User talk:Sb2001/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Hello, Sb2001. You have new messages at AldezD's talk page.
Message added 13:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AldezD (talk) 13:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Question

Hello, Sb2001. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Removal.
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Gonejackal (talk) 01:54, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sb2001. You have new messages at AldezD's talk page.
Message added 12:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AldezD (talk) 12:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sb2001. You have new messages at AldezD's talk page.
Message added 19:15, 3 July 2017 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AldezD (talk) 19:15, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

"Compared with"

Wanted to say thanks for the extensive amount of cleanup applied to misuse of "compared to". Didn't count, but I think you patched up at least 50 articles in that regard.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:36, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

It will be my mission over the summer to continue with this - extremely irritating. Thank you for the acknowledgement. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Most welcome; it was bugging me that I was surely coming across as overly critical when the intent is to help guide you better into the WP flow, not to blockade you. While you're doing that cleanup, please feel free to eradicate cases of things like try and for try to – "try and find", etc. Drives me nuts. (Which reminds me of a lame pirate joke.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:03, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Certainly, on it! –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 15:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.

The above is templated boilerplate. To be more specific: You'll need to stop changing things like "4:01 p.m." or "4:01 pm" to "4.01pm", a style not sanctioned at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers (in two separate ways, both the punctuation and the space collapsing). Same goes for removing the stops/points/periods/dots (whatever you like to call them) from abbreviations like "e.g." and "equiv." You are not actually even following the "major UK style guides" you claim to be citing. A common but not universal British style is to drop dots for words internally contracted such that they begin and end with the same letters as the original word, especially when used in names and titles, "Doctor Brown" -> "Dr Brown", "Saint Patrick" -> "St Patrick", but "Professor Chan" -> "Prof. Chan". "Equiv" does not qualify as such a contraction (it's a trunctation that doesn't end with the t of the full word "equivalent"), and is written "equiv." in British English. No style guide anywhere recommends "equiv". While some journalism style guides prefer "eg" and the like for some particularly common abbreviations (a choice made for expediency and for saving as much space as possible), Wikipedia is not written in news style, as a matter of formal policy, and neither deadline pressure nor compression of text to fit into thin columns and "above the fold" are concerns here.

Like most publishers of large quantities of material by multiple authors, Wikipedia has its own house style, codified at WP:Manual of Style (MoS) and its subpages. Your style manifesto at User:Sb2001#Frequently changed raises serious WP:NOTHERE, WP:NOT#ADVOCACY and WP:GREATWRONGS concerns. You have less that 400 mainspace edits here, most of which are stylistic fiddling about (albeit some in the correct direction under MoS, plus some actual content work; I am not aiming to be over-critical). To the extent these edits are against established consensus at MoS or any other Wikipedia policies and guidelines they are counterproductive. If the programmatic anti-MoS changes you are making do not cease, this will result in an examination of your editing pattern at the administrators' noticeboard of incidents and is liable to result in restricted editing.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

* 'You are not actually even following the "major UK style guides" you claim to be citing.'

The major UK style guides I follow, and the ones to which I was referring, are the Guardian, Oxford University, Cambridge University (and the Economist, sometimes the Telegraph, and an in-house style guide which I use for my writing). The first three are all listed on my user page.

* '"Equiv" does not qualify as such a contraction

I was (and still am being) educated in an extremely well-respected establishment in the UK. This is what I was (and still am being) taught to do. Also, if you read the Guardian style guide, it tells you NEVER to use full stops for abbreviations (p23).

* 'Your style manifesto at User:Sb2001#Frequently changed raises ...'

I have removed this, due to the negative reaction this designed-to-be helpful element obtained by certain editors.

* 'If the programmatic anti-MoS changes you are making do not cease'

'programme' suggests I do it without thinking. Every edit I make is considered carefully, on a case-by-case basis. I do not go out of my way to consider the MoS. I did not know about its opinions on 'p' and 'vol'. They just looked wrong to my rather young, British eyes.

* 'this will result in an examination of your editing pattern at the administrators' noticeboard of incidents and is liable to result in restricted editing'

There is no problem here. Most of my edits are GENUINE. All are done in good faith.

* 'You have less than 400 mainspace edits (sic)'

Yes, I have not made that many edits, clearly fewer than you. I do not think this is of significance. The quality of my contributions should not be made out to be less due to the number of edits I have against my account.

Finally, I would like to express my sadness at you examining my edit history, and systematically checking every edit to see if you could undo it. You will notice that, as you say, (MOST - not just 'some') of my edits are 'actual content work'. Good ones at that. I contribute knowledge to various issues. Since I became aware of the MoS, I started to enforce the regulations of which I was aware. I do not spend all of my time reading it in great detail. I do not use the WP MoS in my actual writing, that it the stuff I have to do in order to achieve my qualification. I use either board-issued guides, the Guardian, Oxford or Cambridge. These are the most highly-rated in my establishment.

I will end by saying thank you for your interest. I know that you are grateful for my contributions to the project. NB, I have been a member since 2012 - no need for a welcome message! -Sb2001 (talk) 15:50, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Trying to catch up here; I've replied to the similar stuff at WT:MOS, and my own talk page already; not sure where else I should be looking. "I know that you are grateful for my contributions to the project": That is correct, and I meant it when I said I noted your edits that were improving content and even sometimes bringing style into rather than out of MoS compliance. The below material is long; there's a lot to cover.

On WP editorial matters:

This sort of melodrama isn't helpful; only the material about being on some kind of style mission raised any concerns. I did not challenge your education in any way, nor did I suggest you have no style guides. I simply pointed out that you arrived here with an "enforcement" mindset, yet seem not to be following the style you wish to enforce; "equiv" is not standard British English, in any register; it's only found in news journalism produced by certain publishers. Our templating system is rudimentary; we're not supposed to leave anyone a {{uw-mos2}} without a recent {{uw-mos1}}, yet the latter includes "Welcome" language. It could probably be modified easily to not include that wording, with a parameter like |welcome=no or the like. "Program[me]" suggests the diametric opposite of "do it without thinking". A program[me] is a plan or (in computing) a set of specific instructions. Even in television, it refers to pre-planned, not random, content. I chose that word specifically because I was referring to your self-published plan to enforce your view of British style at Wikipedia. We don't need anyone to carefully consider and case-by-case implement their own personal style agenda here, nor any nationalistic one. We need people to write articles, to expand small stub articles, to find sources for unsourced claims in articles (or remove them if they fail verification), to provide photos for articles that don't have them, to clean up style to be consistent, and do other useful things for our readers. Removing punctuation and spacing to mimic your favourite newspaper is not among "useful things for our readers". Anything that makes content harder to parse is unhelpful; clarity is important here, but matching regional or field-specific text compression trends is not. I'm not undoing your edits, just making MoS-compliance changes to them. If you want to go through your own edits and undo you own "eg" and "4.01pm" changes, be my guest. But I would almost be willing to bet you will not, which would mean someone else has to do the cleanup. I'm diligent enough to do much else in the process, like fixing broken or incomplete citations, incorrect italicisation, grammar errors, etc. (and none of that looks like it had anything to do with you, it's just stuff that needs to get done). No one will care if you decide not to read MoS or to comply with it when creating new content. We want new content more than we want it to be perfectly compliant with a style checklist. However, people will object if you change compliant material to be non-compliant, so you'll eventually absorb MoS's main points anyway. And MoS compliance will be checked at the Good Article and Featured Article review stages. People will also object if you go out of your way to create new content that is as divergent from MoS as possible as some kind of "protest", since it wastes other editors' time. Since you stress good faith and that there won't be any such problem, I'm happy to take that at face value, and to consider the whole issue resolved, other than patching up some stray "eg" and "4.01pm" style. I do have to point out that if you were submitting an article to Nature or to The Guardian for that matter, you would probably read their style guide and conform to it, or at least not feel put-upon if an editor there changed your text to comply. I'm always a bit mystified when people treat WP any differently. "Anyone can edit here" doesn't equate to "there are no rules and this is a free-for-all, a textual deathmatch arena".  :-)

On style matters:

The Guardian style guide is just one newspaper's own house style for its journalists. It is not a linguistic reference work, and it does not reflect general British or any other norms. It sharply conflicts in innumerable ways even with the house styles of other British news publishers, such as The Economist. The section "abbreviations and acronyms" is downright aberrant, and directly contradicts most all other style guides on most points, and does not reflect the way people actually write outside of The Guardian and The Observer newsroom. They are doing this to "look different"; it's a branding move. The New York Times has its own style book that also does some (completely unrelated) things differently from almost all other publishers, for the same marketing reason. Wikipedia does not care what these news publishers prefer anyway; WP is not written in news style, but in academic book style, following our house style manual, which is based primarily on Scientific Style and Format (8th ed.), New Hart's Rules (Ritter ed., also published as The Oxford Style Manual and The Oxford Guide to Style), The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), The Elements of Style (4rd ed.), Fowler's Modern English Usage (Burchfield ed.), and Garner's Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) Very new works like Garner's Modern English Usage, New Hart's Rules (Waddingham ed.), and Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Butterfield ed.) are too new to have had any effect on observable language use yet, and the latter two at least have severe editing errors which make them self-contradictory in places. Journalism style guides have had almost no influence of any kind on the WP Manual of Style; the only exception I can think of is handling of transgendered persons and their pronouns, something that Associated Press Stylebook and various British news publishers have caught up with – and amazingly actually been consistent with each other on it – while the academic guides mostly have not yet due to slower publication cycles. Please tell me you're not hinting above that you're a journalism student and that professors are actually requiring you to follow Guardian style. I shudder at the thought [of the latter part – I'm sure you'd make a good journalist], and it would seem unjustifiable given so many alternatives like The Economist Style Guide, BBC News Style Guide, The London Times Style Guide, Reuters Handbook of Journalism, The Telegraph Style Guide, the UPI Stylebook, etc. The Economist Style Guide (hereafter E) is actually intended as a style guide for public use, and is instructive in many of these regards. It's a higher-register and more respected publication than The Guardian (hereafter G), with a better reputation for both quality writing and editorial care, and at very least proves lack of consensus among British news publishers. E uses "AIDS" and "PDF" not the (internally inconsistent) "Aids" and "pdf" used by G. For initials, E also retains punctuation but not spaces ("V.P. Singh"), while G drops them both. E is mostly consistent with the British academic style guides and book publishers who follow them. Like most British news publishers, E likes to drop the points from the ends of abbreviations generally, but this is not advised outside journalism; both Oxford/Hart's and Fowler's (and Cambridge if I remember correctly, not that anyone buys their style guide) say to only do this with contractions that begin and end with the same characters as the full word: "Doctor" -> "Dr" but "Professor" -> "Prof." This is the norm in British book publishing, academic journals, fiction, and even some UK news journalism. To skim some of the others here: London Times and The Telegraph are inconsistent internally and with each other, and mostly are on the spectrum between the two British Journalism extremes, giving both "BBC" and "ICRC" but "Nato" and "Awacs"; yet LT has "IMAX" where T would likely have "Imax". LT uses "Prof." and "i.e." (as do the academic guides), while T (like G) uses "Prof" and "ie". But, rather backwardly, LT would use "V P Singh" while T would use "V. P. Singh" (dots and space), and G would use "VP Singh". The academic British guides use "ICRC", "NATO", "Prof." (but "Dr"), "i.e.", and "V. P. Singh" (sometimes without the space); aside from "Dr.", this agrees with mainstream North American usage, too. I think this is sufficient illustration why MoS exists and why it says what it does about these matters. And why people say there really is no particular British style, but a collection of conflicting styles. That's historically a bit unfair, since there's been a consistent book and academic journal publishing style, just not a news journalism one (because the UK lacks something like the AP Stylebook being treated as a standard by most of its news publishers). However, both the Butterfield Fowler's and the Waddingham New Hart's take an excessive "descriptive" stance and have stopped actually providing advice on most of these matters, probably under pressure from news publishers. Instead, they just observe chaos and throw up their hands, essentially saying writers should do whatever the hell they feel like. I would definitely bet real money that the negative backlash against this – style guides abandoning their roles as guides to masquerade as linguistics works not written by actual linguists – will cause this to be rectified in the next editions, if the works get new editions. It's noteworthy that the internationalised Garner's Modern English is also an Oxford University Press publication, in direct competition with their New Hart's and Fowler's volumes, and Garner's get better reviews; at some point someone will probably realise this doesn't make much business sense. To the extent anyone is even reading them, Waddingham and Butterfield are worsening rather than helping with the "British style chaos" problem.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:29, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I really hope you'll read the MoS pages, or stop doing style edits and focus instead adding and sourcing content. I'm seeing a lot of other issues besides "eg" and "4.15pm" in your edits (at least up to June of this year), like removal of commas that are grammatically necessary, using redundant time formats (e.g. "9.00pm – 9.30pm" for "9–9:30 pm"), mixing "from x to y" style with "x–y" style in the same expression, as "from x–y", ignoring MOS:NUMERO and putting the ambiguous "No" all over the place, capitalising things never capitalised here (e.g. academic subjects), removing capitalisation from proper names (e.g. the third thing in a series of them at a game show article), or weirdly partially removing it (e.g. "West Wing" → "West wing") resulting in a style not used in any dialect in any register. Lot of changes against MOS:INITIALS, at least two of which introduced errors (falsified the name of a company that pre-dated the emergence of the no-dots style; did something similar to a title of a published work). At least two cases of changing directly quoted material to suit your preferred style.

Working from oldest to newest, I've only reached 30 May 2017 in your edits (about 3/4), and have not seen you self-reverting any of your own un-MoS edits; I hope this means you've been working from newest to oldest. I've already spent three days of my WP time mostly on cleaning up after it all. [Update: Never mind; I caught up to all of it.]

Cite fixing tip: When a source URL is dead, don't delete the source. If you're busy, you can tag it with {{dead link}}. If you're not, use wayback.archive.org to get an |archive-url= and |archive-date= for it and also add |dead-url=y; this will repair the citation (unless the page was so obscure that Archive.org never spidered it, which makes it suspect as a source to begin with).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:38, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

User:SMcCandlish: Thank you for this. The thing with the 'west wing' was to do with the fact that 'wing' itself is not the important part of the name (also followed with names of certain political parties, treaties, constitutions, battles/wars, republics, etc). I actually think is should be 'block' - ten years at the school ... only ever called the 'east block': I will get round to changing this when I have met Friday's deadline. Regarding Coronation St's article, I changed it from 'between 7.30–8pm' (or whatever it was) to 'from 7.30–8.00pm'. I carefully considered whether to change the en dash to 'to', and decided against it (cannot remember why, exactly). I assume you are talking about 'Babushka' and 'x-ray': I thought this was right – my Physics never was that great, though (to the extent that my teacher told me to drop it before GCSE). It just seemed to be in my mind that there was no cap. My English education (that is the subject, not the language) taught me to always capitalise the names of academic subjects. I support that, and do not know why the MoS does not. I do not know to which company/printed work you are referring. There may be a reason. Most books which I have do drop the stops, actually (although some (including the wonder that is 'Wuthering Heights') do not). With reference to the dead links, is this solely for external pages, or internal, also? –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:04, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll try bulletizing this stuff for convenience.

Details on each above case, and a summation:

WP (like most others) uses "Labour Party", "Republican Party", etc., not "Labour party" or "Republican party", unless the name of the party is something different and it's just descriptive, in which case even the first part might not be capitalized. E.g. "Sinn Fein is a republican party in Ireland", in a different (general, original) meaning of "republican" – though WP would not probably write it that way, because of ambiguity. Or, "the Democratic Party [proper name] is the main liberal, progressive, or left-wing party [just descriptive terms] in the United States". If the DP changed its name next year to the Liberal Party, that would be capitalized, as a proper name, though when separated only the unique part would be: "According to the Liberal [Democrat, Republicans, Labour, etc.] platform, ... [some claim goes here] ..., but this party [not 'Party'] position has been criticized by [whomever]." In the "West wing" and "Liberal party" edits, I think you're either pulling from some external style guide that has a down-casing rule that is even more "gung ho" against capitalization than Wikipedia is, or you're mixing different rules. A prime suspect for the latter is the one to not (any longer) capitalize things like the isolated, common-noun reference "universities" in the sentence "Oxford and Cambridge are in competition, but both universities are prestigious." A generation or so ago, "Universities" would have been capitalized by many publishers, on the basis that "University" is capitalized in the full names of the institutions. That usage only seems to survive today almost exclusively in house styles, usually in business writing ("Meeting tomorrow after lunch in the Board Room [overcapitalization, but 'the Johnson Memorial Board Room' would be a proper name] between the Marketing and Development teams [arguably okay if the departments are really named that and not something else like 'Public Relations and Marketing' and 'Product Development'] to resolve conflicts between these Departments [overcapitalization]"). I'm only aware of one even semi-recent style guide for general public consumption (a minor one) that would retain "Universities" in the original example, and it was in fact on the "'University' is capitalized in the full names" basis. Even news publisher no longer do this; I saw just the other day a reference to a conference of the National Association of Attorneys General (US), which referred to it as a regulation-drafting meeting attended by the attorneys general of most of the [US] states; it did not capitalize "attorneys general" or "states", despite the title of the guy from California being the Attorney General of California, and the formal name of California being the State of California. WP consistently follows this lower-casing convention. Even "the US state of Georgia" is written that way, as a reference to a place (the "State of Georgia" is a legal entity, a bureaucracy not a location). WP never, ever mixes range styles, as in "from x–y"; other comprehensive style guides also say to avoid it, as confusing. I'm unaware of any that advise doing it, and I own two book cases of English language style guides, collected over the last 30-odd years. This is covered at MOS:NUM, which is explicit about not mixing the styles. Whether "x-ray" is capitalized in physics or not is irrelevant (I think it is not, but would also have to go look); in this context it is not a reference to part of the electro-magnetic spectrum per se (just by way of metaphor); it's the name of part of a game, and is a proper name for that part of it like the other two that preceded it. The argument that such things are proper names only applies to trademarked games with trademarked segments, like Jeopardy! and its closing segment, "Final Jeopardy!". If you are playing Texas hold 'em poker and come to the segment of gameplay called the river, you have done just that; you are not playing Texas Hold 'Em Poker and have not come to The River. Specialized poker publications overcapitalize such things for emphasis, as innumerable specialty works do in pretty much every field and topic. WP never permits Caps for Emphasis, because it would result in virtually everything being capitalized (each speciality would insist on capitalizing its "special" words if one was permitted to do so), and en.WP would look like German, which capitalizes alles Substantive und Substantive Sätze ('all nouns and noun phrases'). WP:Specialized-style fallacy explains why "it's capitalized in my field or preferred publications" is invalid reasoning on Wikipedia, and why pursuit of imposing specialized style here is disruptive. Capitalization of elements and accoutrements of trademarked games and game shows also doesn't extend to generic references, e.g. it's "She was eliminated in the second round [not Second Round] in her third appearance [not third Appearance] as a contestant [not Contestant] on The Price is Right." Or, "He choked to death on a handful of Dungeons & Dragons dice" [not Dice]. Not a proper name? Don't cap it. Virtually no modern style guides recommend capitalizing academic or other subjects, except in proper names. It's "the Department of Classics at the University of [Whatever]", but "I got a terrible grade in gender studies last year", "she is a professor of physics" (contrast "Professor of Physics Julia X. Chang" or "Prof. Chang" as a title adhered to a person's name). You capitalized "Physics" above, but see our article at Physics, and our articles on every other discipline; such terms are never capitalized here. See also MOS:ISMCAPS; Wikipedia down-cases more than you probably think it does, including things like method acting, the adherents of which almost religiously capitalize. (It's a form of promotionalism: "our Method is magically special and better than your [alleged] lack of one".) There's no consistent British style on most of these matters. British fiction and journalism is increasingly picking up stuff from North American style, including more frequently "double 'then single' quotation marks" order, and handling of commas at the end of quotations). British journalism is also more often than its non-UK counterparts apt to drop points from all abbreviations, not just the contraction variety, and to drop spacing in various constructions. There are to-and-fro influences between one publishing circle and another, and some trends can probably be demonstrated. But they does not equate to a formal national style distinction (even when some writers like Bryan A. Garner incorrectly suggest otherwise without any proof; style guide writers love to over-nationalize because it helps sell books). In the end, it's a matter of what a cluster of publishers are doing with their own house styles. Sometimes a particular publisher like The Guaridian is in agreement with British (and other) general-audience and academic guides, sometimes with other journalism guides only, and sometimes with no one. There are very few points of complete publishing-world consensus, even within any particular country. Where there is universally recognizable overlap (as with "9:15 p.m." or "9:15 pm" time formatting), this is precious, and we have WP:COMMONALITY for a reason: every such instance is an opportunity to shut down a tremendous amount of productivity-wasting editorial conflict that would otherwise recur at article after article, day after day, indefinitely. Dead links: I meant external ones ("When a source URL is dead ..."); WP cannot be a source for itself. Archive.org is not used here for internal links (if a WP article was deleted it was for good reason). For internal links: see WP:REDLINK for the overview. The gist is that things that are red-linked which are very likely to be notable should be left linked, since this encourages article creation ("This important topic is still red? I'd better get to work to fix that!"). But things unlikely to ever have an article here should have the red links removed, as annoying visual clutter (sometimes also promotionalism, e.g. when a non-notable blogger comes here and links a reference to their own name in citation to an article of theirs that someone used as a reference). Most red-linking is innocent, the mistaken idea of noob editors that every proper name should be linked. General sum-up: I really hate the misleading title of WP:Competence is required, but the page covers much of this in a general way: "I was taught that ..." is an attitude that has to be dropped. We were all taught lots of things about how to write in the micro-style sense (punctuation, etc.), how to compose "good" prose and a "good" outline, what makes a good source, how to get our own ideas to shine through and be distinguished from a recitation of basic facts, and so forth. A large amount of this absorbed pedagogy (and even professional experience in other, non-encyclopedia contexts), goes right out the window when writing for Wikipedia. WP has its own rules on style, format, tone/audience, verifiability versus original research, source reliability, etc., etc. They're out of necessity for the goals of the project, and are not arbitrary (even if some particular choices are arbitrary ones between multiple available options; the necessity to make a choice and stick with it is not arbitrary). Absorbing the policies and guidelines, either by reading and studying them or by having them held up at you in objection then slowly absorbing them bit by bit is necessary to contribute well here. It's effectively required that one absorb the WP way of doing things and listen to other editors (as a community if not always individually) even if you'd rather that the rules were different. I frequently analogize this to sports and games: most players would probably change a rule or two, but they all agree that the rules are the rules, otherwise the game can't be played. And no one shows up to a football game with a baseball or cricket bat and asks who the first pitcher will be. Or, you don't use pool balls on a snooker table; they don't fit in the pockets. Both methods of absorption are painful and tedious in different ways, but the study method, rather than the "people keep grousing at me" method, is only a hassle for the single editor. Some of the material will seem nit-picky. Even how WP defines "primary" and "secondary source" differs from how some entire disciplines do it (and they have differing reasons, that don't apply here, for divergent source classification systems). These seeming nit-picks are there for important but not always obvious reasons, which can usually be discovered in the talk-page archives. Please consider that we've been at this for 16.5 years now; there's not likely to be an objection you'd raise that hasn't been raised and found wanting before (at least not until you've really been around, as a near-daily editor, for several years, with tens of thousands of edits – enough experience to identify a frequently recurrent problem, which is genuinely problematic for the project, which can with certainty be traced to a policy or guideline deficiency, and which isn't counterbalanced by some other factor as part of long-standing consensus compromise. Most "my kind of English versus your kind of English" conflicts are firmly in that last category; what we have at WP:ENGVAR is dialect flexibility for (but only for) A. stuff that can be proven to be a matter of national dialectal distinction, and B. something about which WP has no reason to prefer one option over the other (like clarity, precision, readability, commonality between dialects, etc.). Most of the changes you want to make do not qualify. Some of them do, like changing contractions to drop the dot in BrEng ("Mr. -> "Mr") and changing "July 12, 2017" to "13 July 2017" in the same UK context.

Hope this helps. My intent is not to belabo[u]r any of these points, but to address each in turn and fully. A long answer now is probably better than a dozen short ones in multiple places over an extended period.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:59, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for this. No, I would much rather have a detailed response to something like this than either a rubbish half-answer or nothing at all. I did the 'Physics' thing without even thinking. I will certainly think about these things in future. Yes - you are right about 'X-ray'. I do not really understand how MOS:TM works: 'TK Maxx' is the actual name of the company; 'T.K.maxx' is the logo (well, sort of 1.); the article is called 'T.K. Maxx' - a style not even in the MoS (where – surely – it should be 'T. K. Maxx'). I will start a discussion on the article talk page. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 15:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

MOS:TM is "difficult", especially since people have a hard time mentally reconciling it with WP:COMMONNAME. I wrote WP:COMMONSTYLE to help them. For the company you mention, I'll address that on its talk page. PS: Applied the requested moves template. Made a detailed WP:CONSISTENCY case, but overturning the J. C. Penney decision is a probably equally likely outcome.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:40, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

MOS:DATEUNIFY

Regarding this revert. The article was created with all dates as DMY, and the creator added the DMY tag themselves. Regardless of when the DMY tag was added, it was the accepted and the dates were uniform date format at that time. Months later, new dates have been added. While yyyy-mm-dd is certainly an acceptable date format, DMY is already specified and all of the older citations are using it. They need to be unified. Please undo your edit. -- ferret (talk) 18:01, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

You have a point with regards to yyyy-mm-dd, I do not see why the initial dmy tag should be changed, though. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 18:11, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm unsure what you mean. Do you mean the date in the "Use xxx dates" template? It is meant to denote the last time dates were unified, not when the tag was added. -- ferret (talk) 18:13, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, I was under the impression that it was referring to when the tag was added. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 18:15, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Ukraine

I can tell that you aren't really up on Ukrainian issues. As part of the decommunization of Ukraine in the Spring of 2016, hundreds of cities and villages had their names officially changed ([1]). Citations are not needed for this. --Taivo (talk) 17:20, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

User:TaivoLinguist: Hmm. I do not care. You need to provide the citation. The point is that WP helps people with little knowledge. Provide the citations to do so. If I do not have vast knowledge, good. I am like other people, who will visit the page. Help me and the thousands of other users by providing evidence for your facts. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:23, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

The name change is described later in the article if anyone is interested. The official name of the city is Dnipro. Do you ask for citations for the official name of Washington, DC? --Taivo (talk) 17:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

The name of that article is the same as that mentioned in the text. I did ask for a citation on Conservative Party (UK), though, for the same reason. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Rollback granted

Hi Sb2001. After reviewing your request for "rollbacker", I have enabled rollback on your account. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

• Getting rollback is no more momentous than installing Twinkle.
• Rollback should be used to revert clear cases of vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
• Rollback should never be used to edit war.
• If abused, rollback rights can be revoked.
• Use common sense.

If you no longer want rollback, contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some more information on how to use rollback, see Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Rollback (even though you're not an admin). I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, but feel free to leave me a message on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of rollback. Thank you for helping to reduce vandalism. Happy editing! Anarchyte (work | talk) 03:01, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Re: Jamshedpur FC

Where did I only ask for mdy? I always advocate, for Indian football articles, dmy (1 November 2016 for example). --ArsenalFan700 (talk) 19:05, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I looked into it. This was my mistake. I always intended to use dmy but when I created the Jamshedpur FC article I used my template at User:ArsenalFan700/Indian Football Team Template which I based off Seattle Sounders FC which uses mdy. I simply forgot to change it from mdy to dmy by accident. Sorry, don't need to be so harsh about it. --ArsenalFan700 (talk) 19:07, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. This sort of thing annoys me, though. As long as it was an innocent mistake rather than, 'I'll add the tag and then leave other editors to do the work' it is fine. I am sorry if I came across as harsh. I am – however – sure that you understand how frustrating off-loading editors are. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:11, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Ip Man 3

In your user profile you say "If I am on Huggle and an edit appears which seemingly removes a large section for no reason (ie there is no edit summary), I will revert it. Do not expect me to self-revert back to your version if there is a legitimate reason for this edit. It is your own fault if you do not leave a summary." This is fair enough, however, in my edits to the Ip Man 3 article I did leave edit summaries explaining my edits. The majority of content I removed, the "Themes" section, I feel was out-of-place and the content more akin to trivia than themes. The quality of the content itself was bad, poorly justified despite being referenced: "Cha cha champion" is not a theme, it is trivia; "Symbolism of butterfly" is not a theme, it is trivia. None of the listed "themes" were themes of the movie, they were trivia points. As a whole, my edit encompassed a thorough revision of the article's standards and I can only ask that you compare the two versions properly and see for yourself the improvement in quality. I streamlined a lot of the clumsy writing in the Plot section, removing extraneous detail and improved on details that were lacking. I made the "Cast" section more in line with the other Ip Man film articles.

Given the amount of time I spent on this edit and my love of the Ip Man series, I am of course quite offended at it being undone. Please reconsider. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.4.168 (talk) 11:14, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

I will work on a solution, and get back to you. I imagine that I will restore your version and leave a message on the article talk page. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

I have now restored your edit, and left a summary of it, and my objection, on its talk page. You should really be discussing all major changes like this on talk pages before going ahead. Hopefully, I have now provided a template for you to use in future. Editors will be very grateful for your contributions, but to avoid this sort of thing happening in future, you must first obtain a consensus before removing vast sections of an article. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 15:15, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

My thanks. In future, I'll remember to go to the talk page before making major edits. 86.185.4.168 (talk) 18:41, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:07, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Unused book in Ip Man 3

I removed the book The Legendary Bruce Lee from Ip Man 3 because it was not used anywhere in the article (originally it was used when the article had a "themes" section, which is not there now). The book source also has a field called "ref=harv", and if the book is not used as a source anywhere in the article, i.e. just kept under the "bibliography" section and not cited elsewhere, then it will read "Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFVaughn1986" (install User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js and you'll see). --Kailash29792 (talk) 13:29, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I have changed the section title to 'further reading', which is a better solution than simply removing it. Maintain sources wherever possible. You may wish to change the format away from a cite book tag, if this is flagged up by a tool. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 13:55, 8 August 2017 (UTC)Update: I have changed the format of the book, so that it is not flagged up as an unused reference. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:15, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox television channel

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox television channel. Legobot (talk) 04:27, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Comics MOS

Hi, Sb2001. Just a quick notes that WikiProject Comics MOS is to use the number sign and not "No." See also WP:CMOS#CITESTYLE and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Comics#Uniform cover artwork crediting convention. Thanks for understanding. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:50, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Right. Totally stupid rule. I will raise this at the general MoS talk page. Thank you for letting me know. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:55, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

15:39:01, 15 August 2017 review of submission by Sl29

Draft:Kamran_Khavarani Sb2001, thank you for taking your time to review my article. I have some questions about what I can do to establish my subjects nobility. So far I have referenced a book written on the subject by an art historian and a few articles discussing his artwork and early life. From my understanding they fit Wikipedia's guidelines. Is this not enough? Also are there any references that I should remove because they are not good?

I highly recommend that you make it really clear in the lead section of the article why this person is of significance. Write an essay-style introduction, selling their credentials and most famous works (without sounding biased). Sentences like 'Khavarani is perhaps best known for his ...' can help with this. I am really pleased with the work that you have done on the article. I will have a go at sorting out some of the stylistic impurities later, as I know a lot about the MoS. Once you have had a look at the lead, leave me a message, and I will be happy to publish the article. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I have revised the lead section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sl29 (talk • contribs) 22:49, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

User:Sl29: I have accepted the draft article which you submitted. At the moment, this means that two articles exist on the same topic. I will campaign for the removal of the old one, as the new one is better. The content of yours may need to be transferred across, should the administrators not see how much more convenient my suggestion is. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 13:44, 17 August 2017 (UTC)