User talk:Andy Dingley

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Hi Andy

You may remember some years ago (2015?) we had a conversation about the correct title for Rolls-Royce C type diesels - "Range" or "Series". I did mange to find a photo on the www of an RR engine makes plate. This shows that they are "C Range". You can find the photo on the following page: https://www.trms.org.au/rm_engine_frame.htm

Regards Bruce

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Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Bluebird record-breaking vehicles, you described the nomination as "A particularly ignorant and stupid nomination by someone who's obviously read nothing of the content here.".

That's pretty harsh regardless of the merits of the AfD nomination. We all have to get along and the nominator is a human being, too. There are nicer ways to make the point such as, "I think this nomination is a regrettable mistake". --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 22:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I stand by it. This has been running for 15 years now, ignorant Yanks trying to delete Donald Campbell because "he never held the land speed record" and "Bluebird 7 never set a record". Dronebogus has had years to create a better impression of their opinions, and they still haven't managed it. Andy Dingley (talk) 08:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Late to the party, but I’m going to give you one more chance to withdraw that comment or it’s straight to ANI. Racism/nationalism and vicious personal attacks are absolutely against Wikimedia values. Dronebogus (talk) 21:55, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I’m still waiting on an apology. I re-read the article and its an interesting topic. Racially and personally abusing people isn’t going to make them less ignorant. Dronebogus (talk) 12:29, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Fyi, If this goes to WP:ANI and I'm listed as a participant , I may not be around due to travel this month. I hope y'all can work this out without going to the drama boards - nobody wins.

—A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 13:11, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I was really trying to avoid that, as evidenced by my continued hope for a peaceful solution. Dronebogus (talk) 17:04, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have redacted the personal attack. As much as I'm known for being strict with enforcement of

WP:CIVIL, I also don't see the benefit in drawing attention to an incident embedded in a discussion that closed a month ago. That said; Andy: the comment was beyond the pale, a clear violation of "comment on content, not contributors", and not acceptable no matter how frustrated you are nor how much you disagree with the nomination. Please don't do it again. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

Hi, something of a technical query. You restored the circular link to Centaur Tanks in the Cromwell tank article as it points toa specific section, Examining the raw text I can't see how that works as there appears to be no anchors specified, either in the link or in the appropriate heading. Could you enlighten me? Thnks Murgatroyd49 (talk) 09:26, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Headings generate an implicit target.

Really we need more coverage of Centaur. Maybe not at

Centaur tank

, although we could do as they're clearly notable, but somewhere within an overall article on the late-war cruisers.

Although with an adequate service history for Europe,

Centaur tank could be a decent article on its own. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

Thanks for the explanation. I agree a separate article on Centaurs could be useful, outside my competence I'm afraid. Regards Murgatroyd49 (talk) 10:16, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Likewise. I could do the engineering, but I'm not a historian of the conflict. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:49, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Solid-state relay, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Triac.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dear Andy, I can't find a way to produce more than two columns with the Template:Col-float. For example:

Are you sure these template are supposed to work with multiple columns? --200.58.135.162 (talk) 20:26, 15 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I wrote these templates years ago. They are certainly supposed to work with multiple columns, and used to work with multiple columns. If they no longer do, that's an new error (the template was changed to use Lua, I don't know why or if that broke anything).

However your first example shows them working correctly and I see 3 or 4 columns there.

I think that the issue is the purpose of these templates, and why this one is different. As it says at the start of the doc page, "Side-by-side columns, based on

CSS float

."

This template does not strongly control the layout of the columns and their number across the page (table-like behaviour). Instead it uses

CSS float (I think it's the only wiki column template that does). This sets the width of the columns, and hints that they should float alongside each other, but how many can fit side-by-side is left up to the CSS renderer on the browser. This means that the number of simultaneous side-by-side columns that are alongside at once depends on the browser window width. In most cases involving prose and lists that are just groups, rather than a table, this is a better behaviour – at least as far as web accessibility goes. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

Hmm, it seems that Col-float doesn't work on the 2022 version of the Vector skin... --200.58.135.162 (talk) 22:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh, well nothing does. The margins set in that skin are ridiculously wide, so anything with columns suffers badly. The best fix is to add some custom CSS to it. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:01, 20 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see that you are still editing. You are one of the few good editors.

Given your edit to 2N3906 you have a better understanding of what a stub article is compared to some other editors. I think you should work on Category:Electronics stubs. I tried cleaning it out on another IP address but a particular editor seems to think that anon editors knows nothing. As a logged in editor I racked up over 100,000 so I reckon I know how WP works. See my contribs on this IP addy and on 121.98.204.148 for my attempts to to do some tidying up.

I get really pissed off with how WP, an important and influential website, is being mismanaged.

Cheers. 103.21.175.228 (talk) 23:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You would be taken more seriously (which isn't right, but it's how it works) if you logged in. IP editors are fair game for harassment.

I don't know how this situation arose (your talk page is a little 'prickly'), but things have clearly broken down between you and Pbritti, to the point that they're treating you as site-banned, no matter what you do. This is wrong, but again, it's how it works here.

Your de-stub changes are, of course, right (that article was tagged as Start on its talk: page for a decade). But that doesn't matter: Wikipedia is about the social club for the clique, not the content. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For better or worse, Wikipedia is a type of social media. Constant314 (talk) 12:59, 23 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Andy Dingley, users are blocked from editing for the duration of their block—the treatment of this incredibly uncivil IP user has been generous and patient considering some of their past outbursts and disruption. ~ Pbritti (talk) 04:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Do you really want to go there?

They made a valid edit to de-stub an article that has been marked as Start for a decade. They were not blocked. You reverted this as vandalism (it was not vandalism). You then sought out a cooperative admin and then had them blocked for a month and a half (for making constructive edits).

Wikipedia does not need you to be their personal policeman. If they make bad edits, then other editors can deal with that. You might even try to engage other editors to do so. But when you're on-sight reverting an IP in order to revert constructive changes, then you have let yourself become the problem. We do not need that.

It doesn't matter how uncivil they are (if they're blocked for incivility, then so be it). But if you're making bad changes to the content just to DENY an uncivil editor, then you're the one being more disruptive. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:50, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, as I understand the situation and policy. This is a disruptive editor who is mass-removing stub templates; when they resumed their disruption in evasion of the block last month, the de-stubs were clearly just the user going alphabetically and removing templates without care for what was actually a stub. See this and this—those are definitional stubs that the IP user removed templates from. Also, please strike your accusation of me being disruptive by on-sight reverting an IP as baseless. Not only does policy provide that all edits made by a blocked user can be reverted, on at least six occasions I actually retained their block-evading edit and adjusted the relevant article talk page to match the destub (example). Now, I have some content to work on. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:30, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

121.98.204.148 was not blocked. Their block had expired. Therefore they were permitted to edit again. That is how our blocking policy works. You cannot judge an editor as "you should still be blocked, so I'm going to revert you immediately as if you were" when they're no longer blocked.

When that then leads you into reverting valid edits and describing them as "vandalism", simply because of who made them, not what those edits were, then you really need to back away from interactions with that editor. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's perfectly well sourced. Are you challenging the veracity of it? That she appeared like this, or that Bragg (a significant player in her earlier career) made this comment about her?

The fact you don't like what he said is quite another matter. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:24, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Bragg's post on Twitter is a self-published source. It would be admissible for facts about Bragg, but not about other living people such as Distras. Again, see

WP:BLPSPS. If you want to include the fashion commentary, find a secondary source and attribute it inline to Bragg. gnu57 10:38, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

But it's not a comment about Bragg. It's him commenting on her dress sense, when trying to appeal to a DM audience. It's not a primary source. Now OK, he's no fashionista – but he is a recognised authority on mixing pop and politics. Yet you're OK with this article running unsourced quotes in the lead? Andy Dingley (talk) 10:52, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Have you read the relevant policy, Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Avoid self-published sources? Do you understand that Twitter posts are self-published sources? If Bragg had written on Twitter, "I myself coordinate my own outfits to appear palatable to the Daily Mail readership", we could add that information to the article about him. If he writes that someone else is doing so, we can't add that to the other person's article, absent better sourcing. gnu57 22:04, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please stop adding unreferenced or poorly referenced biographical content, especially if controversial, to articles or any other Wikipedia page, as you did at User talk:Firefangledfeathers. Content of this nature could be regarded as defamatory and is in violation of Wikipedia policy. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:17, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

And just what aspect of that (talk page, not a content page) was unsourced? Andy Dingley (talk) 01:18, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The part I had to revdel as a flagrant BLP violation. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:22, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What utter bullshit. Partly because BLP only applies to user talk pages in the most elastic situations, and also because the only contentious thing has been long-sourced here.

Now why are you and that other editor re-adding unsourced content to a BLP describing

transgender activist'? I presume you've been here long enough to understand the need for sourcing contentious topics on BLPs, so where is it? Andy Dingley (talk) 01:26, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

What did I re-add to what article?

Your statement was directly contradicted by the source, and was a clear BLP violation.

WP:BLP applies to all pages at all times on Wikipedia. There is no allowance to post defamatory material about a BLP on a user talk page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:30, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

What was defamatory? What wasn't already sourced by what's in the article? (and just why are you so keen to defend an advocate for 12 year old topless swimming? [1])

You have re-added a previously challenged (on article talk) claim that they're a transgender activist, rather than merely someone who litigates in the hope of personal profit (as the judge stated). Transgender, yes. Activist, maybe. But transgender activist? You two still need to show that. Why won't you? Andy Dingley (talk) 01:35, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think you might be confused. I've never edited that article. Your statement on the user talk page was not supported by that source, and I will not repeat it after revdelling it. Also, knock the veiled attacks, e.g. and just why are you so keen to defend an advocate for 12 year old topless swimming? and baseless references to tag-teaming. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:42, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you were tag-teaming it any more, you'd be on World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon in the '70s, wearing a saggy leotard.

So where's the sourcing, other than the quote from Yaniv herself, that she's done any 'activism' for any transgender cause? Andy Dingley (talk) 01:50, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I reverted a BLP violation on a user talk page that I watch. I do the same on many of the user talk pages on my watchlist. You keep asking me questions about an article I have not edited, and asking me to defend edits I have not made. Again, knock off the personal attacks. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You've been all over this article's talk: page for years, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] to support the inclusion of 'activist', yet still neither of you can source it to

WP:BLPRS standards. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

I've answered around 14,000 edit requests, and removed hundreds more. I don't think removing obvious BLPvio, edit requests without actual requests, not removing sourced information based on personal opinion is "being all over the article talk page." The last diff was me removing your clearly inappropriate comment from a page covered by

WP:CTOP. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:19, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply

]

Came here from FFF's talk page. Andy Dingley, you reverted a CT notice, posted a newbie BLP warning on an admin's talk page, shoehorned in a BLP violation, and then screamed bloody murder when it was deleted. You got off lightly: many admins would have blocked you immediately. Drop this and move on, please. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You got a source for that "transgender activist" claim yet? Andy Dingley (talk) 02:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm discussing your behavior here, and edits made by FFF or anyone else are utterly irrelevant. I'm not getting involved in the dispute about Yaniv, but if I see you post more BLP vios, I will block you. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:31, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]