User talk:BrownHairedGirl

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This talk page was last edited (diff) on 23 December 2021 at 22:12 by Chilling out and relaxing (talk • contribs • logs)

Link rot

Hi. I think the threshold (for your AWB script) is too low. To my eye, adding a large cleanup tag (which suggests the entire article needs cleanup from link rot) is a "cure" that is worse than the disease. When (for example) just one out of 125 references has a minor issue. Or one of 50 odd refs. Or similar. While a "link rot reduction" goal is laudable, I'm not sure tagging hundreds of articles for cleanup (many of which are otherwise not suffering from material cleanup issues) is necessarily advancing that goal. Guliolopez (talk) 01:27, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Guliolopez, I had seen you fixing some of the tagged pages, so thanks for your good work. I had seen some of your edit summaries (e.g. [1]), and was thinking about leaving a note for you.

I considered the idea of a threshold, and discarded it for several reasons:

1. Complexity. AWB is relatively crude in its filtering abilities, with extra levels of filtering requiring custom modules which take a lot more programming, with a higher risk of error. So the most reliable way to avoid false positives is to keep it simple, by using my current filter which catches one or more bare URLs: <ref[^>]*?>\s*https?:[^>< \|\[\]]+\s*<\s*/\s*ref
   (I think that produces a small number of false negatives, but I am not worried about that).
2. Defining a threshold. Anything related to the number of refs is a non-starter, because both the ref count and the bare URL count are not available to AWB. They could be determined only by running a complex custom module, which I don't trust myself to do reliably.
   Using only a URL count would be misleading, because that would give the same answer on a page which 3 refs were all bare links as on a page whose 100 refs included 3 bare links.
3. Small numbers are easier to fix. In the cases you mention where there is only one bare URL, I can see how a tag may seem disproportionate. I am unsure about that view generally, because it seems to me that tags exist to identify problems, and that if we apply a proportionality test before tagging, we risk not marking problems.
   So my view for now is the tag is still helpful, because if he problem is small it can be easily cleared and the tag removed.
   Fundamentally, Wikipedia is a work-in-progress, and I for one value deeply the fact that we flag up problems on the face of an article rather than for example hiding them on the talk page. I regard that as an important transparency measure which should be more widely replicated elsewhere, e.g. in newspapers.
4. Tag size. Yes, cleanup tags are all too big and clumsy, but that's an issue for elsewhere. I can only work with the tags as they are.
   However, your message prompted me to do some burrowing, and I see that there is a {{Bare URL inline}}, and I think that it may be possible to incorporate that into my currently methodology. What would you think of that?

I should stress that this is all experimental. AFAIK, there has previously been no systematic tagging of linkrot issues, so that many links had rotted for years. Working on a series of Indian articles, I found that bare URLs were widespread, so I wrote a wee script to allow one-click tagging thereof. But even that seemed laborious against the scale of the problem, so I started experimenting with AWB tagging.

That seemed to work, so I decided to try some mass tagging and see how the community took to it. Some editors like to be able to clear the current month cleanup category, so I am doing an end-of-month run to load up Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021, and leave June to be free of mass-tagging.

I have another three thousand or so articles lined up to scan and possibly tag, and on experience so far I guesstimate that will amount to 1,000 to 1,500 more tags. Then I will be done for the month, and I won't restart before the end of next month, all subject to more discussion.

Thanks again for your thoughts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:20, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Guliolopez: I have just tested {{Bare URL inline}} on Kilmichael Ambush. See this edit,[2] where the inline tag replaces the bulky top-of page {{Cleanup bare URLs}}.

What do you think of that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi.

RE: "Wikipedia is a work-in-progress". Indeed. That is a given. To the extent that practically every article on the project could be tagged in some way. But that would be disruptive and not really representative of "responsible tagging". Personally I see more issues (than value) in tagging 1000 to 1500 articles with the same broad tag.

RE: "there is a {{Bare URL inline}} (and it works with the AWB script)" . If the goal is to highlight issues (such that follow-on editors or bots can more readily address specific issues), then that would seem a more balanced solution. And sounds good (certainly much better than broad article-level tags) to me.

Cheers. Guliolopez (talk) 02:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Just passing by and noting this conversation as several pages on my watchlist are being hit as well and I was wondering if there was a bot to smack. I'm grunting as I've ReFill didn't work for me though a manual archive lookup did. (I usually use ReFill2 by adding {{Cleanup bare URLs}} and taking the link from the Preview screen without saving). In all events please respond to the person on the talk page of {{Cleanup bare URLs}} who champions its use in all cases. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark: I haven't really tested ReFill2 myself, but I note that it seems to require a skilled driver. Those who just whack save on it can produce ugly results.

I looked at Template talk:Cleanup bare URLs, but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Cleanup_bare_URLs&action=history shows no posts since Feb, and I am not going to trawl the page loking for whoeover you might have been referring to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Apologies,: heaven knows what I was looking at.Djm-leighpark (talk) 14:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Guliolopez: I am not much persuaded by WP:OVERTAG and WP:RESPTAG. Both are just essays, and while they have some good points, they are in many places far too restrictive for my tastes.

However, I was able to adapt my AWB set up to use {{Bare URL inline}}. This has the advantage of visibly marking each of the bare URLs with [bare url], which editors can search for in the page. That makes cleanup a lot easier, and also resolves your concern about the prominence of the top-of-page tag. I have now tagged about 1800 articles in this way, and hope to do at least as many again before my self-imposed deadline of midnight GMT today.

BTW, this phase of the list-making process has been interesting, because my diff window shows where the inline tags are being applied to each article, which allow me to make a rough tally at a glance. Overall, about 10% of the articles I have scanned needed a bare URL tag, which is lower than I expected. However, the bare URL rate varies significantly by type of article. Landforms are usually free of them, but popular culture topics (football, musicians) have a much higher rate, while an alarmingly high number of articles on Irish town and villages appear to have been spray-painted with bare URLs.

Of course the number may be different on other types of topic or other geographical areas, but that's my take from my scan of this is set of pretty much everything in Ireland+Scotland+Wales+UK politics.

Thanks again for your help in poking me to a better way of doing this.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:49, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Well it's working to the extent that I've now resolved the bare URLs in Dorothy Dunnett and Garelet Dod from my watchlist - but I'll be watching my watchlist expecting to see (and fix, if I'm in the mood) a slew of grotty results from Refill2, which some editors use to create ugly and unhelpful "references". Seems a useful project, anyway- good luck. PamD 14:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, PamD. That's kinda how I was hoping this might work: that some editors would pick up on articles in their watchlists, and fix them, while others might see the tags when they visit a page.

  I agree about the poor quality of too many uses of Refil2. It's one of those tools which usually seems to produce results on a spectrum from "needs some polishing" to "compete junk" ... but sadly some editors seem to just blindly save its first suggestion, which can lead to refs mangled into complete garbage. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it be nice if there was something to try to deter people from adding bare URLs! Either at the stage of saving the edit, like the "did you really mean not to add an edit summary?" I get, or the red error messages from some sorts of citation errors, or a message on the user talk page like the one for linking to a disambiguation page. People might just get weary of being hit with that message repeatedly, and change their ways? On the other hand, I suppose they might create really rubbish refs as "not a bare URL"s, to suppress the message but still without offering a sensible reference for the poor reader. Ah well. :::That's an interesting analysis of the correlation between bare URLs and subject areas, above. I got worried when the bare URL in Garelet Dod was to a thesis on hill names, and thought it might have been used umpteen times (there are a lot of hill articles), and checked the editor's contributions at that date and time, quite expecting to see a long stream of similar edits, but was relieved to find it was a one-off - an editor responding to "Needs more refs" tags, I think. Thanks for all your work! PamD 17:16, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

"Slapping"

If you know that there is a problem that needs fixing, why do you not fix it? To be true, this slapping of templates is just putting me off from fixing the. The Banner talk 21:39, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I refer the honourable member The Banner to the reply I wrote yesterday[3] to @Sevenseaocean. See above at #Bare URLs tagging comment. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

With other words: you have no intent to solve the problems and you are only slapping templates. Very demotivating. The Banner talk 22:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

AGF, please The Banner, and don't twist my words into a meaning opposite of what I clearly meant.

I fix lots of bare URLs and other malformed refs. However, I can do so at a rate of about 30 per hour, whereas I can use AWB to tag them at a rate of about 1000 per hour. The tags help in several ways for other editors to identify the problem, so me spending a few hours tagging is a big contribution to solving the problem. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:48, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think slapping down 1000 templates an hour is solving anything. Contrary, seeing your whole watchlist passing by is very demotivating. I doubt if anyone is now getting enthusiastic about solving those bare links. The Banner talk 00:15, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

@The Banner: I find it disheartening that so many rotting links exist as bare URLs. You, however, express concern solely about the fact that problem being identified and marked. That seems to me to be an ostrich approach.

It is clear that we clearly disagree fundamentally about the utility of the inline cleanup templates. I see only three possible bases for your objection:

1. That you think cleanup tags as a class are not helpful. If that is your view, then open a WP:RFC to propose their abolition. If the cleanup tags are all abolished, then our discussion here will be moot.
2. That unlike other cleanup tags, this particular cleanup tag ({{Bare URL inline}}) does not help in solving the problem of bare URLs. If that is your view, then take the template to WP:TFD. If the template is deleted, then our discussion here will be moot.
3. That there is some manner in which I am applying this cleanup tag incorrectly to each page. I followed the instructions, but I am human so cannot guarantee to have avoided errors. If you think that I have misapplied it, then please take one or more of my edits as an example, and explain how you believe that how that edit should should have been done.

But apart from those three points, I see no reason to continue our exchange. I have no interest in any further rhetorical statements about "slapping" templates, so please stop that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

No surprise that you prefer to walk away from this discussion. The Banner talk 06:53, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Is it solving the problem, though? I mean, my watchlist is very full now of articles you've tagged from yesterday and today, and I'm not going to go through any of them to fix them. I might look for the extra info if I come across an inline bare URL tag in a section I end up editing, but I'm not gonna go "Oh, here's some work to do, yay!" Though I do appreciate there are people who may well do that. Regardless, though - people keep on adding bare URLs as references, and will continue to do so. Would editors' time be better served by doing something about the cause of the problem, for example? You go to save an edit with a bare url reference, you get a popup warning you it's a bare URL and requesting more data. Or the popup prevents you from saving at all until you've fixed the problem or removed the bare URL. Regards, Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Ah - I see PamD already proposed the same thing! Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:30, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Bastun: I think we agree about the purpose of this cleanup tag. It facilitates action by anyone who wants to fix bare URLs. If editors don't want to fix bare URLs, then they are under no obligation to do so, just as they are not in any way obliged to respond to the requests for expansion on any of the 2,332,761 stub articles. In both cases, WP:NOTCOMPULSORY.

A problem like bare URLs rarely has a single solution. As I see it, a solution to this problem has three elements:

1. Identifying existing bare URLs, to facilitate cleanup. My tagging run is a part of that.
2. Fixing existing bare URLs. I do lots of that, but I wish it was less time-consuming, and wish that the Refill tool was not so often used to generate carp. We need more people to work on the cleanup, and better tools.
3. Slowing or stopping the creation of bare URL refs. There are various possible approaches, including technical measures such as a bare URL equivalent of the bot that posts a note on yout talk if you create a link to a dab page. But the more nagging that the technology does, the more likely that editors will just devise workarounds which confuse the bot, but just make the problems harder to identify, like this addition a short word "miaow") after the bare URL:
   <ref>http://example.com miaow</ref>
   That's the point which PamD picked up on below, and it's the same reason that the mediawiki software never requires an edit summary, and only gives a reminder if you opt in to ask for a reminder. Yes, the software could require a certain number of symbols or words as an edit summary, but without a huge AI effort it couldn't require a meaningful and useful summary. So the effect would be to just trigger a flurry of useless or misleading edit summaries, which be worse than nothing.

Anyway, I am working on tasks 1 & 2: tagging some bare URLs, and fixing some. If you want to work on another angle, then more power to you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:02, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

For some reason I became interested in this discussion, followed it until the end, and was impressed by the Wikipedia:Civility of both editors, each of whom had something worthwhile to say. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 00:12, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Civil, perhaps, but snide is also corrosive, as in No surprise that you prefer to walk away from this discussion. just above. I think I would be more ^comfortable with more^ blatantly uncivil and less snide. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 01:10, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Citation template without title?

Thank you for tagging bare-urls. Your method is okay, but there is an alternative that's worth considering. Instead of slapping a {{Bare URL inline}} at the end of the reference, you could enclose the bare-url within {{Cite web|url=}}. It has a few advantages. Considering that the overwhelming majority of articles use the CS1 citation style, most of these bare-urls are going to end up within a {{Cite web}} template anyway. Using the template at this point would help to ensure that the article will consistently use CS1 templates when someone will show up to fill the reference with more detail. Adding {{Cite web}} will produce a visible error tag and also place the article in Category:CS1 errors: bare URL. Unlike {{Bare URL inline}}, which needs to be manually removed, the error tag in {{Cite web}} will be automatically removed when someone adds a |title= parameter with text. The only (less than trivial) downside is that not all articles use CS1 or even citation templates of any kind, which is fine, so one needs to check if this is the case before tagging this way. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:08, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for those ideas, @Finnusertop.

I can see the utility of what you propose, by providing a step in the right direction rather than just a warning. However, I am not going to adopt it because:

AWB user being carried to an evacuation helicopter

1. AWB is quite dumb. It's basically just a pattern-matching tool where the user can set actions based on patterns. It doesn't know things like which citation styles are in use (and i don't see how it could reliably detect them) ... and without that detection, an assumption of CS1 will be a screw up some of the time. Such screwups cause major headaches for everyone and land the AWB operator in a world of pain.
   For example, on Monday I tagged bare URl refs on over 8,000 articles. If there was even a 1% error rate ('cos 1% of those pages used a ref system other than CS1), then 80 articles would have been damaged ... so I would now be busy trying to a) identify and fix the errors; b) respond to a flurry of angry posts on my talk; c) deal with a storm at ANI.
   Been there, got that blood-stained t-shirt. It usually means a whole day of stress. No way.
2. Deliberate error. Your proposal amounts to a providing a step in the right direction, but as you note it will create a CS1 error on every page, by design. Using AWB to deliberately create an error on thousands of pages looks to me like a breach of WP:AWB#Rules which would justifiably cause mobs with pitchforks and blazing torches to descend upon me, and might trigger the loss of my AWB rights before I even had a chance to explain my reasoning. So, once again, no way.

Even if this was formulated as a fully-specced bot job, and was preceded by an RFC endorsing it and then scrutinised by WP:BAG, I still wouldn't do it. Because even with RFC+BAG approval, the bot operator would still get flamed to a crisp on a regular basis.

That said, I do like the idea, and if you propose it as a bot job then I think (from what I have considered so far) that I will be happy to support it subject to having error checks built in. I just don't want to be the person who needs asbestos underwear and an armoured helicopter to airlift me out. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:41, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I was just brainstorming with the idea. I totally agree with your position though. One thing that occurred to me, and is unrelated to my proposal above, is that you don't seem to tag bare-urls that follow the format: [4]. (Uses the url+title syntax but the title is not defined). I'm pretty sure those count as bare-urls as well. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:07, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

And it was useful brainstorming, @Finnusertop! A great idea, just dangerous for anyone who implements it. But I have a notion that if the CS1 setup was modified a little, something close to this might be doable safely: use a special param to indicate that it's a bare URL rescue process, so that it can trigger whatever sort of alternative error-handling doesn't get the editor in trouble. Something like {{cite web |url=http://www.example.com/ |title= |bare-url-rescue=yes}}

Yes, my regex didn't pick up that [http://www.example.com/] format. I was aware of it, but in the time available before the end of the month, I had more articles than I could tag just by selecting the other set, so this time round I didn't bother developing and testing a regex for that format. (It's not complex, but I like to check very thoroughly before charging through a big set of articles.)

If I do another run at the end of June, I will process that format too. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Stats on bare URLs tagged in May 2021

My tagging of bare URLs ended about 18 hours ago. All the articles I tagged were categorised in Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021. No more articles will be added to that category, so its size is a useful measure of how tagging correlates with cleanup (assuming that the tags being removed only when the bare URLs are fixed). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Articles in Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021
When	Count
End of tagging run on 1 June 2021	15,900
17:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)	15,043
06:49, 3 June 2021 (UTC)	14,793
18:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)	14,524
19:29, 8 June 2021 (UTC)	14,321
12:54, 12 June 2021 (UTC)	14,029
17:24, 15 June 2021 (UTC)	13,901
17:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)	13,698
14:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)	13,256
10:53, 19 July 2021 (UTC)	12,400
14:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)	12,073
01:36, 3 August 2021 (UTC)	11,889
01:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)	11,408
21:09, 29 August 2021 (UTC)	10,832
16:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)	9,377
13:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)	9,223
14:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)	8,985
23:41, 1 October 2021 (UTC)	8,852
13:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)	8,545
18:22, 23 October 2021 (UTC)	8,041
17:58, 28 October 2021 (UTC)	7,765
21:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)	7,014
Live total as of 06:37, 15 November 2024 (UTC)	0

Bump, to prevent this from being archived. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:02, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Bump again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:37, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump3. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump4. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump6. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Bump7. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Bump8. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:41, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Bump9. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Bump10. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:24, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Bump11. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Instead of going "bump, bump, bump", might it be preferable to stick this on a user page? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:59, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Possibly. But I am working on a bogger stats page using data from the database dumps, which will probably be more useful. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hello BHG - I came here to express my thanks for highlighting articles with {{Bare URL inline}} refs. They've provided some laser-focus on referencing issues in the articles on my fairly lengthy watchlist, especially articles that don't get much attention otherwise. I trust all is well with you............. Cheers! PKT(alk) 20:49, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, @PKT. Hope you are well too.

I am glad that the tagging has helped. That was the idea! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Archive links at Felix Frankfurter

I've just removed the archive links you inserted by bot at Felix Frankfurter, although it was harder than just undoing due to your subsequent edits. The first and third links led to Google Books index pages, not to text that supported assertions made at the article. Such archive links are not very useful. The second link led to a web page, where the original link going dark should provoke a search to determine if website reorganization has taken place, not just falling back on a possibly out-of-date archive snapshot. Placing links when they're not needed adds clutter that gets in the way of those of us who edit text in raw mode. IABot itself only adds links when it determines the original link has died, which should be a guide. The link rot guidelines don't endorse massive adding of archive links, only one-at-a-time, as the original references are set up, which implies the snapshots linked to are being checked for usefulness. Dhtwiki (talk) 10:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: that seems like a spectacular waste of your time and mine.

The archived copies are available in case of transient outage or permanent failure of the target link, and their presence in no way impedes the reader from making other searches off the failed link.

I find it quite bizarre that you went to all that trouble to remove the archive links, thereby depriving readers of the safety net and depriving editors the security of knowing that the link they added is already rot-proofed.

Your objection to falling back on a possibly out-of-date archive snapshot is particularly bizarre: the sooner a webpage is archived, the more likely it is to be a replica of the page that was actually consulted by the editor who added the ref. If the webpage has since been updated, the earlier archive copy is the one that should be used: in other words, the "out-of-date archive snapshot" is exactly what is needed. WP:Link rot#Internet_archives is explicit about this: Usually dates closer to the time the link was placed in the Wikipedia page, or earlier, are more likely to show valid information.

Also, I can find nothing in WP:Link rot to support your objection to pre-emptive archiving. So far as I can see, your reasoning is unsupported by the guidelines.

Please spend your editing time improving articles instead of actively degrading them. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:27, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Accussing someone of actively degrading Wikipedia because they pointed out problems is a personal attack. This seems to be a pattern - you make lots of mass changes, people disagree with your changes, politely point it out and you attack them. I’m writing this anonymously so I don’t get targeted. Please, I urge you to recognize your behaviour, it’s unhelpful. - 49.195.153.219 (talk) 13:57, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Whoever you are, please note that I criticised the action, not the person. That is not a personal attack. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:53, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

For more information on preemptive archiving, please read Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Further_considerations#Pre-emptive_archiving where it is endorsed. Personally, in my experience, as long as the url-status is added for live links (which IABot does), it should not be an issue with anyone. Rlink2 (talk) 23:15, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Another page is WP:PLRT. I read the endorsement of preemptively setting archive links as applying to the original researcher, with the implication that the snapshot has been inspected for relevance. Massive bot runs, especially by those not actively curating the article, make less sense. Where they add little to article size, such as at Felix Frankfurter, I often don't bother to revert. However, I've seen as much as 92K added to an article (United States, in 2017) that received (and receives) ~40k page views per day, which must mean something in terms of adding to everyone's download time. As I must have said before, IABot doesn't add links unless the original has died. I would think that could be taken as an example of how it should work. Dhtwiki (talk) 15:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: see my comments above about why early archiving is beneficial.

As to page size, WP:V is core policy. Even in the extreme cases which you mention, the increase in page size is much less than one small image, so a small increase in text size is a trivial overhead to assist verification. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

December 2021 at Women in Red

Women in Red | December 2021, Volume 7, Issue 12, Numbers 184, 188, 210, 214, 215, 216 Online events: New: "Double the lede!" | Women who died in 2021 Contest (Oct/Nov/Dec): Women in Oceania contest Continuing: Women's rights | #1day1woman See also: Women in Climate Change and preparations for our 2022 Climate initiative Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help plan and coordinate future events. Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Follow Women in Red on social media: Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Innisfree987 (talk) 00:10, 27 November 2021 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Category:Wikipedia vital articles by topic by class

Hi there! I noticed lots of the categories in this category have very similar wikitext, so I created a template {{Vital article by topic by class}} that gets the relevant values from the title. Do you think it would be worth using this on the categories instead (i.e. replacing their current text with this template)? Note: the template uses {{CatAutoTOC}}, which I think is only for smaller categories, but this should be fairly easy to fix it it's a problem. ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: thanks for your msg. I spent a lot of time a year or so back standardising those categories, which were in an awful mess. It's great to know that someone else has an eye o them.

In principle, I think it's a good idea to use a template, so long as it as good error-checking and reporting, preferably with a tracking category. I haven't checked to what extent (if any) there are sub-topics requiring different parenting — e.g. Physics as a sub-cat of Science — but the template will need to handle that. Those variations (parent topic or no parent topic) plus the error-checking add a lot of complexity (tho it gets easier with practice)

I took a peek at {{Vital article by topic by class}}, and it looks like a good start ... but it would be much better if it used a sub-template. That is, use the main template just to pass the class and topic parameters to a sub-template {{Vital article by topic by class}}. That way the sub-template can check for errors, and also do the actual categorisation (which will be easier to read if it uses variables).

For an example of a single-page template with error-checking, {{YYYY classical albums category header}}. As an example of a template with sub-page, see and its subpage {{YYY0s (dis)establishments in one of the Thirteen Colonies/core}}.

As to {{CatAutoTOC}}, I created it. Its whole point is that it is for use on any size of category.

Hope this helps! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:25, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I was just making sure the template is okay in principle. I'll see if I can add error-handling etc.. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:30, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Okay, it can now handle errors and most of the subcategories. The only problems I can see are as you mentioned with the "Physics" and "Biology" subcategories. The easiest and simplest way to solve this would be with a parameter like {{{rootcat}}}. The other issue is with the "in an unknown topic" , with categorises them under |in an unknown instead of |*unknown. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:39, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Qwerfjkl. Quick work!

I took a peek, and it looks good. I haven't tested anything, but I see a few issues:

• the header templates {{Possibly empty category}} {{Wikipedia category}} {{CatAutoTOC}} should be in the sub-template, so that they are not included in an error page
• the "Physics" and "Biology" parenting should be automated: parameterless templates are much easier to use.

Hope that helps. I will take a proper look tomorrow. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:54, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I've fixed the "an unknown topic" issue above; I'll see what I can do about those other issues. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:00, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl? ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think I've fixed most (all?) of the issues. Can you have a look? ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:26, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi! It's been a while, and you haven't responded. I think I've fixed all errors, so I'll add this to all relevant categories, starting tomorrow (sometime). ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: I am sorry for the very slow reply.

I took a long look at it two weeks ago, and wanted to take a day or two to arrange my thoughts. But I got buried in a project which grew beyond expectations, and distracted by a real-life drama, and I forgot to get back to you. Sorry for my rudeness.

The thing is that I can see you have put a lot of hard and careful work. However, I have to say that the result is so disorganised that I could not really figure out what was going on.

For example, all the checking for whether the page is valid can be done without invoking the /core. Pushing that into the /core adds avoidable complication and makes it all harder to read.

Conversing, assessing the parenting for a topic should be done in /core, when the topic value is already available. Doing that in the root template massively adds complexity, which makes the code harder to maintain because it is much harder to understand.

I think that your hard work has shown that a template could be viable, and that is an important first step. However, I think that deploying it in its current state would be very unwise, because issues inevitably arise in deployment, and the current template would be a divil to fix.

So I think it needs a complete rewrite. I am willing to do that rewrite if you like. How does that sound?

But please don't deploy it as is. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:16, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

No problem. I did some handling in the main template because it's hard to get the {{{topic}}} and {{{class}}} parameters without knowing the format of the title. I'm inexperienced in creating templates - especially complex ones - so I would welcome any changes you could make. Thanks! ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: thanks very much for being so nice about that. The reason I didn't reply immediately was that I was concerned that I might get the tone wrong and cause unintended offence, so I wanted headspace to tone-check my response. It's now clear that your generosity of spirit make my concerns superfluous. Thanks.

Template programming is a tedious exercise, because unlike most programming languages there is no ability to assign global or local variables. Passing named parameters is the only workaround, and as you have already discovered, that can get complex. But it looks you are a good way along the painful leaning curve, and your hard work so far has in no way been wasted. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

List of bishops in the Church of England

Hi, comrade. A few days ago you tackled the citations at List of bishops in the Church of England. Firstly, thanks for your efforts, because I acknowledge that they should never have been bare anyway. However, as you'll see from this edit, the scripts you ran introduced a number of errors. Please would you have a look at the mistakes the bot made and look out for these in future? DBD 21:55, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your message, @DBD.

I had begun using ReferenceExpander a few days before (as another tool in my toolset for following up my mass use of Citation bot to fill bare URLs), and most of ReferenceExpander's edits were on simpler pages where it did a truly brilliant job. Since then I began to notice how it can go bonkers in some situations, and I am now much more wary of it.

In the case of List of bishops in the Church of England, I see now that my ReferenceExpander edit[5] created a lot of carp, and should have been immediately reverted. I am now much more wary of it, and wouldn't use it on a page like that ... and I am annoyed with myself for not checking its output there more thoroughly. If I had checked properly, I would have self-reverted.

Thanks for cleaning up the mess, and for being so nice about it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

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Can you add List of mayors of Macedonia, Ohio to Category:Lists of mayors of places in Ohio

I am for some reason prevented doing it myself and i saw you contributed to the page before so im hoping you can do it. Scottlinehan1999 (talk) 21:49, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

@Scottlinehan1999: I have done it.[6]

You had actually done most of the work yourself, but your edit placed a colon before the title.[7] That made it a link to the page; all I had to do was to remove the colon. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:56, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you brownhairedbeauty lol. Scottlinehan1999 (talk) 21:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Grenada–Netherlands relations

A tag has been placed on Category:Grenada–Netherlands relations indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Ja icon

Could you use |lang=ja instead of |lang={{ja icon}} in edits like this one? The ja icon template was deleted. Same for the other language icon templates. thank you. 98.230.196.188 (talk) 14:08, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer.

Unfortunately, that wretched use of the icon is hardcoded into WP:REFLINKS, and I don't always remember to check for it when I use that tool.

After your msg, I set off to do an AWB job to fix such uses, but they all seem to have been fixed: a search for insource:/language=\{\{[a-z]+ icon/i finds nothing. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:26, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

These get fixed fairly routinely by people going through the database report. But, not creating the bad links first place is always better :) hopefully someone can fix WP:REFLINKS. 98.230.196.188 (talk) 14:55, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Sadly, WP:REFLINKS is unmaintained. It has many bugs and glitches, but no fix is in sight. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Braille

Out of curiosity, can you see why citation bot can't improve on the simplistic recent citations at Braille. Refill helped a bit but not a lot. (I tried cbot before and again after refill. In each case, it reported nothing to do.) Is there a better tool I can use? (short of doing them by hand). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi John

Sorry, but I am not clear which refs you are referring to, so I can't comment esp since there are currently no bare refs. Can you point me to a particular revision, and gimme the ref numbers that need attention?

As to other tools, the main choices are are WP:Reflinks, WP:REFILL, and ReferenceExpander. ReferenceExpander is absolutely brilliant on simple cases, but it strips out {{webarchive}} templates (e.g. [8]) and text which wouldn't be within the cite template. It automatically saves, so there is no review-before-save. My guess is that would make an almighty mess of Braille, but a possibility is to run it on a sandboxed copy of the page, clean that up, and when its all sorted, paste the results in to the main article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have included some examples (yes, there are no bare references but many rudimentary ones that I thought cbot would expand. (TBF, this is without looking at the citations themselves to see if the metadata is there in the first place but I have had a mumber of cases in other articles where the metadata certainly was there and I was able to do them by hand.) Anyway, some examples of what I mean:

• <ref>Madeleine Loomis (1942). ''The Braille Reference Book [for Grades I, I{{frac|1|2}}, and II].''</ref>
  • could have become (using Worldcat lookup): {{cite book |first=Madeleine Seymour |last=Loomis |date=1942 |title=The Braille Reference Book for Grades I, I{{frac|1|2}}, and II |location=New York and London |publisher=Harper & Bros. |oclc=13839990}}
• <ref>History of the Perkins Brailler www.perkins.org/assets/downloads/research/history-of-brailler-11-17-09.pdf</ref>
  • (no cite web or even [...]
• ''allowing blind children to develop an early love for reading even before formal reading instruction begins.[https://www.pathstoliteracy.org/pre-braille Pre-Braille]''
  • (not even ref tags)
• <ref name="D&B">Daniels & Bright, 1996, ''The World's Writing Systems'', pp. 817–818</ref>
  • Could have become a cite book as per first example
• <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.antiquetypewriters.com/typewriter/hall-braille-writer-1/|title=Hall Braille-writer 1}}</ref>
  • It's a cite web but lacks website= (to be fair, the remaining metadata is not at all obvious, so I wouldn't expect a bot to find it.

[As a sighted editor, I'm reluctant to start hacking an article like this. For example, I would normally move (See 1829 braille.) into an {{efn}} template but that purism could be disabling)

So my real question is this: am I expecting too many miracles from the bots? I have been impressed on how well they have cleaned up other articles and was really surprised to find them report back with no fault found. (No rush to reply, going offline for next 16 hrs) --John Maynard Friedman (talk)

@John, thanks for taking the time to post those details.

I think you nailed the problem: the metadata is not obvious, so the bot won't find it. The URLs are not properly formatted (no http://), so the bots and tools can't recognise them.

So yes, I think maybe you were expecting miracles . This needs to be fixed manually.

Hope this helps, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Template:Party abbrev

With the Template:.../meta/abbrev family of templates being deleted, I was wondering if you would mind if I usurped your {{party abbrev}} template to use as a wrapper for the replacement module. (please ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 13:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Primefac, thanks for your message.

I created those abbrevs as data for use in {{Compact election box}}, and I have not had time to get my head around the consequences of the deletions.

I would like to be helpful, but I don't want to unleash a series of glitches, and haven't researched this enough to safely say yes.

Sorry I can't be more helpful. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess I was mainly wondering because your template is not used and it's the perfect name for the new template. I would be taking all of the risks and guarantee that there are no glitches, but if you want to keep hold of it for now I guess I'll find some other way of wrapping the module. Primefac (talk) 20:39, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, @Primefac, but I think that some other wrapper would be best for now ... unless the new module has identical functionality. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:44, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough, I guess I'll wait and send it over to TFD when the transition is finalised, since it will be useless when the /meta/abbrev templates are all deleted. Primefac (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Primefac: what will the module do? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The module takes a political party and returns either a shortname, color, or abbrev, basically the same as calling Template:<party>/meta/abbrev or the like. I've already created {{political party}} but that requires the user input their return choice, so I am looking at {{party abbrev}}, {{party shortname}}, and {{party color}} as easy-to-type shorthands for the three variants. At the moment all three of these are calling the /meta/ subpages of the various political parties, so there's not really going to be any loss of functionality.

As an example, {{political party|Labour Party (UK)|abbrev}} returns Lab, but I would like {{political abbrev|Labour Party (UK)}} to do the same (if only to save on the number of characters and potential mistakes when typing it out). Primefac (talk) 08:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

A question about editing scale

@brownhairedgirl I'm a new editor. I put an article (Jameschapman[journalist]) into an AfD discussion. In it, I mentioned that there is COI there (i.e. the subject edited it). I also mentioned a couple of other odd things I noticed about the article. One was that you had edited at some point (in 2016....) and edit at a rate I can't understand. I have been told that I risked coming close to aspersion - I've read up on that policy now and I in no way intended to say that you were doing something out of order (it was a bare url link, and you haven't been back since). I can see that you are real and that you edit at an extraordinary rate. However, I really would like to understand, even just a pointer to something I can read to help me understand Wikipedia, how you make thousands of edits each day. Up to 20 edits a minute is one every 3 seconds. And sometimes you don't take a break for 16 or even 24 hours. Am I misunderstanding the data at edit contributions? Do feel free to ignore, particularly if it's a daft question from a brand new editor, but I'd really like to learn about this. All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 15:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Reading that over, it's not grovelling or apologetic enough. I want to add that while I didn't intend to offend a massively respected editor (I can see from the extraordinary contributions here, for example), if I actually have then I really am grovelling and apologetic! Emmentalist (talk) 15:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Emmentalist: There many semi-automatic editing tools like AWB that allow similar edits to be made en masse. Mass-categorisation (i.e. adding lots of pages to a category) can also easily amount to lots of edits. ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

That is massively helpful, @Qwerfjkl Thank you so much. I have read up on AWB now: a great education! All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 17:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Emmentalist: sorry for my slow reply, but luckily @Qwerfjkl has explained it well (thanks, Qwerfjkl!).

I use tools such as WP:AWB which allow mass editing at speed. And sometimes I work all day, eating beside my computer. My edit[9] to James Chapman (journalist) was one of those AWB edits. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:15, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Emmentalist: You can see these 50 contributions for an example. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:23, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@brownhaired girl thank you so much for replying here. It's very kind of you and quite the learning experience for me. I feel like I've tugged the sleeve of a Chelsea player as they're trying to get on the pitch! Thank you very much @Qwerfjkl too! All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 07:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi

Can you make Spoken Wikipedia for Naruto Uzumaki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Talsh Empire (talk • contribs) 18:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Talsh Empire I have no idea what you mean, how I would do it, or why you are asking me. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Talsh Empire. 1, Request Naruto Uzumaki to be spoken wikipedia. 2. Record to make or give me tip to do so. 3. I am busy to do recording for a time. Are you preoccupied? Also, are you familiar with the guidelines? — Preceding undated comment added 18:29, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Talsh Empire: Sorry, but I still do not know what you are talking about. I am not able to help, and do not want to help.

Good luck. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:11, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, nevermind.

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Ian Hislop

Dear BHG, I have a question about Ian Hislop and the categories that apply to his BLP.

Extended content on writers, broadcasters and comedians in Britain and Ireland

For satirists, comedians or broadcasters of a certain age, often grammar/public/state school and university are added as a category. Sometimes also religion. That applies to Richard Ingrams, Eleanor Bron, Paul Merton, Sandi Toksvig, Peter Cook, etc. Also Evelyn Waugh and Auberon Waugh. For the broadcaster Clive Myrie only his university appears as a category; "English people of Jamaican descent" appears. For the Irish comedian and broadcaster Dara Ó Briain, the categories Category:People educated at Coláiste Eoin, Category:Alumni of University College Dublin, Category:Former Roman Catholics and Category:Irish former Christians have been added. For Terry Wogan, the categories Category:Irish atheists, Category:Former Roman Catholics, Category:People educated at Belvedere College and Category:People educated at Crescent College. For Graham Norton, the relevant categories are Category:Alumni of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Category:Alumni of University College Cork, Category:People associated with University College Cork, Category:People educated at Bandon Grammar School and Category:Irish Anglicans. Ian Hislop is extremely well known in Britain and the Island of Ireland: he spent his formative years as a head boy at a public school and at Magdalen College, Oxford; later his Anglican religion, both in writing and broadcasting, is mentioned in the article. Very recently, without any type of explanation, education and religion were removed.[10] Because of his notability as main editor of Private Eye, writer and broadcaster, I have re-introduced 3 categories, streamlining place of birth (Mumbles, Swansea) and abode (Sissinghurst), and re-adding Category:People educated at Ardingly College and Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as Category:Anglican writers. [11] These changes were reverted[12]. No general justification was given for these repeated deletions on Talk:Ian Hislop. It doesn't seem like gnoming; nor does it chime with any consistent wikipedia policy or guidelines.

Johnuniq mentioned in private that you were an expert on sorting out categories. Arguing about "categories" can be time-wasting; where sourced articles such as BLPs provide reliable information that is not WP:UNDUE, wikipedia editors over the years have communally worked out consensus for obvious and uncontroversial categories. How would you deal with these recent deletions on Ian Hislop with no discussion on Talk:Ian Hislop? For Magdalen College, Cambridge, Hislop is listed as "famous alumni" (reading English).[13][14] Oscar Wilde is also in that list; but the categories for him are much longer—unsurprising given his extraordinary legacy. The current culling of categories for Hislop thwarts the educational purpose of this encyclopedia. What do you think? Mathsci (talk) 07:49, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Mathsci, and thanks for your message.

Per WP:BRD, I have restored[15] the categories on Ian Hislop, pending discussion. @User:RandomCanadian should not editwar.

There is a tension here between guidance and established practice. On one hand, WP:NONDEF and WP:COPDEF suggest caution in categorising by non-core attributes. On the other hand, established practice involves much more intensive categorisation of people, such as that on Ian Hislop

I don't think that these issues can be easily resolved. For example the alumni/people-educated-at categories are very rarely the first thing we think of a person, and if WP:COPDEF was applied very strictly, then those categories would be emptied, which amounts to a form of deletion. However, I think it is very unlikely that such categories would be deleted at CFD, so emptying them would not reflect consensus.

Hope this helps. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Everything you've written has been very helpful. Thanks a lot. Mathsci (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• This is unacceptable WP:FORUMSHOP. Mathsci, there was a discussion on your talk page, which you've recently blanked (and where you did not answer to my questions), with edit summary "read". I find it unhelpful that you come here to continue this without leaving me a notice (and that I must thus thank BHG for giving me a ping); and without addressing any of my arguments (such as those BHG also points out). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  @RandomCanadian & @Mathsci: please discuss this on the article's talk page ... and until there is a consensus, please retain the status quo ante. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  Moved to article talk page, where hopefully Mathsci can provide more convincing arguments that an appeal to tradition. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  FWIW: this isn't the first time (notice the important detail: {{noping}}...) Mathsci tries to get another editor's opinion (one could be more cynical and call it WP:CANVAS) on this exact issue... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  @RandomCanadian & @Mathsci: sadly, this episode has not shown the best side of either of you. In the discussions I have seen on Talk:Mathsci, both of you strayed far off the substantive topic and made inflammatory personal comments. Random Canadian has edit-warred, and both sides have used edit summaries for discussion.

  This discussion might be helped by both parties taking a break. And RP ... if this is part of a wider categorisation exercise by you which is proving controversial, then per WP:MULTI please open a centralised discussion, e.g. at WT:CATP. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  I left a post here, but nobody has bothered to reply. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  @RandomCanadian: Your post[16] at WT:BIOG#Widespread_overcategorisation_problems:_ethnicity,_descent,_... was a good attempt to start discussion, but

  1. It was only five days ago. It seems that you didn't even wait 4 days before starting work on a mass cleanup, and that you didn't even leave a note before starting to say that you were treating silence as assent.
  2. Categories tend to be a minority interest, so if you want a discussion about categories, it's best to notify WP:CATP and possibly WP:VPP.

  May I suggest that you now make those notifications, and hold back from further category removals until the discussion reaches some sort of consensus?

  And @Mathsci: please take your concerns to the centralised discussion. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:13, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  @BHG: instead of taking their concerns to the centralised discussion, or even to continue the discussion that was being had on some of the pre-existing talk page sections, Mathsci decided to instead go to yet another admin's talk page. At least, the ADMINSHOP issue has been made clear (including via a comment on their talk page, which they've reverted so I'll assume read). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:07, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:YearInCountryPortalBox/decadePortal

Template:YearInCountryPortalBox/decadePortal has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 12:06, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Jason Kenney

BrownHairedGirl, check your AWB config. Per this session all the {{Cite news}} templates were changed to {{cite news}}. Thought you'd want to know in case it was not intentional. All the best! — WILDSTAR^TALK 02:09, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@WildStar: No, it was not intentional. Many thanks for pointing that out.

I found the problem, and fixed my AWB settings. Tested successfully in this sandbox edit.[17] BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia page creation

Hello 2401:4900:4627:46F8:74EA:D37D:F430:3CA0 (talk) 19:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Croatia–Mongolia relations

A tag has been placed on Category:Croatia–Mongolia relations indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 07:14, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

phab:T291704 fixed

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291704 has been fixed, making Rlink2 Bot 3 redudant, and meaning that IABot can run automatically again on enwiki.

Rlink2 (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for the update, @Rlink2.

Thank also to @Cyberpower678 for closing phab:T291704, and for fixing the bug. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Rlink2, Actually, is it possible to employ Rlink2 Bot to do a one-time run and dedup some of the mess IABot left. If yes, that would be awesome. —CYBERPOWER (Merry Christmas) 00:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: phab:T291704 errors are tracked in Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter. That category is currently empty, so all the mess has already been cleaned up. Therefore no need for @Rlink2's bot #3. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, all of the mess has been cleared up already it seems. Thank you all for the work you do with IAbot! Rlink2 (talk) 01:01, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That's great to hear. Also BHG, while I may not always be the most responsive these days, lot's of other things going right now, as long as a Phab ticket is open, it will receive attention.—CYBERPOWER (Merry Christmas) 01:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Cyberpower678. Sorry to hear you are overloaded. I hope that you at least get some space to have a Merry Christmas!

If possible, it would great going in future to have more proactive responses to the ticketing system. There was no feedback at all about phab:T291704 for over 6 weeks, and for those of use who use the bot a lot that lack of commication meant a lot of extra work. Just seeing a bug has been triaged is a huge help.

Best wishes, BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:40, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

We will work on that. —CYBERPOWER (Merry Christmas) 03:06, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:07, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:DisestcatCountry/checkuse

Template:DisestcatCountry/checkuse has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Q28 (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Bare URL inline

You know, instead of mass tagging with {{bare url inline}} as you did here, you could just run Citation bot on the page and clear those, like so, and have the problem taken care of, instead of flagged. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:59, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@Headbomb: I have already run Citation bot over every page which had had a bare URL in the database dumps since August. That's over 500,000 pages.

I am now trying a different angle, which involves some tagging and some selective runs of citation bot, such as those listed at User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles with probably fixable bare links. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:44, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

PS Here's an example of the fuzziness of the tools, which has led me to this overlapping strategy of both tagging and CitationBotting

The article is Manhattan (Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts album) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views):

1. 16:31, 16 December 2021:‎ Citation bot processes the article as part of the targeted batch job discogs.com + washingtonpost.com (Manhattan (Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts album) is entry #1005 on that list), but the bot fills no bare URLs
2. 18:06, 20 December 2021:‎ BrownHairedGirl's AWB run adds a {{Bare URL inline}} tag to a ref to https://www.discogs.com/Jeffrey-Lewis-Los-Bolts-Manhattan/release/7855070
3. 18:09, 20 December 2021‎: reviewing the AWB run, BHG randomly selects that article for a single-page Citation bot request ... and Citation bot fills that link to https://www.discogs.com/Jeffrey-Lewis-Los-Bolts-Manhattan/release/7855070

I see many many examples of this sort of fuzziness. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's another example: Pierre Jerksten (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).

A bare URL refs to https://www.discogs.com/Adolphson-Falk-Ta-Den-Kärlek-Du-Kan-Få-Nu-Lever-Jag-Igen/release/1464846 was added[18] in April 2017. That link is still live, albeit as a hard redirect to https://www.discogs.com/release/1464846-Adolphson-Falk-Ta-Den-K%C3%A4rlek-Du-Kan-F%C3%A5-Nu-Lever-Jag-Igen-PJs-Dance-Summer-Remix-96 (which works eamlessly in my browser).

That ref was still bare when Citation bot processed the article at my request on 31 July 2021‎. The bot's edit[19] did not fill the bare URL.

Pierre Jerksten was entry #1266 on my Citation bot targeted batch job discogs.com + washingtonpost.com. But Citation bot's edit[20] at 18:16, 16 December 2021‎ also failed to fill that bare URL.

So today, it was still bare, and my AWB run tagged it.[21] BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

And here is another example: Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport

• Citation bot filled none of the 4 bare URLs[22]
• but a few minutes later, I filled them all using Reflinks[23] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Gabon–Georgia (country) relations

A tag has been placed on Category:Gabon–Georgia (country) relations indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 22:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Query

Hey, BHG,

It's been a while since I visited your talk page. I hope you are well. But when I come here, I always come with a question about an odd category! I was looking at some bot reports which led me to some bot categories and I came across Category:Pages monitored by Wikipedia bots. I'm sure you work more with content categories than project categories but this is pretty odd, it contains mostly user pages, many of whom are not longer active and some old archive pages. Do you think people added this category themselves? It's hard to see why a bot would monitor most of these pages. The category creator hasn't been editing Wikipedia in about a month or I'd ask them.

Thanks for any insight you can offer. I hope you have a good holiday season! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:03, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The user pages in that category appear to come from an attempt to add Category:Wikipedians who have opted out of automatic signing that ended up adding the bots category as well for reasons I can't work out. They (in addition to all of the project-namespace pages in that category, which suffered from an analogous problem with Category:Non-talk pages that are automatically signed) should be removed from that category, leaving it containing only subcategories (many of which I nominated for deletion) and templates. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 17

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Braniel, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page UTV.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:00, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Fixed[24]. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:EstcatCountry/checkuse

Template:EstcatCountry/checkuse has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Q28 (talk) 09:01, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

RE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks_websites

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for this useful entry! Cheers -- Pete Tillman (talk) 20:49, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Pete Tillman! But which entry? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

The one listing useful tools for filling out bare-URL cites. Which is something I do from time to time: always a bit annoying to came across such. Sounds like you do a lot of them, and good for you! Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

May I say, you have quite an interesting User page. You may have been active here even longer than me! I got very tired of wikipolitics, especially during the notorious Wiki Climate Wars, and only recently returned to reasonably frequent editing. As you know, BHG, some topics here are radioactive! Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Pete . Sadly, there are a lot of toxic things about en.wp, including contentious topic areas and far too many toxic people. In the last few days I have just another unpleasant encounter with some of that.

You wrote: " there are also lots of great people here, and I reckon that the way to make editing enjoyable is to try to work with those good people.

But there are also lots of great people here, and I reckon that the way to make editing enjoyable is to try to work with those good people.

I have spent the last 5 months working full time on :Bare URLs, using a variety of tool to turbocharge the cleanup. In that time the numbers of bare URLs has roughly halved, and although the list of pages with bare URLs has about 250-300 new entries each day we are staying ahead of the flow, and the number continues to fall. Your work is much appreciated! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:11, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Amen to that! Nor are toxic people (almost all men!) limited to WP! Here's a cute sample from the bygone days of Usenet:

> Just becuae you misees the point of the article lady, don;t think it

> is not irrelevant. --'Lazarus Cain', to Dorothy Heydt, rasfw 6/7/04

-- all just as he typed them, 17 years ago. My, how time flies! Best for 2022, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:27, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Tillman: That Lazarus should never have been resurrected!

Ienjoyed Usenet in the early 1990s. Or at least some corners of it.

Plenty of mad and/or nasty people, but also some great fun to be had, esp if the killfile was used. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:31, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. And an amazing time-sink. I miss it. None of the www websites ever really captured the verve of the Best of Usenet! IMO, of course... Pete Tillman (talk) 05:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Richard Rogers

On 20 December 2021, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Richard Rogers, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. PFHLai (talk) 22:53, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

'Insufficient References' Tag?

Hello. Can you point me to a list of all tags? I know about '' and '

' - but the latter is too sweeping. Is there a code for 'insufficient number of references'? Thank you, Billsmith60 (talk) 13:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Another year template taking parameters

Just came across a page with {{DeathyrBC}} and was a bit surprised to see that it still takes parameters. I guess it's part of a set that's on your to-do-someday list. I could probably do it myself, but not with the full elegance & failsafes that you bring.

I'm really glad you're still here, BrownHairedGirl. Thanks for all that you do.

Best wishes for a happy Christmas and New Year! – Fayenatic London 10:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2022!

Hello BrownHairedGirl, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2022. Happy editing, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 16:12, 22 December 2021 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Your recent contributions to Ben Purkiss

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Ben Purkiss. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Chilling out and relaxing (talk) 22:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Your recent contributions to Aramex

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Aramex. Chilling out and relaxing (talk) 22:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Your recent contributions to Felton Snow

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Felton Snow. Chilling out and relaxing (talk) 22:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)