User:SMcCandlish
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On the Radar: An Occasional Newsletter on Wikipedia's Challenges
- "Wikipedia still has a moderator diversity problem. Its new chief wants to fix it." (Cristiano Lima, The Washington Post, 15 September 2021)
- According to WashPo, WMF has tapped a South African nonprofit executive and lawyer to be its new executive director. While I've been saying for a decade that WMF has to stop hiring software- and online-services-industry people to run an NGO, and hire NGO people, this one – Maryana Iskander – is rather cagey and bureaucratic, or comes off that way in the interview.
- First up is a belief that the MOS:ACCESS going to be better-enforced? Is Simple English Wikipedia going to be reintegrated into the main site as alternative articles? Is the mobile version of the site going to stop dropping features? Is WP:GLAM going to turn into a bigger effort? There are a hundred ways (sensible and otherwise) this statement could be made to affect policy, funding, and the end "product" (though one suspects nothing important will change for the better unless the internal culture of WMF's organizational leadership also changes in a major way, such as by diversifying the board of directors, toward more academics and nonprofit people instead of tech-industry rich people).In short, I have hopes that Iskander's NGO background will make for a better exec. dir. fit than that last two we've had, but right out of the gate she's saying strange, too-vague, and even troubling things. And nothing in the interview actually suggests anything like a fix for WP's editorial diversity problem, which the headline suggested was going to be the focus. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢😼 15:48, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- First up is a belief that the
- "Imposing orthodoxy: Left-wing activists are using old tactics in a new assault on liberalism" (staff writers, The Economist, 10 September 2021)
- "It is possible to detect eerie echoes of the confessional state of yore", and today's far left is recycling techniques from fun times like the Inquisition." I've been saying this for years, and the article is a good summary of how "left-wing" and "leftist" do not always align with "liberal". It's an observation too few mainstream writers have been willing to make, but the truth of it explains a great deal of disruptive PoV-pushing on Wikipedia. Illiberal left-wing activism is often harder to detect, and harder for the average editor to publicly resist, than far-right extremism, which we tend to recognize then delete on sight. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:51, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- Study confirms what we knew already: People edit here to change public perception (Barbara Page, "Edit-a-thon participants are motivated by desire to change the views of society", The Signpost, 24 May, 2018)
- An Information Research survey shows that people's editing motivation is often "their desire to change the views of society", and also that they view Wikipedia as a "social media site". This isn't news to us, and the material doesn't have a huge statistical sample, but I would bet real money that it will be re-confirmed by later studies. This has systemic bias, neutrality, and conflict of interest implications (also not news). What we don't really think much about it is what this means for Wikipedia long-term, as everyone with an agenda becomes more aware that they can try to sneakily leverage Wikipedia articles to boost their side of any story, especially after the Trump 2016 US presidential campaign proved that powerful results can pulled off by organized manipulation of "social media" sites (whether WP really is one or not is irrelevant if the public thinks it is). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:28, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
- WMF Community Wishlist Survey is system-gameable (SMcCandlish, 19 December 2017)
- The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has closed; the results are here, and as disappointing as in previous years. This process is fundamentally flawed, for numerous reasons:
- Only the top-ten proposals will get any resources devoted to them, no matter how many there are, or how urgent or important they are.
- It's a straight-vote, canvassing-allowed, no-rationale-needed, short-term "popularity contest" – normal Wikimedian consensus-building is thwarted.
- This setup encourages people to vote for the 10 things they want most, then vote against every other proposal even if they agree with it. Proposals cannot build support over time.
- There's no "leveling of the playing field" between categories. Important proposals of narrower interest (e.g. to admins, or to technical people) never pass, only the lowest-common-denominator ones do – and the most-canvassed ones.
- Too few Wikimedians even know the survey exists or when it is open, which greatly compounds the skew caused by focused canvassing – the intentional spikes actually determine the outcome.
- Archived stories:
- Wikipedia co-founder on WP's flaws – and potential replacement? (SMcCandlish, 2 June 2018 (update of original 11 November 2015 story))
- "Time Inc. Buyer Helped Koch Brothers Airbrush Their Image Across the Internet" (Lee Fang, The Intercept, 1 December 2017)
- New "Wikipedia:Nations and Wikipedia" page (Fixuture, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), 26 June 2017)
- RfC to require paid editors' disclosure of advertising to edit (Doc James, and 100+ Wikimedian respondents, Meta.Wikimedia.org, 13 September 2017 – December 2017)
- At last, an RfC on paid use of admin tools (Smallbones [original proposal by Jytdog], Wikipedia talk:Administrators, 20 December 2017)
- Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing (Smallbones, The Signpost, 25 February 2016 (updated 29 June 2018))
- WMF Exec. Dir. Tretikov resigning (Patricio Lorente, Lila Tretikov, meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard, 25 February 2016)
- "WP:BOGOF" stance helps derail an adminship after conflict at AfD (SMcCandlish, 6 February 2016)
- "Inside the game of sports vandalism on Wikipedia" (Jeff Elder, Wikimedia Blog, 6 January, 2016)
- "Hundreds of 'black hat' English Wikipedia accounts blocked following investigation" (Ed Erhart & Juliet Barbara, Wikimedia Blog, 31 August 2015)
- "Are Pakistan articles being manipulated?" (Gamaliel, Wikipedia Signpost, 18 February 2015)
Hi!
I am Stanton McCandlish (often referred to as just SMcC here and some have nicknamed me Mac, which I don't mind). I am a Web developer, IT consultant, nonfiction author, civil liberties activist and nonprofit executive, as well as amateur pocket billiards (pool) instructor, genealogist, former online news editor, policy analyst, archivist, independent publisher, and also an amateur artist, among other things. I have been among the most active, avid Wikipedians. I have a B.A. in anthropology and communication (a custom minor that combines linguistics and broader human communication, including journalism, PR, and media criticism). I am a US citizen, but have lived in England, Ireland, and Canada for extended periods, and learned to read and write in the UK (and I use something of a form of
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My current local time is 03:00 PM (
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Contact
- E-mail me here
- My profile at LinkedIn
Wikitivities
Putting my money where my mouth is
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The "TL;DR" version
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Access levels and roles
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Beyond en.wikipedia
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Detailia
SMcCandlish (
- My Commons upload/move log (far more informative for my image contributions than the en.wiki one).
- My contributions to WP policies and guidelines
- MediaWiki Bugzilla bugs I've filed or been involved with
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What I'm working on now...
...when time permits:
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Incomplete articles
- American snooker (draft)
- Lots of cue sports articles; see WikiProject Cue sports for an overview.
- Lots of articles related to Highland dress
- Lots of articles related to breeds of cat
Wikipedia-namespace pages
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (glossaries)(nascent proposal)
- Sports naming conventions and manual of style (draft)
Stuff I've been largely responsible for or heavily involved in
Projects
- pool, snooker, carom billiards, and obscure billiards-related games such as bagatelle and bumper pool.
- fixPOV}}.
- WikiProject English Language – for articles on the language's history, linguistics, grammar, style, etc.
Articles
This user has helped promote 3 good articles on Wikipedia. |
I devote most of my mainspace time to improving poor articles to be encyclopedic quality, rather than "polishing the chrome" on already-good articles. Both kinds of work are necessary, but I find working on Stub, Start, and C-class articles, to move them toward B, A, and Good class, is a higher priority for the project. (To date, I have little interest in Good-to-Featured improvement; that's a wiki-subculture all its own.)
- Stats on the articles I have edited the most
- ACUI Collegiate Pocket Billiards National Championship – created article, as a 5-source stub verging on Start-class.
- sourcingthe science, and defending it from frequent vandalism. Most of my work on it has been surpassed by now, but it was important back in the day (late 2000s).
- Evil albino stereotypewhen I got to them; it's quite solid now, after a lot of mergin' & purgin', reliable sourcing, and frequent shepherding and cleanup.
- Persecution of people with albinism – a later split, and a significant amount of the content was from my work in the above articles.
- Antebellum architecture – mostly based on material split from Antebellum South.
- Caffè d'orzo
- Crystalate Manufacturing Company – an early plastics manufacturer.
- Eight-ball pool (British variation) – mostly my work, building on skeletal, unsourced material originally interpolated into Eight-ball.
- English in New Mexico – along with several others, have been working to develop this into a proper article (it's more difficult than it sounds; most of the source material is on paper at the UNM library, or behind journal-archive paywalls). It later merged to Western American English#New Mexico– with most of the content now gone, which is disappointing. Win some, lose some.
- Five-pin billiards – Article about the carom billiards game popular in Italy and parts of South America. I wrote it from scratch after someone posted a (terrible) machine-translation of the (good) Italian article; mine is now more extensive than the original Italian one, though may yet suffer from translation problems. Help wanted from someone fluent in Italian.
- Folgerphone – an experimental musical instrument. Someone's disputed a major fact, on the Talk page. Help wanted from anyone who knows anything at all about Folgerphones.
- Galfrid – a major disambiguation page (it existed before but had very little in it); this took a considerable amount of work, hunting down all the notable and probably-notable Galfrids (many of whom were also Geoffreys, Godfrieds, Gruffydds, Goffredos, etc., and not at titles with "Galfrid" or "Galfridus" in them), and looking into the origin of the name and its variants, and their relation to other names.
- Ground billiards – written from scratch.
- IBSF World Snooker Championship
- International Open Series – a snooker tournament.
- List of professional sports – mostly based on material split from Professional sports.
- List of U.S. Open pool championships (begun as a disambiguation page).
- Logorrhea (rhetoric) and now at Verbosity.
- Mythology (fiction)
- Persian onager – a beast.
- Pleonasm – article on redundant expressions in language. About 70% or so of that text is mine.
- Relatedly, I also shepherded various other language articles like Verbosity, Redundancy (linguistics) and Calque, until they became stable.
- Pool Hall Blues – an episode of TV series Quantum Leap.
- Pro–am – mostly based on material split from what is now Amateur professionalism.
- Regimental tartan – written pretty much from scratch, originally as a section of Tartan.
- Sandbox (software development) – a coding safety process. Created this article. I crack up when someone mistakes it for the Wikipedia:Sandbox.
- WP:NORproblems.
- Three-ball – article about the poorly-documented modern pool (pocket billiards) folk game, about 95% my material. Sourcing help wanted!
- Triple deity – started this, originally as a list article.
- Turkmenian kulan – a creature.
- Valley-Dynamo – a gaming table manufacturer (especially pool, foosball, and air hockey).
- Valley National 8-Ball League Association – a pool league (actually international now despite its name).
- William A. Spinks – written from scratch.
- William Hoskins (inventor) – written from scratch.
Overhauled
Pre-existing pages I've done a lot of work on (over time or all at once); new list started January 2018, so very incomplete:
- WP:AFD.
- Godwin's law – I informally shepherded this page for quite some time, before other editors got more involved in keeping it encyclopedic. (I have a potential conflict of interest, since I worked at the same organization as its namesake back in the 1990s.) I've more recently (2023) returned to cleaning it up, as it started to get crufty again.
- Jeannette H. Lee – Korean-American businesswoman article. I originally nominated this for deletion, but after it was kept as (marginally) notable, I significantly worked up the article so it will be properly encyclopedic.
- Khes – iffy article on an Indic fabric type and garment, written by a non-native English speaker, and with poor sourcing. Was already slated for AfD by someone, but I managed to massage it into passable shape (a quality edit more than a quantity one). Still had issues (as of December 2020), but I drew attention to the page at the wikiprojects and noticeboards for India- and Pakistan-related topics.
- Lynette Horsburgh – British amateur cue-sports champion. Was AfDed, so I improved it (diff includes a few intervening edits by someone else), and it was kept. Not a massive overhaul, but a qualitative one.
- Mora, New Mexico [4]; Mora County, New Mexico [5]; First Battle of Mora [6]; Second Battle of Mora [7] – were palimpsests of confusing drive-by edits, so I re-did them all with everything where it actually pertains, copyedited, and with some new sources.
- WP:BLP-violating attack page and a shameless promotional advertisement by his followers (whom I attempted to dissuade from further WP policy violations, both on-wiki and by contacting his organization directly). I overhauled it repeatedly, and watchdogged it for months until sufficient attention from other neutral editors was drawn to it. (Problems still arise, but they are much more manageable now.)
- Tartan – totally overhauled from top to bottom, using pretty much every available reliable source.
- Splits so far include Clan tartan(presently a redir to main article).
- Splits so far include
Wikipedia policies, guidelines, essays, and proposals
- Stats on the "Wikipedia:"-namespace pages I have edited the most
- Wikipedia:Notability – policy – I was deeply involved in the debate over the future and form of this when it was a proposed guideline, especially from Nov. 2006 through Feb. 2007, until it stabilized (it was much more controversial back then than editors today might realize).
- Wikipedia:Gaming the system#Gaslighting – guideline sub-section – I popularized the concept on WP; someone else added it to the guideline, though most of the wording is mine at this point.
- shepherdingthe MoS, and have written substantial portions of it. I often move on to other stuff, so as to not get overly focused on it, then return to it periodically, mostly to help keep it stable.
- MOS:CAPS
- WP:MOSsub-guideline section – principal author
- WP:MOSsub-guideline – principal author
- WP:MOSsub-guideline draft – principal author
- WP:MOS sub-guideline – one of the principal authors (I wrote most its key provisions)
- WP:MOSsub-guideline draft – principal author
- Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey) – did a total rewrite (combined diff), so that it makes some kind of sense, and actually follows site-wide policies and guidelines; not sure how much of that will stick.
- WP:ATsub-guideline – principal author
- WP:Nsub-guideline draft – principal author
- WP:Nsub-guideline draft – one of the principal authors
- WP:AT sub-guideline – much of the prose and most of the structure is my work, though none of the major ideas are; I simply took a palimpsestuousmess and made a parseable document out of it.
- Wikipedia:Advice for hotheads – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Article titles/Criteria order – supplement – principal author
- Wikipedia:Asshole John rule – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Commas exist for a reason – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Consensus venue – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Content forks/Internal – supplement – creator, one of the principal authors
- Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2021#Flyer22 Frozen – obituary – one of the principal authors
- Wikipedia:Don't be high-maintenance – essay – wrote the overhauled version that changed it from the WP:Don't feed the divas attack page to an advice essay (both for the editorship-at-large and for editors accused of such behavior)
- Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process § No one is obligated to satisfy you – essay section – principal author
- Wikipedia:Don't "teach the controversy" – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Emerson and Wilde on consistency – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Fallacy of selective sources – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Fallacy of the revelation of policy – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Frequently misinterpreted sourcing policy – essay – principal author
- Help:How to mine a source – how-to – principal author
- Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Identifying and using tertiary sources – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:In versus of – supplement – principal author
- Wikipedia:Logical quotation on Wikipedia – essay – principal author
- MOS:FAQ
- Wikipedia:Notability/Historical – archival index, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of the development of the "notability" concept on Wikipedia – creator/maintainer
- Wikipedia:Proper names and proper nouns – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Race and ethnicity – essay, largely educational in nature – principal author
- Wikipedia:Reducing consensus to an algorithm – essay, verging on humor – principal author
- Wikipedia:Rouge editor – humor essay – one of the principal authors (the version before mine was here, as the text in a category page)
- Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Tertiary-source fallacy – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Use modern language – essay – principal author
- Help:User CSS for a monospaced coding font – how-to – principal author (and actually transcluded from Template:Mxt/User CSS for a monospaced coding font, as it was created initially as a supplement to template documentation)
- Wikipedia:Use modern language – essay – principal author
- MOS:NICKNAMEas of November 2017.
- Wikipedia:Wall of text – essay – substantial revision [9] to be balanced and less like a polemic
- Wikipedia:When unbundling admin power works – essay – principal author
- Wikipedia:Why Manual of Style discussions are so awful – outline of the causes (and a few hints about what to do about it, though the problem is largely intractable and human nature)
- Wikipedia:Why Manual of Style talk pages have so much churn – a list of reasons and related matters
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals/Article structure - wikiproject advice essay (draft) – principal author
- Wikipedia:Writing about breeds – essay – principal author; primarily for new-ish editors, but also an overview for those just new to the topic
- Wikipedia:You can search, too – essay – principal author
User-space essays
- User:SMcCandlish/Adminship reform – draft proposal (more like a "what if", since it'll never happen unless WMF imposes it)
- User:SMcCandlish/Avoid quoting definitions – author; still in a draft state
- User:SMcCandlish/Bare basics of Wikipedia footnotes – just a little bit of "micro-help" for beginners
- ArbCom's failure to address them.
- User:SMcCandlish/Gendered category criterion – draft proposal
- User:SMcCandlish/It – a "ha ha, only serious" piece. [It proved controversial when someone mistook it for "transphobic" because it had anything at all to do with pronouns. It's actually about self-aggrandizement for commercial, religious, classist, or plain ol' egotism reasons, and why Wikipedia will not write in such a manner to please such a subject.]
- User:SMcCandlish/TG-NB – a FAQ on what my actual views on TG/NB/GQ issues are, and on the history and results of the disputes about the above essay
- User:SMcCandlish/Notability and Deletion policy – my personal "ground-truth sitrep" on notability as a concept on WP; updated every few years (since 2006)
- User:SMcCandlish/RfA standards – what I (loosely) expect and do not expect out of candidates for WP:Requests for adminship
- User:SMcCandlish/RfC-replacement voting system – draft proposal (more like a "what if", since it'll never happen unless WMF imposes it)
- User:SMcCandlish/Wikipedia's self-management and future – some thoughts on organizational life-cycle, editor retention, and dispute resolution
Major successful proposals
Key:
- = Proposal (or its gist) accepted
- = Proposal rejected
- = Partly accepted, or other solution reached
- = No consensus, or unclear resolution
- MOS:LIFEupdated to reflect this. I was neutral on the matter, just insistent that we pick either that or lower-case, not continue to have no clear answer. (December 2018 – January 2019)
- Wikipedia:Proposed article splits – I created this noticeboard in July 2018, though originally as a section [10] of what is now Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers (suggesting a broader name); it ran that two-in-one way until April 2019, when it was split off into its own noticeboard by GenQuest.
- A series of merge proposals from 2016–2018 to consolidate biographical advice into MOS:CAPS in a long series of back-to-back edits [11](June 2018).
- MOS:CAPS, and essentially identical material already in there about over-capitalizing dances and dance genres was merged into it. (January–February 2018)
- MOS:BIO (before vs. after), based on my WP:Using nicknames essay; accepted almost verbatim (November 2017); there was some later clarification discussion, long but not major (December 2017).
- MOS:FICT.
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126#RfC: Religion in biographical infoboxes – Removed contentious
|religion=
and|denomination=
parameters from most biographical infoboxes (March–April 2016).- See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes, which was going nowhere until I moved it to Village Pump right after the above RfC, then it closed with strong consensus against
|ethnicity=
parameter for similar reasons (March–April 2016).
- See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes, which was going nowhere until I moved it to Village Pump right after the above RfC, then it closed with strong consensus against
- Grevy's zebra). (April–May 2014)
- WP:TRANSACTIONAL – Original idea from Hurricane_Noah, but most of the wording is my policywonkery. Successful proposal here(November 2023)
Ongoing proposals
- Virtual-reality game article, since the topic is distinct from virtual reality hardware, and we already have a Category:Virtual reality games.
- WP:CONSISTENT.
- South Scandinavian languages nominated for deletion, unless a proper target article/section can be found. Presently redirecting to Danish dialects, but does not appear to be a term for this (or for anything else – zero hits in Google Scholar (March 2021).
- WP:RECOGNIZABLE(this is dialectal/colloquial use of "according to", and unnecessarily wordy anyway.
- MOS:CAPS.
- Talk:Yan Tan Tethera#Section merge from Cumbric– It is duplicative of the material at the latter and inappropriate in huge chart form in the former; all that's needed there is a general summary (March 2021).
- WP:DAB: don't use a longer disambiguation term than is necessary.
- Template:Cite presentation, since we cite presentations at conferences (or in conf. proceedings), not entire conferences.
- Talk:FKM#Merge from Viton – To merge spammy and redundant brand-name article into article on the substance (March 2021)
- MOS:PNmerge left a section on this in MOS:CAPS without any actual material pertaining to capitalization, and we actually have plenty to say about that (February 2021).
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Wording proposal on ethnic/racial terms, in light of the recent RfC – To address "[b|B]lack", "[c|C]olo[u]red", etc., since there's been a lot of churn about that, including an RfC with clear results which are not yet reflected in the guideline (February 2021).
- WP:OPERATITLEessay in the mix (December 2020).
- Talk:James D. Zirin#Merge book stubs here – Proposal to merge three questionably notable stubs into a single article that is more encyclopedic (December 2020).
- Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 72#Proposed documentation and parameter alias changes for Template:Cite episode – to make the template more relevant in the age of digital media, and less US-centric (October 2020). Archived without resolution, so will need to be re-started. [Leaving it in this section, because I should do this, and while it is still quasi-recent.]
Accepted proposals needing further work
(That's further work by me or by anyone.)
- WP:CONSISTENT) just moving this one article. Leaving it in this section (despite not an accepted proposal), since I actually need to do the work of building that RM.
- Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 December 19#Template:Hover title and Template:Tooltip – to merge the former to the latter. In progress: Re-develop code for better accessibility.
- WP:PROJPAGEessay) Followup: It's likely that essay needs revision as a result of this and other moves.
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2020/October#Folklore stubs – because we don't have a stub category tree for folklore, leading to lots of uncategorized and mis-categorized stubs. "The result of the debate was create." Confer with Pegshipon building this out over time: "I suggest this be set up under Culture stubs | Other culture."
- dog-breed-stub}}, and their categories (also a rename of an over-long one). Result: create parent-only category, and file breed stub sub-categories under it. (I'm not sure about the rename; may need to separately revist that.)
- Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people/Archive 10#A point needs clarification into guidance instead of non-guiding observation (and tacit approval) of conflict– Needs to proceed if MoS is going to incorporate that page by reference. Did not attract opposition, but I'm not sure there's enough feedback to declare consensus. May need to re-ask, or just go do it and see if it sticks.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists#Propose merging WP:Manual of Style/Embedded lists into WP:Manual of Style/Lists – Pretty straightforward. Some of this got done while I was on wikibreak, but some may still need to be completed.
- Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 26#RfC: Proposal to make TfD more RM-like, as a clearinghouse of template discussions – Just what it says. While this passed almost unanimously, nothing has been done to actually implement it yet. We need a listing template, and a bot that goes looking for it.
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Temperament Test Society – Result: Merge to Temperament test. Non-notable org; not unencyclopedic, but should merge to Temperament test
- WP:BOLDlydo it. Will take some merging work.
- WP:CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:Terrier#Merge from Terrier Group – close out a CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:Herding dog#Merge from Herding Group – close out a CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:List of dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club#Merge redundant articles – close out more CONTENTFORKs. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:Fédération Cynologique Internationale#Merge from "FCI [Whatever] Group" pages – close out more CONTENTFORKs. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:Breed standard#Merge from Breed standard (dog) – close out another CONTENTFORK. Unopposed, but merges need to happen.
- Talk:Non-Sporting Group#Requested move 20 February 2018– de-capitalization multi-RM, plus some further merge ideas. Most articles moved; merges need to happen. One article was carved out of the RM by the closer, but without any actual basis and in direct contradiction of a recent RfC on the matter. Closer has been asked to reverse that; otherwise, I will re-RM this later.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#RfC: Capitalisation of traditional game/sports terminology – WP will use "chess" and "baseball bat" not "Chess" and "Baseball Bat" (question didn't seem like it needed to be asked, until editwarring proved that it did). Some game and equipment articles still need to be lower-cased, as does lots of text in them.
- WP:WIKILAWYER, but so it goes. Still needs the fix at Template:Post-nominals that inspired this to be reopened from original 2015 request in the first place. Follow-up request also open at Module talk:Yesno#Support on/off.
- Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 January 24#Template:IUPAC spelling US – merge some redundant ENGVAR templates, to just be parameters; merge needs to actually be done.
- WP:SUMMARY version to List of cat breeds, but it requires condensing the material.
- WP:Manual of Style/Proper namesalmost unanimously supported, but need to actually do it.
- Wikipedia talk:Media help#Requested move 10 January 2018– some cleanup work needs to be done, and possibly a merge (see final comment at discussion)
- Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 21#Category:Fédération Cynologique Internationale members – move to name without "members" (we don't have narrow subcats. without a parent cat.)
- Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 22#Category:Male dogs – upmerge as unencyclopedic; more sensible to split by dog type/role.
- Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 22#Category:Glossaries of medical terms – upmerge to more concise duplicate/parent Category:Glossaries of medicine.
Log of closed proposals |
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Changes to
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Major templates
- {{rp}} (The template that kept us from doing awful things when citing the same source many times in the same article. Came to me in a flash after User:Fuhghettaboutit bemoaned how many lines were created by citing the same book for so many entries at Glossary of cue sports terms. For many years it was probably the most widely used of the "support" templates for our source citation system. Later improvements to MediaWiki's handling of the
<ref>
system, with the addition of the|ref=
parameter, eventually made this template obsolete. (See this diff for a crash course in using|ref=
.) - {{compact TOC}} as we now know it (There were many radically different templates of this sort, and I merged all of them and their features and added many new ones.)
- {{MOS:GLOSSARIES.)
- {{em}}, {{strong}}, {{var}}, {{kbd}}, {{samp}}, {{dfn}} and most of the rest of Category:Semantic markup templates
- {{"-}} (quotation-mark kerning templates)
- {{xref}})
- {{cue sports}} navbox
- {{WikiProject Cue sports}}, {{WikiProject New Mexico}}, and several others
- {{TfR notice}}
- {{fake heading}} – Built a flexible, unified template out of code originally at that page and at
{{fakeheader}}
and{{fake header}}
, with new features added. - {{sfnref inline}}
- {{page range}} – accessibility/utility template (temporary, i.e. intended to be subst'd)
- Loads more, I just fire and forget (literally – I'm often surprised to look in a template's history and see that I created it and don't remember).
Categories
- Category:Cue sports (I created and have been one of the most active maintainers of most of its subcategories.)
- Category:Insular ecology (I didn't write the articles in it, I just noticed they were scattered about and not categorized sanely, so now they are.)
- Category:Highland dress (No category for this for years for some reason; I organised the articles and have been working on them intensively, starting with Tartan and History of the kilt.)
- Lots that I'm forgetting.
Non-admin closures
Just started tracking this in September 2017 (and then forgot until early 2020). I sometimes do
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Toy portals (2020-01-30)
- Disruptive-turning RfC on whether the US dollar "really" is a fiat currency: permalink – someone barnstarred me for this one. (2017-09-30)
- Nationality of Jose Antonio Vargas: permalink to discussion and closure (2017-09-10)
Misc.
- Some shortcuts that seem like they should have been there forever weren't, and were created by me. I usually forget, but a few important ones are .
Gallery of contributed images
Some of the images I've contributed under GFDL/CC (and sometimes PD) are displayed as thumbnails in my Gallery Page.
To-do list
Honestly, I no longer maintain or even look at this; there's so much to do, I just do whatever grabs my attention first.
To-do list for User:SMcCandlish:
Unsorted additions:
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Wikawards
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noob | involved | been around | veteran | seen it all | older than the Cabal itself |
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The Running Man Barnstar | The Working Man's Barnstar | The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar | The E=mc2 Barnstar | Excellent User Page Award | |||
For your many, many fine cue sport related edits. --Fuhghettaboutit 23:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC) |
For all the arduous work on Cue sport 23:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
68.239.240.144 |
Awarded to SMcCandlish for sleuthing out sockpuppets being used to subvert 20:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC) | Awarded for your tireless work on articles relating to the field of 09:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC) | [...] ask Mr. McCandlish if programmers are users too. Peace and love. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC) | |||
Barnstar Eaten by a Bear | The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar | Some Falafel and One Canadian Beer | The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | The Heroic Barnstar | |||
I regret to inform you that the barnstar that I was going to give you for this bit of hilariousness was eaten by a bear. Happy editing! Hamtechperson 04:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC) |
For general template taming goodness. Ludwigs2 03:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC) |
For being here and to work on the women sport project. --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC) |
For behaving in a genteel fashion, as if nothing were the matter, and for gallantry. --Djathinkimacowboy 03:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC) |
For your recent work at ) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC) | |||
Chapeau | Cheers! | The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | The Socratic Barnstar | The Special Barnstar | |||
for this one! Cheers - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC) | For all of the thoughtful posts through the extended discussion at MOSCAPS. I've appreciated it. JHunterJ (talk) 13:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC) |
This comes as a recognition of your kindness in developing the Firefox Cite4wiki add-on. It has been helpful and a great resource. I was also happy to learn you contribute to Mozilla which I do as well :) Talk to Me. Email Me. 18:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
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In recognition of your general fine work around the 'pedia, and the staunchness and standard of argumentation on style issues. And if for nothing else, I think you deserve it for this comment Ohconfucius ping / poke 02:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC) | It's a bit delayed, but for your rather accurate edit summary here. Keep up the good work on various breed articles! TKK bark ! 18:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC) | |||
The Original Barnstar | The Purple Barnstar | The Brilliant Idea Barnstar | A cheeseburger for you! | Fauna Barnstar | |||
For your recent work at ) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC) | You've been putting up with a lot of crap from other quarters; just want to let you know that people out there do, in fact, manage to appreciate your work. illegitimi non carborundum! VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC) | I couldn't quite find a suitable barnstar for this, but I found it insightful when you brought up the issue of accessibility within TfD#Template:Tn. Maybe it was kind of a small realization you had, but on behalf of the disabled friends I have, thank you for bringing it up. A step in the right direction for making this everyone's encyclopedia. Meteor_sandwich_yum (talk ) 02:58, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
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Except of course that would be 30 min on the treadmill. But we can still look. Thank you for well measured comments. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:59, 11 May 2014 (UTC) | For being an enlightening Star in a farmyard Barn ✍♪ 15:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
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WikiCake | The Special Barnstar | The Socratic Barnstar | Some baklava for you! | The Barnstar of Diplomacy | |||
You seem to be among the vanguard in the quest to raise copy editing and style formatting to at least the level of writing barely literate articles. Primergrey (talk) 05:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC) | for disagreeing, with reason and cogent arguments backed up by both source and policy as well as logical interpretation of the position you disagree with. In essence for disputing content in a manner that builds consensus. SPACKlick (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC) | For extremely skilled and eloquent arguments and advice in guiding the overhaul of the very important article Domestication William Harris • talk • 07:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC) | To fortify you in your marathon task of finding an acceptable form of words to use in our MoS. I admire your patience and stamina and am thinking of proposing you as a Middle East peace envoy... BushelCandle (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2016 (UTC) | Thank you so much for stepping in on the Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations article, specifically the talk page. You seem to be able to clearly communicate the applicability of guidelines and resolve what might otherwise become a dispute. Excellent job! CaroleHenson (talk) 19:28, 2 November 2016 (UTC) | |||
A cup of coffee for you! | The Barnstar of Integrity | A Dobos torte for you! | The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |||
Thanks for your service to rodents. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC) | I award you this barnstar ... because you have shown to be a person of integrity and honor. Or, more simply, a stand-up guy. Antidiskriminator (talk) 10:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC) | 7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. | For going above and beyond to help with a query — Anakimitalk 20:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC) | Thanks you for the Project namespace and TL/SUPPLEMENTAL updates.....been trying to get that wording right for a long time. Would love your CE skills at ) 17:08, 6 September 2017 (UTC) | |||
Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar | The Fauna Barnstar | Precious | A beer for you! | The Barnstar of Diplomacy | |||
Thanks for your definitive non-admin closure of U.S. Dollar back to congruence with reality. BirdValiant (talk ) 06:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
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Thanks for the big progress recently on sorting out fauna titles – and other titles, too. Keep it up. Dicklyon (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2017 (UTC) | Thank you for quality articles such as ... initiative for clarification, - Stanton, cat lover in four dimensions, you are an awesome Wikipedian! --Gerda Arendt (talk ) 22:41, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
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Thank you for your recent edits to WP:RFAADVICE. When I wrote that page a few years ago, I never dreamed of the tens of thousands of hits it would get and become the default advice for RFA candidates. It's nice to know that someone is watching over it and making useful improvements. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk ) 10:14, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
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I appreciate your contributions regarding my topic ban as well as your thoughts on Arbitration Enforcement. --MONGO 13:23, 10 January 2018 (UTC) | |||
The Userpage Barnstar | There is a mop reserved in your name | The Original Barnstar | Perhaps it's time... | A Baker Barnstar | |||
I decided you deserved this for your very interesting and informative User Page ... Tlhslobus (talk) 14:53, 1 March 2018 (UTC) | You are a remarkable editor in many ways. You would be a good administrator in my opinion, and appear to be well qualified! You personify an John Cline (talk ) 13:29, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
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For your ongoing and unending effort to tidy up the bureaucracies around the English Wikipedia. Jc86035 (talk) 05:05, 14 July 2018 (UTC) | As someone who as bumped into you in various spaces over the years with a generally positive impression resulting, I decided to take a closer look at the scope and caliber of your contributions over the last few days because it has occurred to me that your experience and facility with nuanced policy might make you a good candidate for adminship .... I suspect you would be good with the bit. Snow let's rap 07:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC) | The Disambiguator's Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who are prolific disambiguators. For applying your expertise in disambiguating the James Addison Baker articles. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC) | |||
The Industrial Barnstar | The Editor's Barnstar | Trouted
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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | A beer for you! | |||
The Upward Spiral: For your excellent expansion work of the Girls Under Glass article following its AfD nom. Nice work! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC) | I learned a lot from you about Wikipedia in the Jean Mill afd. Just wanted to say thanks! User:Lightburst 23:10, 19 June 2019 (UTC) | You have been trouted for: having a kick-ass profile. :D Ivario (talk) 02:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC) | Thank you for keeping the Nithyananda page clean! [...] Happy editing! Kind regards, Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI converse | fings wot i hav dun 09:33, 22 December 2020 (UTC) | For teaching me something. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC) | |||
The Special Barnstar | The Guidance Barnstar | The Barnstar of Diligence | |||||
For all your help (especially with regard to cursive) and patience. JackkBrown (talk) 15:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC) | Thanks for helping fight policy 06:11, 15 December 2023 | For noting that unencyclopedic detail was inserted into the Brunswick Corporation and taking prompt action, exemplifying scrutiny, precision and community service! gidonb (talk) 14:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC) | |||||
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Fifteen Year Society | Ten Year Society | 100,000 Edits Award | Supreme Gom, the Most Exalted Togneme of the Encyclopedia |
Good Article
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I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more. Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 14:11, 11 August 2020 (UTC) | I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more. Best regards, Sarah (talk) 01:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC) | Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that only 339 editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work! Buster Seven Talk 15:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC) | This editor is entitled – for 18+ years & 150K+ edits – to display this Senior Vanguard Editor Badge, associated ribbons, and "floor plan of The Great Library of Alecyclopedias with carrying tube". This is very silly. | This user helped promote the article CornerShot to Good status (promoted 24 July 2006) | |||
Good Article
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Good Article
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Good Article
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" Did You Know? " Article
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" Did You Know? " Article
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This user helped promote the article Jasmin Ouschan to Good status (promoted 12 September 2009) | This user helped promote the article William A. Spinks to Good status (promoted 22 April 2016) | This user helped promote the article William Hoskins (inventor) to Good status (promoted September 24, 2021) | On March 2, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William A. Spinks, which you created and substantially expanded. | On June 2, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Golden Cue, which you created and substantially expanded. | |||
" In the News " Article
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" In the News " Article
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The Original Barnstar | The Barnstar Creator's Barnstar | Precious six years | |||
On 5 May 2009, Shaun Murphy (snooker player) , which you substantially updated.
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On 5 May 2009, John Higgins (snooker player) , which you substantially updated.
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This barnstar is awarded to everyone who – whatever their opinion – contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation. 20:37, 21 January 2012. |
Thank you for your submission of the Instructor's Barnstar. It's now on the main barnstar list. Pinetalk 15:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC) |
Thank you ... for improving article quality in January 2018! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:06, 30 January 2018 (UTC) [This one updates monthly.] | |||
" Did You Know? " Article
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" Did You Know? " Article
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On February 12, 2019, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William Hoskins (inventor), which you created and substantially expanded. | On March 25, 2019, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Ground billiards, which you created and substantially expanded. | ||||||
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The Angry Tarsier of Appreciation! | A Barnstar Point | A Barnstar Point | A barnstar for you! | A kitten for you! The Loyalty Award | |||
For awarding me a barnstar, I hereby giveth unto you one angry tarsier of appreciation. Thanks! --Fuhghettaboutit 21:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC) |
This barnstar point is awarded to SMcCandlish for giving me a barnstar point! § 01:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC) |
I, Λυδαcιτγ, award Stanton McCandlish the Minor Barnstar Point for the creation of said Barnstar. | Howdy Wkatherine003 (talk) 07:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC) | You get the Loyalty Award! Please accept this cute little kitten as token of appreciation for being loyal to values, and standing by other editors in need like me! Thank you!Huggums537 (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC) | |||
Hostile | |||||||
"Anti-awards" like this are a great example of what not to do on Wikipedia just because you disagree with someone: | |||||||
Consider yourself duly admonished | |||||||
I hereby award this barnstar for your disruptive MFD nomination. —freak(talk) 13:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC) | |||||||
Incidentally, the incivility had quit the entire project anyway). I wasn't disruptive, just a little before my time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont ] ‹(-¿-)› 00:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
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What I'm up to in general on Wikipedia
On Wikipedia, I mostly do the following in lieu of large-scale article authorship (though I do have some major ones planned and three under my belt):
- Resisting poorly-thought-out attempts to change the policies and guidelines
- Neutralizing (sometimes subtle/crafty) promotional or advocacyoutlet
- More broadly, reverting and repairing vandalism and other intentionally anti-encyclopedic edits, especially those by religious or other zealots, slanderers, the foul-mouthed, and the discriminatory
- Making substantial contributions to existing articles (and sometimes creating new ones) on topics I know a lot about
- Shepherding the growth and health of some particular articles that need it (and, in some but not all cases, about which I care a lot)
- Correcting typos, grammar errors and readability problems
- Weeding out unverifiable, or incredible and unsourced, claims
- Adding missing salient information
- Moving articles that violate the WP article naming conventions
- Correcting outright factual errors
- Improving cross-references, categorization, etc.
- Improving consistency of formatting
- Removing redundant wikilinks
- Removing pointless (Wikipedia is not a dictionary!) wikilinks – everyone already knows what "eye" and "the sun" mean, in most contexts in which they appear
- Removing minor, childish quasi-vandalism (smart-aleck remarks in articles, etc.) – I like to document these in the Talk pages, since they often are actually funny
- Tagging outright vandals' talk pages with countdown-to-blocking warnings
- Repairing semi-vandalism edits in the form of deletions of long-standing passages without explanation, or the inexplicable addition of large chunks of questionably relevant or unsourced alleged facts, especially attacks against living article subjects, fanwanking and crackpotism.
- Copyediting, encyclopedizing and formalizing any juvenile, colloquial, non-neutral or poorly thought out language in articles
- Fixing miscellaneous "bad stuff" - vanity/marketing language, crystalballing, etc.
- Proposing (and sometimes performing) merges of redundant articles
- Adding obvious missing redirects and making sure they go to useful places
- Educating misinformed arguments (per logic or Wikipedia policy) on talk pages
- Trying to resolve circular disputes on talk pages
- Defending articles from AfDwhen the reasoning for the deletion is specious, especially "NN per nom" me-tooism.
- Nominating truly atrocious crap for prod'ing them)
- Learning a lot concerning things I didn't know about, on all sorts of topics
- Having a good time!
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Wikiphilosophy
On the non-"political" side, I am largely an
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WikiFauna userboxes
I am a chimera, frequently shapeshifting.
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Critics who think I make valuable contributions but get into conflict with me frequently would probably classify me as a cross between a WikiPlatypus and a WikiPuma.
Licensing rights granted to Wikimedia Foundation | |
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I grant non-exclusive permission for the GFDL . This permission acknowledges that future licensing needs of the Wikimedia projects may need adapting in unforeseen fashions to facilitate other uses, formats, and locations. It is given for as long as this banner remains.
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Where I am in Wikispace
Host wiki | Account | User page | User talk | Contributions | Logs | Edits |
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Wikipedia (en) | Rollbacker, AutoReviewer, Reviewer, FileMover, PageMover, TemplateEditor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Meta-Wiki | Editor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Commons | Editor, FileMover | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wiktionary | Editor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikibooks | Editor (incative) | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikinews | Editor (inactive) | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikiquote | Editor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikisource | Editor (inactive) | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikiversity | Editor (inactive) | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Mediawiki | Editor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
Wikipedia (simple) | Editor | User:SMcCandlish | User talk:SMcCandlish | Contribs | Logs | Count |
- SMcCandlish at the MediaWiki Bugzilla server
Potential conflicts of interest
Just as a matter of full disclosure, there are certain articles I should not heavily edit (i.e., other than to revert vandalism, provide sources, or otherwise adjust in an entirely neutral manner), because of unintentional potential for
- WP:BIO, I have no article, have never had one, and don't want one - that would be a bit creepy to me, and friends with articles say they just cause trouble for them (personal attacks, misinformation, etc.), and I helped one get theirs deleted to protect their privacy. McCandlish Consultingis also me (d/b/a) and also non-notable.
- ISBN 9780062515124; it has no article and is surely not notable enough to have one.
- WP:Essay, as it applies to talk pages here.
- Things I could vaguely, conceivably have a conflict of interest on, due to past connections
- Too many clients to individually list here (and some are covered by NDAs anyway); I know better than to edit articles about them.
- CryptoRights Foundation (CRF) – I was their volunteer CCO/Communications Director for several years, starting 2003; it bugged me somethin' fierce that it did not have an article until recently, but it seemed grossly inappropriate to even start a "just the facts" stub on it, and someone else finally did)
- Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – Held various job titles there, including Program Dir., Communications Dir., etc., and was editor of their EFFector newsletter, and the webmaster of eff.org, 1993–2002.
- Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign – This was largely my brainchild, as a part of my professional life at EFF; it was an EFF project not a personal one.
- University of New Mexico (UNM) - Alma mater, 1991–1993 and 2007–2010; former employer, 1992–1993.
- Double Rainbow (ice cream) – Former employer, 1991.
- Wal-Mart– Former employer, late 1980s.
- Cannon Air Force Base, United States Air Force – Former employer, late 1980s; I was a civilian worker, not military personnel.
Things and stuff
Funniest things I've seen on Wikipedia
- [emphasis added when salient]
- Wikipedia:Not everything needs a navbox
The content itself isn't funny, but the fact that more than 50% of the content of the page is a huge navbox is hilarious. "
WP:ANI is like a huge orgy. It's fun to watch, and sometimes it's fun to join in, but like any orgy, the larger it gets, the greater the chances are that someone will eventually try to stick a dick in your ass."
— Slakr (talk), at 03:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC), User:Slakr/Admin coaching [25]11:07, 26 March 2007 83.253.36.136 (Talk) (→Performance of FAT 32 - moved spam down)
An edit summary from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Needless to say, the next editor's summary read "deleted spam".- A diff that must be seen to be believed
Someone upset about grammar flames that were wasting people's time and being a distraction posts a distracting time-waste in the form of a longwinded and meticulously-researched grammar flame about it (plus a second shorter one!), all in support of the grammar flaming of the starter of the grammar flame; in the process, re-opening debate to yet more grammar flaming in the pointless sub-thread being complained about (dormant for over a day), and to which the poster was not even a party to begin with. I couldn't make this stuff up! 05:46, 21 February 2007
TfD on a useless template simply relating to barnstars. I awarded Gracenotes a Barnstar Pointfor that one.- "filk, with a passion, yet I somehow loved this.
- Possibly the worst ever of my own typos. (See edit summary used.)
I think I was channeling Ancient Finnish or something. "Karl Marx, founder of modern Marxism ...."
in Animal Farm, as of 13 January 2010 version (we all know that ancient Marxism was of course founded by Marxus Aurelius, right?)- From the "unclear on the concept" department
Rather remarkable definition of "watch your language". - Hairy ball theorem
Perhaps the funniest real article name on Wikipedia. (It's a real math/physics theorem, and not intrinsically funny, though a bit amusing.) - Unbelievably selective evidence
Someone concerned about overlinking in articles actually used theWP:LINKING. Of course that article in particular would have overlinking, along with just about every other noob error, except when periodically cleaned up by experienced, neutral editors who don't believe in fairytales. The article is clearly indicative of nothing but the nature of that topic's fanbase (and thus its most frequent editorial pool). "Presumably we're talking about
proposal for a "WikiProject Life on Mars"; if you don't get why this is hysterically funny, just move on – it's an old-school sci-fi geek thing.- Very strange font activism vandalism of my sig at a talk page
Did you know ... that there are not just regular vandals but ones with really, really weird agendas lurking in Wikipedia? - http://www.well.com/~mech/WP/FunnyWikipediaCaptcha.jpg
I'm not sure Wikipedia's account-creation CAPTCHA database should include every word... >;-)
Smartest things I've seen on Wikipedia
Just a few particularly well-thought-out bits by other editors. They aren't necessarily mindblowing or anything, just insightful and well-put.
"We must always do what is best for the readers, without exception. Per in user talk, and in that instance about deleting redirects that are actually useful to readers but which don't quite fit someone's preferred formula.
"My impression is that we shouldn't allow users going against a policy to affect how it is written. People going around changing articles against policy isn't a good reason to have that policy be rewritten"
Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC) [27]. Slightly copyedited for clarity."Unless you can reliably and usefully tell editors how to identify a problematic case, it's generally not helpful to mention it in a policy. It ends up backfiring, as editors make up their own, mutually incompatible definitions and proclaim that their interpretation is the true one."
WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 3 December 2023 (UTC) [28]"
WP:MOS by Tony1 (which starts here), this also gets at why style on Wikipedia is not trivia or trivial."I ... had no problem whatsoever learning wikicode when I started writing and improving encyclopedia articles in 2009. I do not want to learn new software features that are less productive and less intuitive than old software features. I welcome any upgrades that are entirely intuitive and non-disruptive to existing editors. I will oppose ill-conceived and poorly-implemented make-work projects for professional programmers. This is not an employment program for coders. It is an encyclopedia created by volunteers, who are article writers and researchers."
— , WMF's new forum software intended to replace talk pages, pretty much destroyed the wikiproject that agreed to test it."I reverted to the version before the diff you cited [i.e., the addition of disputed material], but was reverted. Changes pushed through without consensus are likely to be ignored or constantly disputed, so there's actually no point in doing this."
— SarahSV (talk) 04:51, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#RfC: Should the guideline maintain the "As a general rule" wording or something similar? [31]"Revert rules should not be construed as an entitlement or inalienable right to revert, nor do they endorse reverts as an editing technique.
Passed 9 to 0."
—Article titles and capitalisation, Final Decision- Perhaps the most cogent explanation to date of what wikiproject banners are really for (and it's not advertising projects) by WhatamIdoing, at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, 06:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
- Roughtly 95%-accurate Observations on Wikipedia behavior by Antandrus, 12 March 2016 (may have been revised since then)
"A small group is more likely to develop a self-reinforcing delusion that their position is reasonable, even when a large number of people outside the group are telling them otherwise."
— Gigs (talk · contribs), 12 June 2013, in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-06-12/Op-ed, "The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons"."Nearly all our policies are driven by the need to prevent ... abuse of Wikipedia. Policies on biographies of living people are driven largely by those who would abuse Wikipedia for purposes of defamation. Policies on neutrality and verifiability have been largely driven by the need to address those who were here to push a political agenda or promote their fringe viewpoints. What Wikipedia is not is pretty much a chronicle of all the things that people have tried to use Wikipedia for that the community has decided are detrimental to a quality encyclopedia. ... This isn't censorship, it's curation."
— Gigs (talk · contribs), 12 June 2013, in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-06-12/Op-ed, "The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons"."
David Levy (talk · contribs), 11:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC), at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured list#Renaming and re-stylizing Today's Featured List?, accessed March 11, 2012"If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business."
— Koyaanis Qatsi (talk · contribs), 04:00, 18 September 2001 (UTC); it is the original formulation of WP:Ignore all rules."Any pile of bullshit decomposes naturally."
— Wikipedia:Ignore all dramas (as of this version), on ignoring instead of responding to wiki-stupidity. Later versions had it as the far less pithy"Even the largest pile of bullshit will decompose on its own."
The original formulation was"The most copiously deposited bullshit decomposes on its own."
I reverted it to the concise version on 10 August 2011 and it seems to have stuck."Removed older logo. One logo is sufficient. Logos are copyrighted and Wikipedia should not serve as a gallery for logos."
— Farine (talk · contribs), 05:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC) (edit summary at Data East)"Anyone who adds material to an article, but cannot be bothered to cite any sources, is being discourteous to the other editors who later have to try to find reliable sources."
—talk · contribs) 11:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC) (Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles#Userfy is a good option, accessed January 31, 2007)"Of course, the point of style is to give coherence and consistency, deviations from which can detract from the publication's voice (in this case, an encyclopedic voice)."
—Wikipedia Manual of Style."Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists, who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here."
— WP co-founder Larry Sanger, on Wikipedia:Etiquette"[N]o need for bullet points – detail here is no more important than others"
— SilkTork (talk · contribs), 10:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC) (edit summary at Wikipedia:Article size), on the problem that too many editors create bulletized lists from normal prose, as if Wikipedia were a giant PowerPoint presentation."While the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article."
— Born2cycle (talk · contribs), 17:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Common names""The reason Wikipedia has policy pages at all is to store up assertions on which we agree, and which generally convince people when we make them in talk, so we don't have to write them out again and again. This is why policy pages aren't "enforced", but quoted; if people aren't convinced by what policy pages say, they should usually say something else. The major exception to this stability is when some small group, either in good faith or in an effort to become the Secret Masters of Wikipedia, mistakes its own opinions for What Everybody Thinks. This happens, and the clique often writes its own opinions up as policy and guideline pages."
—WP:POINTyway, sockpuppeting in a discussion he was trying to control (and arguing against me on the details of the issue) he's precisely right, and this was well articulated."If a high-profile [Wikipedian] poll is conducted that brings in widespread participation from editors who had previously stayed away from [the] venue, and the holdouts who had been stonewalling and preventing progress merely slouch, stuff their hands in their pockets, and walk away, then that proves that they knew full well that their arguments were not sufficiently persuasive, or didn’t have sufficient numbers, or both. ... Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes .... On Wikipedia it’s called ‘wililawyering’ which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded."
— Greg L (talk · contribs), 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Why no action on implementing community consensus""Some editors seek to be totally neutral, which means they invariably catch the most flak from everyone else."
— User:Collect (talk), at 11:38, 30 November 2010 (UTC) [32], as a salient point in the essay WP:Sex, religion and politics."[C]onsensus does exist absent an administrator to interpret it."
—XfDor other consensus process does not require formal closure if its decision is clear.
Smartest Wikipedia-relevant things I've seen from off-site
- Transgender activist Leslie Feinberg, 2006:[1]
For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian—referring to me as "she/her" is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as "he" would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible. I like the gender neutral pronoun "ze/hir" because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met. And in an all trans setting, referring to me as "he/him" honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as "she/her" does.
- ^ Tyroler, Jamie (28 July 2006). "Transmissions – Interview with Leslie Feinberg". CampCK.com. Archived from the original on November 23, 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
Allegedly sensible or clever things I've come up with here
Wikipedia policies are what are required for the project to operate at all; guidelines are what help it operate smoothly; high-acceptance essays are what help its operators not make fools of themselves; and miscellaneous essays are part of the community mindshare that helps shape all of the above over time.
(At WT:Don't bludgeon the process, in a "guidelines vs. essays" thread; 23:31, 30 November 2020 (UTC) [34].
It's a nutshell version of something I've said, in various words, many times since the late 2000s.)As of right this moment, Wikipedia (the encyclopedic content, excluding other material like talk pages) is calculable to be approximately 96.05 times the size of Encyclopædia Britannica.
(The bulk of the math is from User:Tompw/bookshelf/assumptions, but at the time it only calculated how many volumes of EB would be filled by WP.)"WP is a bad place to engage in labelling that isn't absolutely integral to international public perception of the subject."
(In an essay/tutorial at WT:Categorization, 15:39, 9 June 2018 (UTC) [35]. Someone suggested[36] framing it on their wall! The idea eventually developed into the essay WP:Race and ethnicity.)"[O]ur articles are palimpsests stirred together by a global assortment of geniuses, crackpots, and everyone in between, sometimes citing great stuff, sometimes poor stuff, and sometimes nothing".
(At WT:Manual of Style, 16:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC) [37]. This was in the context of readers wanting to verify our content with claim-by-claim inline citations not "general references".
Someone else nominated it as a mot juste and "a gem" [38].
It was later quoted on someone's user page [39] along with one by Stephen Fry and another by Neil Gaiman. Pretty good company; I'm honored.)"An attempt at disambiguation that introduces another ambiguity is a failure."
(I say this frequently. I'm not aware of anyone quoting me on it verbatim, but I've seen a rise in the same argument made in other words, and it is having the desired effect on article titles debates at WP:Requested moves."If
essay."If MOS does not need to have a rule on something, then it needs to not have a rule on that thing"
"No line item in our Manual of Style is supported by 100% of editors, and no editor supports 100% of its line items. The same situation is true of all style guides and their scopes and audiences in the wider world. The purpose of a stylebook is to set some ground rules (often arbitrary) so that the ballgame of writing can continue instead of the players standing around on the field brawling about trivia."
(Summary of what I've said in variant wording probably 100 times in style disputes. No one ever tries to refute it.
This awareness is what keeps our MoS from being a nightmare of editwarring about specific rules, over-inclusion of rules we don't need, deletion of ones we do just because someone doesn't like them, and pretense that no rules are needed.)"The next-to-last resort of someone who cannot muster a rational response to an opposing argument is to wave away that argument as something impossible to respond to (the last resort being
incompetentto work on this project.)"If one grinds an axe long and hard enough, there is no axe any longer, just a useless old stick."
(A quasi-Taoist response tocrankycomplaints that relate to incidents so long ago no one should care any more. Compressed version:"Grind axe too long: no axe."
)"Two words:
WP:HOTHEADSessay.)
Nifty Wikipedia tools
Kind of hard to find unless you already know about them:
Resources
- Wikimedia Labs at Mediawiki.org, for general info.
- The Tool Labs at WikiTech.Wikimedia.org, where anyone can create an account to develop tools.
- This page indicates lost tools and other problems after the demise of the old ToolServer.
- OAuth applications list
Stats tools
- Xtools-articleinfo at WMFLabs (general page stats, by year and month, with charts, etc.)
- editorinteract.py at WMFLabs – analyzes your interaction with one or more other users
- Aka's Page History Stats Tool – edit-related stats on any article or other page
- TDS's Article Contribution Counter – get stats (with some accuracy lag, usually a few weeks) on who the top editors of an article are
- Interiot's StubSense - what stubs are being used in a category
- Interiot's Related Changes Watchlist – makes "Special:Recentchangeslinked" pages behave like watchlists
Internal tools
- WP:USERCSS.)
- Advanced Search of Wikipedia
Editing tools
This user cites sources using refToolbar. |
- WP:WikEd– syntax-highlighting WP editor (integrated, not external)
- WP:RefToolbar 2.0– reference citation tool
Coding tools
- Special:ExpandTemplates – get raw HTML output of arbitrary wikicode with templates and parserfunctions
- Lua programming and Scribunto modules
- Wikipedia:Lua
- Module:Arguments
- meta:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions – the hard-to-find full ParserFunctions (template code) documentation
Cleanup tools
- Reference citation consistency checker (use in sandbox or talk page):
{{ref info|Manx cat|style=float:right}}
Visualization tools
- vCat – a tool to generate Graphviz diagrams of Wikipedia category relationships. Examples:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports
– Show the entire parent and other "ancestor" category tree structure of Category:Cue sports (up to the maximum of 250 nodes)https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&depth=2
– Show just the immediate parent and grandparent categories of Category:Cue sportshttps://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&depth=4&algorithm=fdp
– Show four levels but as node clusters instead of a treehttps://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&rel=subcategory
- Show the immediate child subcategories of Category:Cue sports (this function does not recurse and show child sub-sub-categories, etc.)https://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&category=Cue_sports&rel=subcategory&algorithm=fdp
- Show the same, but as a ring graph instead of a treehttps://tools.wmflabs.org/vcat/render?wiki=enwiki&title=William_A._Spinks&depth=2&algorithm=fdp
- Show a node-cluster ring graph of the parent and grandparent categories of the article William A. Spinks- There are various other options, such as: creating links in the graph to the categories shown, or to new graphs starting at those categories; specifying output image format; outputting a text Graphviz
.gv
file with no node limit, for local rendering; choosing a different wiki, like French Wikipedia, or Wiktionary (example), or Commons; etc.
Help and info
Editor interaction analysis
- Editor Interaction Analyzer by Sigma, compares the edits of two to three specified editors to see which articles overlap, sorted by minimum time between edits by both users. Only works on the English Wikipedia. Speed: slow.
- Intersect Contribs, compares the edits of two to eight editors at any WMF wiki to see which articles overlap. Speed: fast.
- Intertwined contributions, merges the contributions of two editors at any WMF wiki into a single list. Speed: fast.
Unsorted additions
- Help:Labeled section transclusion – comparatively new feature that most of us don't know how to use yet
- How to ping people:
"The keys are: max 20 pings per edit; and do an edit to clean before before trying a new ping, so the system sees a clean diff; and of course always new four-tilde signature. Dicklyon (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)"
- CatScan Archived 2015-10-23 at the Wayback Machine category analysis tool
- TimedMediaHandler - a-v in articles
- Find which Wiki pages link to a particular site [40]
- List changes made recently to pages linked from a specified page [41]
- Readability meter [42]
- Wikichecker [43]
- Emoticons [44]
- Tools for analysis of local MediaWiki installations (not directly relevant for en.wikipedia)
- Magnus's Reference Generator – auto-format several kinds of source citations
Outdated due to the demise of the ToolServer
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Search sites
- https://www.refseek.com – more than a billion sources: encyclopedias, monographs, magazines, etc.
- https://www.worldcat.org – catalogue of 20,000 libraries. Find the nearest rare book you need; get it through inter-library loan at local library
- https://link.springer.com – over 10 million scientific books, articles, research protocols, etc.
- https://www.bioline.org.br – library of bioscience journals published in developing countries
- https://repec.org – 4 million publications on economics and related subjects
- https://www.science.gov – 2200+ scientific sites; more than 200 million articles indexed
- https://www.pdfdrive.com – the largest website for free download of books and other works in PDF format; over 225 million titles
- https://www.base-search.net – over 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them free
Interesting layouts
It's possible to do some nice layouts with CSS – carefully – inside the "shell" that MediaWiki provides. Just of use on project and user pages, of course. We don't do stuff like this in articles.
Security
Bureaucracy
Systemic mega-dramas of 2020 onward
- meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022 – How will WMF spend its development money and time next year? This is important.
- meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review – devils in the details, and just about the longest talk page in history
- Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC - more detail-devils
- WP:FRAMGATE– relates in part to this, though the above item is more closely related to the one above it
- meta: Requests for comment/Should the Foundation call itself Wikipedia
- wmf:Resolution:Publication of proposed Bylaws changes, 2020 – mostly just legalese tweaks, but a few are non-trivial
- meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Proposed Bylaws changes – diff view of the above
- meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Proposed Bylaws changes – feedback page for that
- meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Board candidate evaluation form – draft "Board candidate rubric"
- meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/October 2020 - Board candidate evaluation form – feedback page for that
- meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Global Conversations – not even sure what this is yet, but they used the system-wide banner system to "advertise" it for community input
- WP:CENT
ArbCom
- Archive of stock statements of principles: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles 2
- Old version now marked as {{historical}}: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Principles
- Next year's election-prep RfC will probably appear here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022
- And the ElectCom one should appear here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022/Electoral Commission
- And the
Some of the more nebulous WMF bureaucracy
- meta:Trust and Safety – a.k.a. the cancel-culture enablement system
- meta:Trust and Safety/Case Review Committee – at least there is one, though I'm sure it'll be as opaque as the above
- meta:Ombuds commission – this actually looks interesting for something ...
- Interestingly, ArbCom members are now required (on the en.WP side, not the WMF side) to not be on either of the above bodies, as a conflict of interest (after the WP:FRAMGATEfiasco).