold onto and champion the ideas I started off with about how certain citation procedures were done in Wikipedia but that it turned out I misunderstood. I hope not, as I'm celebrating that the fog has lifted!
::::Remembering that life is a school has sure helped me through Wiki citations! [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 11:52, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
:::::Not assuming (I"m not following your edits closely or anything), just hoping to help steer toward best practices. And, yeah, it's definitely a learning process. Even two years ago, I was using the snf[p] and harv[p/nb] templates not quite right, and didn't understand how best to use {{para|ref}} in a citation (when necessary) to work with those other templates. Pushing myself to learn it all in-depth is why I wrote the tutorial I've linked to above; it was challenging enough to figure it all out that I decided it needed a crash-course summary for others. Would be nice if the system were simpler, but "it is what it is", for now. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 01:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::Are you on Discord? I'm asking because I know you must be into cats from a photo that keeps coming up when I come to write you a message, and I just ran across the cutest photo of a kitten with a comment related to editing that I think would brighten your day. 
::::::I'd have e-mailed it to you using the Wikipedia route but found images can't be pasted in. But if you're on Discord, there'd be no problem. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::Could just drop me a URL to it on an image host like ImgBB.com. I have an account on Discord, and on most things, but I don't think I've used Discord in a year or longer, and don't have the app installed right now. I've never gotten into "interruptive" real-time chat things, not since even the early days, like IRC and ICQ. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 05:24, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::This (ImgBB.com) is amazing! Thanks ... I never heard of it before. You've made my day. Now perhaps what I've just posted at https://ibb.co/dJxjtySt will help make yours.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 06:34, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::Good one. When I meow back at them, I wonder if they think I'm mocking them. Maybe when they're saying "I'm hungry!" they think I'm saying "Me, too!" Or maybe it really does come across as gibberish.  As for ImgBB, it does come in handy for various things. There are a lot of competing sites, but that one seems pretty reliable long-term, doesn't cost anything, doesn't require a login for basic usage, and doesn't dump your uploads into a public feed. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 09:19, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::It's the answer to a prayer for a quick and easy way to send images to other editors. When I first needed to do that, the other editor introduced me to Discord and I was equally delighted at being able to send sensitive text, not just images. But if all I have is an image to send, this is perfect.
::::::::::In my apt, we also have several cats and I think they rather enjoy our feeble attempts to speak their language. Never has it ever seemed were being scoffed at for grammar mistakes, though. Perhaps that's too fur out for them, as food is definitely much more of an interest. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 12:14, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::If you need to share videos, I'd recommend either GoFile.io or Mega.io, though in both cases you might need to create an account, and the files will be deleted eventually after a period of download inactivitity, if you don't have a paid account. There are various video-hosting services that don't expire your files, but they tend to be associated with porn, so I avoid them. Google Drive might also work, along with Microsoft's OneDrive, but I don't trust either company, and am disentangling myself from them. My GMail is going away soon in favor of ProtonMail.<!-- --><p>As for cats, their psychology seems pretty opaque, even to alleged experts. This is one of the reasons I hunt down and remove nonsensical promotional claims in our cat breed articles about intelligence and behavior. If they're ever sourced at all, it's always to material in cat magazines and their websites written by breeders trying to promote the breed they are selling, never to [[ethology]] reliable sources on animal behavior and intelligence. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 23:48, 4 May 2025 (UTC)</p>
::::::::::::Thanks for the video upload platforms — you never know when they might come in handy. I've been using Google a lot, and for Zoom  there's space that comes with a Pro account.  Protonmail also has storage space; I too use that company for additional e-mail and storage. The security seems excellent.
::::::::::::As for cats, I often think they are much less opaque than they're reputed to be. Having lost count long ago of all the furballs with whom I've had the pleasure of companionship over my lifetime, I feel rather "on" to the little rascals. I think they just like to pretend they're opaque. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 13:15, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

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== Up for it? ==

If you're up for it, SMcC, I have a few more tricky reference formatting questions from the same article I've been working on. I've posted them on two JPGs at that wonderful new storage site you gave me.

'''Links:''' <nowiki>https://ibb.co/xtnz57R8</nowiki>      and     <nowiki>https://ibb.co/LDsrZrLf</nowiki> [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 19:12, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
:Okay.
:#Citations go after punctuation. Exceptions would be A) dash used as divider of parenthetical comment from rest of sentence<sup>[1]</sup>&nbsp;– like this&nbsp;– and B) when the citation pertains to something within a bracketed parenthetical but not the entire parenthetical (as in this<sup>[2]</sup> followed by that<sup>[3]</sup>), whereas if you do (this instead),<sup>[4]</sup> it indicates that the 4th citation is a source for the entire bracketed parenthetical segment.
:#What role someone played with regard to whom in an awards-making process isn't really citation data. We would not cite the award, which is not a source, but an article, web page, or press release about the awards. What role the subject played in the award-granting process could be noted in free-form text after the closing <code><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code> of the citation template and before he closing <code><nowiki></ref></nowiki></code> of the citation; or if quoting its wording diretly, in {{para|quote}} in the citation template. This is basically the same situation as citing the programme of a stage production as evidence of who played what character. These people (actors, and assessors of potential awardees) did not [that you know of] write or co-write the source you are citing, so are not authors or otherwise involved parties in it as a citation. I.e., don't confuse content with authorship because both may involve named humans.
:#If you see a message starting "CS1 maint" after a citation, it means something in the citation is broken, redundant, or at least should be checked. In the case you highlighted, "CS1 maint: URL status" means that {{para|url-status}} has been used wrongly (e.g. putting {{para|url-status|live}} in there when not also using {{para|archive-url}}, or has been used with a status code like {{para|url-status|unfit}} which indicates a source that should be replaced or at very least have an {{para|archive-url}} to a version that was not unfit.
:#Interviews are done with {{tlx|cite interview}} which has separate parameters for interviewee(s) and interviewer(s). And yes, they should be done this way so that readers know if it an interview and thus a primary source.
:#I would have to see the ↲ arrow in the context in which you found it to be certain what it means there.
:#Any automated tool is apt to fail on complex data. But why was that citation not simply put in one of our pre-existing citation templates instead of formatted manually? Some errors on it are: no space between date-as-found and date-as-originally-published; using single-quotes around the title of the minor work (article) instead of double-quotes; not italicizing the major work title. The automated tool you tried might have hit on something though; it seems to have identified the source you are citing as a publication named ''Learning and Creativity – Silhouette''. I can't check, because you provided these questions experimentally as an image, and I can't click on any of the links. So, cute experiment, but not one to repeat. Anyway, you were prompted to use the automated tool probably just because it's a manual citation instead of a templated one.
:#I don't know what you mean by Indian/British vs. US "formatting". If you mean using single-quotes instead of double-quotes, don't do that, per [[MOS:QUOTEMARKS]]. WP universally uses double-quotes (except for special purposes enumerated at [[MOS:SINGLE]]), because they are distinct from apostrophes. Various British publishers are moving to that convention, too, for the same reason (double-quotes are increasingly common British news). If you mean some other alleged Ind./Brit. vs US distinction, you'll have to specify what you mean.
:#It's not required to indicate that an author sharing the same surname as the article subject isn't related to the subject, but it is arguably a good idea just for reader peace of mind (e.g. the reader is more certain that the source being cited isn't primary or interest-conflicted). This is best noted in free-form text after the closing <code><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code> of the citation template and before he closing <code><nowiki></ref></nowiki></code> of the citation.
:#Don't use "n.d." for a source that was dated in the original but for which you can't find the date due to having a partial/bad copy. "N.d." means "no date" or "not dated" but there is (somewhere) a date and it was originally dated. For something like this, just use {{para|date}} left empty so someone with access to full text of the original can fill it in later. If you're sure of the year, you can just use the year, e.g. {{para|date|2020}}. If you're not quite sure of the year but can guesstimate it pretty closely, something like {{para|date|c. 2020}} can be used as better than nothing (but don't try to put a range in it with "c.", or another CS1 maintenance message will appear). If you didn't get the article via the original company but from some other publication (e.g. a website quoting it or showing a screenshot of it), then you'd [[WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT|need to indicate where you got this from]]; {{para|via}} can be used for that.
:<span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
::Much appreciate such a quick reply. Before I respond to your comments, though, I'd like to share some new things I've learned about that form I told you we use in the VE, because it will be directly relevant to how I reply. 
::A few days ago, my mentor posed me what you might call a quiz question to see if I could figure out why his sandbox edits don't appear on his User page edits.  After three tries, I had to wave a white flag. He explained that what he does is copy the text version of articles from the SE version of Wiki articles, work on them in an offline text editor, then copy his work back into the SE version of the article in Wikipedia. When he sent me a markup copy of the article I'm working on in my sandbox, it was quite an eye-opener because from seeing material very familiar to me I could understand that my references looked as if they'd been set up individually in the SE even though I'd used the VE. In other words, I saw individual citation template coding around each reference. 
::At this, you as an SE user will no doubt shrug, stare, and say, "And so ...?" But for me, this was a conceptual as well as practical breakthrough! I suddenly realized that the VE citation form I'd been using was nothing more than a menu to bring up the most common citation templates from which to choose for the citation at hand. I never thought of how citations are done in the VE as the same (at least, "underneath") as how they're done in the SE. I'm not sure I'd have had this flash of insight if my mentor hadn't sent ''my own work'' to me in a text version.
::Now I can relate far more easily to advice like you and others have given me in the past about citation coding. Although some of the coding won't be available on the VE citation form, I understand that for those occasional times I can go into the SE and use the coding I need for the citation without having to stay in the SE permanently. I'll just have to get more familiar with what the citation template options are.
::All that said, I'll go on soon to pick up on a few of your comments that I need just a little more clarity on. I hope you'll find all our exchanges of use to you as an MOS mentor with others who, like me, favor the VE because now you probably see better where we might be coming from and what could help in similar situations.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 06:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
:::I've replied to your feedback within my original file pages, using a contrasting font. Doing that increased the number of pages from two to four. Links:  
:::(hopefully, page 1)   <nowiki>https://ibb.co/9HxHrdpd</nowiki> 
:::(hopefully, page 2)   <nowiki>https://ibb.co/NdH29s6Y</nowiki>
:::(hopefully, page 3)   <nowiki>https://ibb.co/zTYvbtWd</nowiki>
:::(hopefully, page 4)   <nowiki>https://ibb.co/qLpgfF8n</nowiki> [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 17:45, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
::::It's not practical to keep doing this with images. I can't click on links or copy-paste text from them. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:47, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::Agreed, and it's been tough to set the pages up as images; but you didn't want to use e-mail. Maybe I can try to use an alternate sandbox. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 02:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::No, that's not the answer either.😞 [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 03:09, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::Yes, it is after all! [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAugnablik%2Fsandbox2&wvprov=sticky-header Here's the link], if you're still "up for it."
:::::::I'm thrilled to have come up with this to give not just you but also anyone else a way to see "real-live text" I need to discuss without actually going into the "production sandbox." The reason I thought earlier that it wouldn't work was because I wouldn't be able to copy/paste images and circle or highlight text to draw a reader's attention, as is possible in a word processor. But I found pretty good workarounds. 🎉 [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 09:41, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::SMcC, if you followed the link I sent you at the previous time stamping, please refresh the page. I ran into a lot of unexpected formatting gremlins, especially line spacing issues. All but one spacing issue is now resolved, and it won't be a problem for you. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 11:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::Have you been able to work with the page to which I transferred my earlier questions to make it easier for you (I hoped)? Perhaps this little fellow can be of assistance (scroll down the page a tad): 
::::::::https://cat9984.com/2021/07/24/letters-to-the-editor/ [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 06:01, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::Will go over it when I get a chance; have a lot going on right now. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:26, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::I understand how that can happen, as I'm suddenly in the same boat.  [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 10:01, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::@[[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]], any chances opening up in the foreseeable future? [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 11:37, 31 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::::::Probably not for a week or so due to off-site projects of some importance to me. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:35, 5 June 2025 (UTC)
::::::::::::Okay … I'd begun to worry that I'd misstepped somehow and ended up in the doghouse. [[User:Augnablik|Augnablik]] ([[User talk:Augnablik|talk]]) 04:49, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

== Nomination for merger of [[Template:Wikicite]] ==
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== Books & Bytes – Issue 68 ==

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr"> <div style = "font-size: 1.5em; margin: 0 100px"> [[File:Bookshelf.jpg|right|175px]]</div> <div style = "line-height: 1.2"> <span style="font-size: 2em; font-family: Copperplate, 'Copperplate Gothic Light', serif">'''The Wikipedia Library''': ''Books & Bytes''</span><br /> Issue 68, March–April 2025 </div> <div style = "margin-top: 1.5em; border: 3px solid #ae8c55; border-radius: .5em; padding: 1em 1.5em; font-size: 1.2em"> 
In this issue we highlight two resource renewals, #EveryBookItsReader, a note about Phabricator, and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.
<big>'''[[:m:The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/March–April 2025|Read the full newsletter]]'''</big> </div> </div> <small>Sent by [[m:User:MediaWiki message delivery|MediaWiki message delivery]] on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:18, 13 May 2025 (UTC)</small>
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=== Feedback request: Biographies request for comment ===
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== Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment ==
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<!--[[File:Internet-group-chat.svg|48px|left|alt=|link=]]-->Your feedback is requested &#32;at [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#rfc_751DD76|'''Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums'''&#32; on a "Media, the arts, and architecture" request for comment]]. Thank you for helping out!<br/><small>You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of [[WP:FRS|Feedback Request Service]] subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by [[WP:FRS|removing your name]].</small> <!-- Template:FRS notification --><div class="paragraphbreak" style="margin-top:0.5em"></div> Message delivered to you with love by [[User:Yapperbot|Yapperbot]] :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact [[User talk:Naypta|my bot operator]]. &#124; Sent at  16:31, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

== Arkady Volozh reminder ==
{{Resolved|1=Handled by InfiniteNexus instead. Thanks! <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 20:29, 5 June 2025 (UTC)}}
Hi SMcCandlish, 
While we waiting for your collaboration, another editor came in and shut down our request:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arkady_Volozh#Career_section_restructure. I'm not sure what this editor means when he says that there was no consensus, because it did seem like we were close to accomplishing this goal. Do you mind coming back in and implementing the edits as we discussed? I know that you're busy, and I really appreciate the time and effort that you put in to align the language with Wikipedia guidelines. [[User:Wikigracht|Wikigracht]] ([[User talk:Wikigracht|talk]]) 21:15, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
:Will look into it when I get a chance; my WP time is very limited of late. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:26, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

== Articles for Creation backlog drive ==

<div style="border: 2px solid #484898; background-color:#98FB98; padding: 1ex 1ex 1ex 1.5ex; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em; color: black;">
[[Image:AFC-Logo.svg|75px|right]]
Hello SMcCandlish: 

'''[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation|WikiProject Articles for creation]]''' is holding a '''month long [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/June 2025 Backlog Drive|Backlog Drive]] in June!'''<br />
The goal of this drive is to '''reduce''' the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 1 month of outstanding reviews from the current 3+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 June 2025 through 30 June 2025.

You may find [[:Category:AfC pending submissions by age]] or [[:Category:Pending AfC submissions|other categories and sorting]] helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.<br />
There is a backlog of over {{Rounddown|{{formatnum:3,205|R}}|-2}} pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! [[User:MediaWiki message delivery|MediaWiki message delivery]] ([[User talk:MediaWiki message delivery|talk]]) 00:25, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
*<small>If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for Creation/Mailing list|the mailing list]] or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add [[:Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery]] to your user talk page.</small>
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== Special:WantedTemplates ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
Hi, I have been cleaning up [[Special:WantedTemplates]] and your script page is transcluding [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite ...|Template:Cite ...]].  This is due to a quirk in the backend software thinking that your script page is transcluding this template, even if the text is inside of a string.  It would be great if you could add <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript>
// <nowiki>
</syntaxhighlight> near the top your script page, and <syntaxhighlight lang=javascript>
// </nowiki>
</syntaxhighlight> near the bottom of your script page.  This won't impact the functionality because the {{tag|nowiki}} are inside of javascript comments, but it will prevent the backend software from parsing your javascript page as wikitext.  You will know if it worked if [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite ...]] no longer shows your script page. Thanks! [[User:Plastikspork|Plastikspork]] [[User talk:Plastikspork|<sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ</sub><sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)</sup>]] 20:07, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
:{{ping|Plastikspork}} Good idea. Done. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:22, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

== May thanks ==
{{User QAIbox
| image = Yellow roses, Johannisberg.jpg
| image_upright = 0.8
| bold = [[User:Gerda Arendt/Top|story]] · [[User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music|music]] · [[User:Gerda Arendt/Places and songs 2025#3 May|places]]
}}
Thank you for improving article quality in May. One of mine was [[Jadwiga Rappé]]. -- [[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 18:20, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

[[Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau]], born 100 years ago, [[User:Gerda Arendt/Stories#28 May|described by Alan Blyth]] --[[User:Gerda Arendt|Gerda Arendt]] ([[User talk:Gerda Arendt|talk]]) 19:56, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

== Sporting nationality ==

This is an FYI that even though I am primarily a gnome and template editor, I created an article for [[sporting nationality]] earlier this year. You [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sports/Archive_8#Major_missing_aritcle|noticed in 2018]] that we needed one. Four years before that, it should have been clear during [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Icons/Archive_14#RfC|this 2014 RFC]] that an article was needed. I noticed the same need [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Icons/Archive_17#What_am_I_missing_about_MOS:SPORTFLAG?|in late 2024]], had a bit of time on my hands, and created the article to help clarify some murky MOS language. Feel free to expand the article. Also pinging {{U|Primefac}} and {{U|Sportsfan 1234}}. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 12:51, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
:Neat. [[User:Primefac|Primefac]] ([[User talk:Primefac|talk]]) 23:17, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
:{{ping|Jonesey95}} Nice gap-fill! It's weird that we were missing such an article for so long, given the prominence of sports (and nationalism) in modern society. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 07:24, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::I was surprised that nobody had created at least a stub, given the high quality of the editors who noticed the void. I'm sure I have said the same thing many times about pages or templates in the past: "We really need this!" before walking away to work on something more fun. In this case, it is quite satisfying to get notifications about people linking to the page naturally while editing pages, as if it had always existed. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 12:24, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
:::How do you get such notifications? Not a feature I'd heard of (somehow). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:27, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::::I get a notification any time someone links to an article that I have created. The preference is called "Page link" at [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo]]. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 15:31, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::Oh, rats. I was really hoping it was a new page-specific feature. I create such a river of redirects and stuff that getting a notice for every link to every page I created would be a firehose. But it would be hot to track links to some specific newly created articles, or (for cleanup) to pages to which people shouldn't link (e.g. common misspellings). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 15:37, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::You can mute notifications for links to a given page when you receive one. As far as I can tell, it's an opt-out system for each page that you have created rather than opt-in, and I don't think there is a way to get access to the list so that you can limit it to just the ones you want to get notifications for. You might get a storm of link notifications at first, but if you diligently mute the ones you don't care about, it might end up being a helpful feature for you. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 16:01, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::::Ah! I might try that, if/when I get back to where I have more time for WP stuff, since that kind of winnowing might be a bit of a chore. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:11, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

== Anthologies ==

See [[:Category:Album articles with non-standard infoboxes|this error report]], where those albums are going to appear as errors until something else gets cleaned up. ---<span style="font-family: Calibri">[[User:doomsdayer520|<b style="color:#9932CC"><small>DOOMSDAYER</small>520</b>]]<small> ([[User talk:Doomsdayer520|TALK]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/Doomsdayer520|CONTRIBS]]) </small></span> 15:05, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
:&lt;Shrug&gt; The tail doesn't wag the dog. It's more important to present non-ambiguous text to readers than to try to please different, conflicting camps of gnomish editors who don't coordinate enough. It's not my fault that someone designed that parameter to accept wikitext input (and they did, carefully, or attempting to do it would fail) and to also accept specific-function "magic" words, while someone else built error-tracking stuff that only took account of the latter functionality of the parameter. While what I'm doing in its specifics can be replaced (as suggested at [[Template talk:Infobox album]]) by adding an "anthology" magic keyword so {{para|type|anthology}} results in output of "[[Anthology album]] by ...", that's not going to do anything to resolve the bigger problem here, which is an error category being created for things that are not errors (or only something might be, e.g. misspellings like "relaesed" or "cmpilation"). I would think the compromise is tracking results as errors only if they neither match pre-defined keywords nor link to something else manually, if we don't want people putting arbitrary strings in there without linking to something pertinent. Another approach might be to seek consensus at the template talk page to revoke the first half of the parameter's functionality and accept nothing but a set of predefined keywords. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 15:23, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

== Thank you for your contribution : )  ==

Hi {{user|SMcCandlish}}, I just wanted to drop a note here saying thanks for your contributions to the sources review for the Femosphere article ''(way to turn your tooth pain into some sort of gain)''; thanks also for highlighting the gender skew in editing feminism-related articles ''(I am a human in woman form, also a social scientist)''. I have some of the other sources that weren't summarized yet, so I may barnacle those on to your review, but mostly I just wanted to say thanks.

[[User:HairlessPolarBear|HairlessPolarBear]] ([[User talk:HairlessPolarBear|talk]]) 22:23, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
:Most welcome. :-)  Once I get ahold of something I tend to plow through a lot of stuff, esp. if it's serving to distract me from something unpleasant. Heh. Anyway, I hope that "dump" can actually lead someone[s] to develop a proper outline then a proper article. Seems worth the encyclopedic coverage, but done proper-like. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:21, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
::{{user|SMcCandlish}} I agree it should exist! It looks as though some of the POV, unsourced and previously removed claims ''(and some new ones) ''have been added back in by an IP user. I'm going to tag some spots and continue building on your mini lit review groundwork!
::[[User:HairlessPolarBear|HairlessPolarBear]] ([[User talk:HairlessPolarBear|talk]]) 10:44, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
:Given multiple rounds of consensus against it, at least a lot of that stuff could be simply deleted again without further ado, and the page locked at [[WP:RFPP]] against IP edits for a while, since the person who didn't get their way is clearly not going to stop, from one address or another, until more strongly discouraged. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 13:15, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

== Good article reassessment for [[Roman Republic]] ==
{{Disregard|Already procedurally closed (needed to be a [[WP:GAN]] not a [[WP:GAR]]).}}
[[Roman Republic]] has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the [[Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Roman Republic/1|reassessment page]]. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.  —[[User talk:GoldRingChip|GoldRingChip]] 21:29, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

== Just for the record ==

Putting this here rather than in the middle of an ANI where it's not pertinent.

{{U|The Bushranger}} has claimed that capitalizing the common (vernacular) names of bird species is "{{tq|the common useage in non-casual publications/scientific useage}}. This has repeatedly been demonstrated to be incorrect, throughout the many various long and tedious discussions that led up to the [[WP:BIRDCON]] result (RfC concluding that [[MOS:LIFE]]'s instruction to put lifeforms' vernacular names in lower-case, except where they contain a proper name like "Madagascar" or "Grevy's", does not have some magical exception for birds).

In actuality, nearly no peer-reviewed zoology, biology, or general science journals permit the capitalization of bird (or other) species' vernacular names, including when they run ornithology articles. Nor usually do other sorts of publications that WP cares about, like newspapers, other encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. The capitalization habit is almost entirely confined to ornithology/ornithoscopy specialist publications.

That is, the split is not "scientific" versus "casual" usage at all; it's ornithologists/-scopists writing specialist material for other specialists narrowly within that speciality, versus nearly all other usage by everyone everywhere in all publications, including formal science papers on ornithology in broader-scope journals. The capitalization is found also in casual as well as scientific material, within the same specialist sphere (namely public-audience field guides for bird-spotting, and amateur ornithoscopy websites and magazines; they picked it up from ornithology journals).

The reason that over-capitalized style exists at all is obvious: it's a form of shorthand for use in a specialized context. If you are an ornithologist reading ornithology material, you understand from long exposure to such material that the capitals are {{em|signifying}} something very specific, that the phrase capitalized identifies a species or subspecies. Because so many bird names sound generically descriptive, this is a convenient way in highly compressed material to avoid having to write something like "the yellow-headed bandersnatch species" or "''Bandersnaticus flavocapitus'' (yellow-headed bandersnatch)" or "yellow-headed bandersnatch (''Bandersnaticus flavocapitus''), when {{em|in that particular context and for that specific audience}} "the Yellow-headed Bandersnatch" will do (to distinguish from a meaning of "any specimen in the bandersnatch genus that happens to have a yellow head"). The exact same reasoning is also applied in some branches of botany and some other zoology disciplines, including herpetology. But again: in specialist publications.

None of that reasoning has any pertinence to our writing here. Wikipedia is not a specialist publication, and it is not possible at all to "signify" something specific to our readers (from the widest array of backgrounds there can be) by employing capital letters in non-standardized ways (i.e. for anything other than identification of things near-universally treated as proper names like "Julius Caesar" and "the Pacific Ocean", and for other things near-universally given in capitals, like most acronyms/initialisms). This is why [[MOS:SIGCAPS]] exists. Even if [[MOS:LIFE]] were deleted, we {{em|still}} would not over-capitalize bird vernacular names, per SIGCAPS. And per the lead of [[MOS:CAPS]] itself, since bird vernacular names are not capitalized in the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, only in ornithoscopy/-ology specialist publications. Because our audience generally lacks the professional or deep-hobbyist background to recognize hundreds or thousands of bird names, WP {{em|does}} need to write out in long form, at first occurrence in an article, something like "the yellow-headed bandersnatch species" or "''Bandersnaticus flavocapitus'' (yellow-headed bandersnatch)" or "yellow-headed bandersnatch (''Bandersnaticus flavocapitus''), at least with regard to species with names that can be mistaken for individual-specimen descriptions. (Ditto for such names in other sectors, like various salamanders, and so on.)

I'm surprised that I need to go over this again, in pretty much the same terms, once or twice per year. But I do, because someone seemingly inevitably will pop up with the old saw that WP not writing in "Yellow-headed Bandersnatch" style (or "Yellow-Headed Bandersnatch" or "Yellowheaded Bandersnatch" – the proponents of this stuff, both on- and off-site, cannot actually agree on the style!) is somehow "anti-scientific", "amateur-looking", "unprofessional", "against reliable sources", and similar notions which turn out to be patently false. So, I'm writing this out in long form here to save for future reference instead of having to do it fresh each time.  What's happening with this stuff is the inverse version of the [[Dunning–Kruger effect]]: specialists have a marked tendency to assume, even insist, that what they know from immersion in their speciality is common knowledge, when it is not, and that how they write about such things is how everyone will expect and understand it, which of course is rarely actually the case. Cf. also [[WP:Specialized-style fallacy]].

PS: For anyone who cares to wade through the many years of debate and disruption generated over this "bird capitalization" stuff, I have catalogued the majority of it at [[WP:BIRDCAPSDRAMA]]. It's a tawdry mess, and probably best forgotten. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 23:01, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

== Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service ==
{{Resbox|Done|all of them}}
<!--[[File:Internet-group-chat.svg|48px|left|alt=|link=]]-->Your feedback is requested &#32;at [[Talk:Serbia#rfc_5D3FCE1|'''Talk:Serbia'''&#32; on a "Society, sports, and culture" request for comment]],  and &#32;at [[Talk:Rajiv Gandhi#rfc_D2B8875|'''Talk:Rajiv Gandhi'''&#32; on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment]],  and &#32;at [[Talk:T. V. S. N. Prasad#rfc_097F4FE|'''Talk:T. V. S. N. Prasad'''&#32; on a "Biographies" request for comment]],  and &#32;at [[Talk:Opinion polling for the 2025 Polish presidential election#rfc_9F40A7F|'''Talk:Opinion polling for the 2025 Polish presidential election'''&#32; on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment]]. Thank you for helping out!<br/><small>You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of [[WP:FRS|Feedback Request Service]] subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by [[WP:FRS|removing your name]].</small> <!-- Template:FRS notification --><div class="paragraphbreak" style="margin-top:0.5em"></div> Message delivered to you with love by [[User:Yapperbot|Yapperbot]] :) &#124; Is this wrong? Contact [[User talk:Naypta|my bot operator]]. &#124; Sent at  13:45, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

== Featured article review for J. K. Rowling ==
{{Resbox|Done}}
[[User:Adam Cuerden]] has nominated [[J. K. Rowling]] for a [[Wikipedia:Featured article review/J. K. Rowling/archive4|featured article review here]]. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the [[Wikipedia:What is a featured article?|featured article criteria]]. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are [[Wikipedia:Featured article review|here]].<!--Template:FARMessage--> [[User:MediaWiki message delivery|MediaWiki message delivery]] ([[User talk:MediaWiki message delivery|talk]]) 13:30, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
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