User talk:Ohconfucius/archive35

---

Greetings! Could you please have a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China-related articles#Chinese equivalent for Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo2? There's a discussion about creating a similar template for Chinese as there is already for the Japan-related articles (Template:Nihongo and Template:Nihongo2). I was wondering if you could help? Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:09, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wanted to make you aware that you and your scripts were acknowledged and praised at the monthly WMF metrics meeting! — MusikAnimal ^talk 19:32, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for the heads up. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 19:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check it out on YouTube :) https://youtu.be/cp9pbOUGU0w?t=2288 (can't link due to blacklist). That's right where you come in, but scan back a minute or two to get the preface, which is that statistically, your work coupled with other tools are proving that Wikipedians are more "productive" today than in previous years. Cheers! — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:47, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there,

Hoping you can give me the shortcut explanation for a couple things in this edit (i.e. what specifically in the several pages cited I should look for).

Delinking -- especially "

, sure, but shouldn't that be addressed by rewording rather than just not linking to something? Similarly, NGO, but less central and not in a sea of blue.

Why change some of the "work" parameters in the citations to "publisher", but not others -- and for those changed, why omit the work parameter? According to the template documentation "The publisher is the company that publishes the work being cited. Do not use the publisher parameter for the name of a work (e.g. a book, encyclopedia, newspaper, magazine, journal, website). Not normally used for periodicals. Corporate designations such as "Ltd", "Inc" or "GmbH" are not usually included. Omit where the publisher's name is substantially the same as the name of the work (for example, The New York Times Co. publishes The New York Times newspaper, so there is no reason to name the publisher). " (emphasis mine).

This is seriously minor stuff, but I get concerned when I see tool-assisted stylistic edits that conflict with what I understand as best practices (either because something is amiss with the tool/its use or because I misunderstand something). Thanks. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:38, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your script now appears to be removing "publisher" data altogether now (eg this diff of Hard out Here). Surely that can't be intentional. Ibadibam (talk) 01:14, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there,

]

Script fixes

Your script is "correcting" reference dates when they meet

]

OK - dates within references should be consistent. You've undone changes where they are either consistent (Leiston) or where the vast majority are UTC - the inconsistency is that the other should be changed (Beccles) as the mjority are UTC. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:14, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My reading of MOSNUM, but specifically

MOS:DATEUNIFY, is that all publication dates should be of the same format, and all retrieval dates ditto. Where one reference contains day dates and another contains yyyy-mm-yy dates, these ought to be unified. This was certainly the case at Leiston before my edits. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 22:15, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

Unified doesn't mean changing all the dates to the minority date style however. The implication is the opposite, change to the majority. Itlooks like a script simply acting to blindly change something - exactly the classic problem of scripts. Blue Square Thing (talk) 00:25, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As an American writing on British topics, I find your script very useful. I'm not sure I agree, however, with always deleting occurrences of "in order to". It looks like this is based on a UK government style guide saying it's always redundant. But I found from this British source that it is a grammatically appropriate way to specify purpose. This seems more a style issue particular to that particular style guide than a local variety of English issue.--JFH (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you for your comments. I'm happy to learn you find my script(s) useful.

  I was advised by my friend Tony exactly to the effect that "in order to" is always redundant and in any event its use is in rapid decline universally. I'm not aware that the source may have been the British government, but I think that represents a powerful source that tends to support its removal, except when it is uttered in the context of a quote. Indeed the source you cite says that it appears more frequently in writing than in speech. In a publication that is universal and demands concise prose of good quality, I also feel it redundant and occasionally unfashionable. As to whether my "authorities" legitimise systematic removal or whether the use is mere stylistic preference, your challenge is the first on this script action. @Tony1: please could you chime in? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:21, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's redundant about 95% of the time. I read one the other day and as usual automatically tested the clause without it, and realised ... aha, you do need the hated "in order" there. The proof of the overwhelming majority is in the surprise. I zap these little fly-spots whenever I see them (unless the test fails, of course). "They fail in order to collect the subsidy" ... "They fail to collect the subsidy"—that fails the test. But people just spatter "in order" everywhere, and it makes me want to do a German salute from the 1930s. The script, regrettably, would require human testing of these before saving, so I think on balance it's better not to include. Tony (talk) 02:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I get it, it probably does more good than harm. It made me do some research to confirm it's not a British thing, but I guess that's not a bad thing either. --JFH (talk) 02:51, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the feedback. I just looked at the script, and it seems that I indeed referred to UK govt style guide. From the above example, I see that I'll need to remove from the script the action where it occurs in mid-sentence, but @Tony1: should I leave the removal where the sentence starts with "In order to"?-- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:20, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, OC: sentence-initial ". In order to", "; in order to"; ") in order to"; "—in order to"; "– in order to"; "- in order to"; and ": in order to". I can't imagine how there could be even a small chance of ambiguity with a direct connection with the preceding verb. So these additions to the script would all be valuable. Tony (talk) 04:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why did your "Script-assisted fixes" delink North Yorkshire and Lancashire in your edit to Bishop of Leeds? I don't see them linked elsewhere in the article, and it looks odd to have a list of counties some linked and some not. I've relinked them. PamD 11:13, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The script is configured to unlink a county name when it is preceded by another linked term – which is more commonly the town or village to which it belongs. The principal reason is to de-fuse instances of
  WP:SEAOFBLUE in articles. Swathes of links in the same sentence are generally counter-intuitive in that they are rarely informative nor do they encourage clickthroughs. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 11:35, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Well I suggest that you need to manually over-ride your script in cases like this, where it's delinking alternate items in a perfectly reasonable list. You're responsible for your edits, and these aren't helpful. PamD 12:19, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• And I would also routinely link the county as well as the place name, deliberately, when identifying a location. Unlink the country, by all means, but have you any consensus for unlinking county names on this basis? Please stop unless you can show a consensus for this unlinking. PamD 12:20, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• When the location name is already linked, there is absolutely no reason for chain-linking the county immediately preceding it as well. To be honest with you, I had considering unlinking all the county names instead of just North Yorkshire and Lancashire. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 12:27, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• OK, looking at a few FAs for buildings etc in UK, I note that countiess aren't linked where they immediately follow place names - in some cases Silverdale, Lancashire is a single link, in other cases it's Penwortham, Lancashire, and in others it's "Penwortham in the county of Lancashire". I'll change my own habit on that point. So the basic action of your script does indeed seem to follow consensus: but delinking half the items in a list was just wayward. Please watch your script to ensure you don't do that again. Thanks. PamD 16:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I go further: unless English counties are of particular relevance, I delete them completely. Tony (talk) 07:53, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And while you've been whizzing through Devon, I spotted three cases of unwanted de-linking: at Tetcott (where Uffculme was delinked), and at Iddesleigh and Holcombe Burnell (where the first instance of Devon in the text was delinked). Based on the above, I can understand how the first could have happened if done automatically without overview, but the other two remain puzzling.  —SMALLJIM  12:28, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo, while most of the changes to Ashurst Wood were improvements, your script-assisted editing left two problems:

1. while piping Mid Sussex (UK Parliament constituency) to hide the disambiguator, you didn't add back any wording to show it was a constituency, leaving the sentence as "which is mostly covered by the Mid Sussex."
2. you removed capitals from the proper noun Independent Schools Inspectorate, which also broke a link to it in a reference.

I've fixed the article now. Just a heads-up on a couple of possible problems with the script (in particular I'd have thought that changing caps to lower case in identified publisher fields, or in links, was a bad idea). PamD 16:03, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why have you taken out several valid references and replaced ’ with '?Johnragla (talk) 19:42, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The vast majority of the links removed were
  WP:CITE as to how to format these correctly. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 19:48, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I've just tried them and 6 out of the 7 work fine, the exception being http://www.ctcaviation.com/nz/. It seems to me that most, if not all, of the others are valid and useful, albeit not following WP:CITE. Rather than deleting them and leaving their statements uncited, is it not possible for you to distinguish between those that work and those that don't and, using automatic citation in visual editing, reformat them correctly?Johnragla (talk) 11:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(

MOS:QUOTEMARKS, "Reasons to prefer straight quotation marks and apostrophes", for the reason that the quotation marks and apostrophes were changed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:49, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

• Thank you. Confirms my prejudice that there are good reasons for not using Internet Explorer!Johnragla (talk) 11:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - your script edit here left a broken piped link (mining|mines) - you may want to check your script if you haven't already fixed it.

]

with respect

is there any conceivable reason why engvarB is being imposed upon Au subjects/topics? franglais perversity? JarrahTree 11:55, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• none at all. Kindly refer to script documentation. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 12:14, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • If I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Strong_national_ties_to_a_topic - there are numerous Australian topics subjects and articles that have had engvar B applied where they really should have Use Australian English then JarrahTree 12:21, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes but the script doesn't drill down sufficiently according to the various intricacies of the Australian code, but merely targets those words which are common to all the varieties of non-American english according to my understanding. "{{
      WP:ENGVAR was concerned. It's now the blanket template for the script action because it's otherwise too complicated to implement. I would prefer a wholly code-neutral name but the project has been going on for some time and it's become too complicated to change. If it is of any consolation to you, there are other users who now go around with a bot to change these to {{use Australian English}} where appropriate. You may already have seen this in some articles. In time, they will get around to that article if you left the EngvarB tag unchanged. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:37, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply
      ]

Thank you so much to take the time to explain - I see what sort of beast the whole engvar thing is, and really in the end, no big deal. I can see what it is all about, and will leave you in relatively unhindered peace, albeit a somewhat complex one if I suspect where you must be in residence, I promise I wont use any words of any of the issue raising languages you must have to bear - thanks again for taking the time. cheers JarrahTree 09:43, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • • • merde! - there in front of me on my watchlist, western australian places with engvar B again, oh well the likelihood of finding a bot or awb enthusiast in the current australian project area is hard - we are in cold snap at the moment, theyre in front of heaters or tv, not on keyboard :) JarrahTree 00:09, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Mr Ohconfucius,

Could you try This Cantonese Tool and tell me what you think of it? --JackonLee54 (talk) 09:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You have no comments? --JackonLee54 (talk) 23:13, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I am really impressed that you were able to develop such a tool, which I think might be very useful for people to learn Cantonese. I actually know very little about Yale, but I tried out the tool using paragraphs from two zh.wp articles. I suspect there may be some minor bugs with the phoneticisation, but really dare not comment anymore at the risk of demonstrating my total ignorance of the subject; what's more, the diacritics mean absolutely nothing to me. I will try using the tools with other articles, firstly to work out how Yale works and then to try evaluating the tool. I will let you know if I come across anything certain. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 11:38, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think of this Penkyamp tool? Do you think it is a more accurate portrayal of Cantonese (when compared to Yale Romanized Cantonese)? --JackonLee54 (talk) 06:32, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Ohconfucius, thanks for your contributions and it has been very pleasant working with you. But I just want to raise a question about the names of the functional constituencies, for example the Commercial (First) or District Council (Second) FCs are actually the official names so I think we should better leave them instead of changing them to 1st Commercial or 2nd District Council. Lmmnhn (talk) 21:12, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Please have a say at this talk page and please take a look at available sources. Best of wishes/Vänliga hälsningar/Kunnioittaen!--Paracel63 (talk) 20:21, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like I've sent a note to sports-reference.com, and they will look into the issue with the accent with their data provider.--Paracel63 (talk) 13:08, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed a couple of little errors your script made:

• Changed "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to "The Texas Chain Saw massacre"
• Changed "Businessman" to "businessman".
• Changed "Businesswoman" to "businesswoman".
• Changed "Chef" to "chef".

Thought you might like to know. Otherwise keep up the great work! anemoneprojectors 09:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Texas Chain Saw Massacre is now a string protected in my script, and there ought not to be any further changes to this wherever these may appear. As to the down casing inside info boxes, I have had some problems with sporadic down casing of professions and occupations, and I have now added a new line of regex to try and make this more uniform. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:37, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[Diff https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style%2FDates_and_numbers&type=revision&diff=736818400&oldid=736809355] Tony (talk) 08:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have begun to do some consistency editing and have tried your script EngvarB. Thanks for providing that script to the community! I have noticed that it always inserts the EngvarB template (which is fine), but it also overwrites existing templates that document a specific variety of English. For example, in Driving licence in India, your script replaced the "Use Indian English" template with the EngvarB template. But the "Use Indian English" template was there for a reason and you shouldn't just replace it. Useful information gets lost this way. I have no problems with the EngvarB template being added if you need it for maintenance purposes, but please amend your script, so that it does not overwrite existing templates. EngvarB consistency (talk) 18:54, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The script also overwrites {{Use British English}} as noted previously but has not yet been corrected. Keith D (talk) 09:00, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm confused by some script edits.[1] Particularly the choice of when to use work, publisher and agency.

Looking at these four changes:

• 1. |work=Cincinnati.com |agency=USA Today -> |work=USA Today |publisher=Cincinnati.com
• 2. |work=Reuters -> |agency=Reuters
• 3. |work=[[Yahoo! News]] |agency=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] -> |work=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |publisher=[[Yahoo! News]]
• 4. |website=janegoodall.org |publisher=The Jane Goodall Institute -> |publisher=janegoodall.org

It seems almost random on when to use agency vs publisher. Or why in #4 it dropped the publisher and replaced it with the website URL. --

]

MOSNUM dates script

It seems this does not work on newer versions of Firefox. No matter which button I click, the edit is always no difference and the script does nothing. Some buttons don't even do that, and do absolutely nothing. I've tried it in several articles with the same result. Am I missing something? Thanks. Adam9007 (talk) 23:55, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adam9007, great to know you're using the script(s). He'll be back when he has a chance. :-) Tony (talk) 09:22, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just loaded FF 49.0.1 and I have no problem with any of the scripts. What version are you using? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:29, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ohconfucius: I'm also using FF 49.0.1 Perhaps it's a conflict with another script or an extension? I also tried the EngvarB script and the same thing happens. Adam9007 (talk) 21:05, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that AutoEd might occasionally cause conflict; I've examined your monobook and found nothing that I know will affect it adversely. The standard procedure is to remove all the other scripts and reload them one by one, purging your cache each time until you find the culprit. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:58, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I found the problem: it was wikiEd. I had to disable it in preferences -> gadgets. Seems to work now. Adam9007 (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please leave the page title as it was. Many Chinese paired company had its parent call "XXX Group" and subsidiary "XXX Limited" as intended (as well as many "XXX Group" remain unlimited company). Moreover, CITIC Pacific was the old name of the company. Matthew_hk tc 06:18, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, @Matthew hk:please put it to its new namespace, but leave the "Limited" out of it, because it doesn't belong. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:30, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article

]

EngvarB script

Does the British Oxford option change all words that happen to end in -ise to -ize? Using this script on The Lord of the Rings changes unrevised (correct) to unrevized (incorrect). The whole -ise -ize thing only applies to words whose ise/ize if of a Greek (the ise/ize meaning, roughly, to make) etymology, and revise is not one such word. Adam9007 (talk) 22:04, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article

]

Article is presently on hold but there is only one issue that needs fixing - Reference #51 needs to be filled-out more completely. Then I will be able to pass the article to Good Article status. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 16:01, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:MOS has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 02:37, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On or about January 5, 2011, you made edits to numerous articles about Football clubs in Germany (e.g. 1. FC Heidenheim), in which you used the phrase "German association football club". I am unclear what you intended by this phrase, can you please explain the intedned meaning?

Is this intended to refer to a club that's affiliated with the DFB? Or could there be one of several "German associations" that the club is affiliated with? In particular, if this is intended to mean the former, then "German Football Association club" would seem to be the right phrase to use. Fabrickator (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Association football is known in Europe as "football" and in the US as "soccer". Calling it "association football" serves to distinguish it from American football. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

	Congratulations, it's a...
	... GOOD ARTICLE!!! Shearonink (talk) 22:57, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply ]

The article Causeway Bay Books disappearances you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Causeway Bay Books disappearances for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Shearonink -- Shearonink (talk) 23:01, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Deeply sorry for bothering you. I am having a prolonged dispute with User:Lmmnhn at User talk:Lmmnhn on the use of British honours. You are a very experienced and dependable editor in the English Wikipedia and I think you may be interested. I should be most grateful if you could offer some views on the subject to help resolve the matter. Thank you very much. --Clithering (talk) 17:31, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article Gui Minhai you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Gui Minhai for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Vanamonde93 -- Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I think your script is inserting colwidth=30em into the reflist. This coding is deprecated. 30em does the same thing. This is minor but I thought I'd let you know. --Jennica✿ / ^talk 13:48, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Two years ago ...

style fixes
... you were recipient no. 1066 of Precious, a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:30, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thank you for your scripts they are extremely useful for those of us who edit wikipedia Jonnymoon96 (talk) 04:07, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

From the icy Canajian north; to you and yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 02:10, 27 December 2016 (UTC) [reply]

Hi I'm a fan of Confucius too :o) I have put in a lot of work and found all the necessary references for an Eric Oram wikipedia page. You can find all the work I've done here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gryllida/sandbox/1 If you are interested in being the page's owner/admin that would be great I already have several pages and I am very new to wikipedia and since the Eric Oram page is so imporatnt in its message of Wing Chun Kung Fu being vital in the treatment of drug addiction and sobriety I would preffer that it be created by an experienced person like yourself. (Australianblackbelt (talk) 05:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC))[reply]

(talk page watcher) @Australianblackbelt: You are a new editor, and perhaps don't understand how things work around here, but two things worry me about your post above:

1. No Wikipedia article has an "owner", let alone an "admin". Anyone can edit anything; anyone can add any article to their Watchlist to keep an eye on it. Which editor first creates a page affects who gets notified automatically if there is a deletion proposal, but that's it. You say "I already have several pages" - you perhaps means "I have already created several pages." There is a big difference.
2. In general a sandbox is a user's own workspace, so why are you working in Gryllida's sandbox? Most unusual. Are you the same editor? If not, why are you not using your own sandbox to avoid any confusion? PamD 08:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I understand everything you say but Gryllida created that template on his/hers sandbox so I could create new pages, its a process Gryl advised me to take for me to improve. I only have one account and like to follow ALL the rules in wikipedia to the T. (Australianblackbelt (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC))[reply]

Seeing as you spent time writing all that about my work PamD perhaps you can give me some feedback on the page I would like to write; Eric Oram.(Australianblackbelt (talk) 20:33, 3 January 2017 (UTC))[reply]

@Australianblackbelt: I've never come across Gryllida and their template for article development before, though it's an interesting approach, but you seem to have misunderstood it. Where they say "One-paragraph summary (300 characters maximum)", that does not mean "One-paragraph passage lifted from the article (300 characters maximum)" I only looked at your source 9, but can see that not one word of your "summary" seems to differ from the source text. It looks as if you need to learn about writing stuff in your own words. But I am not at all interested in martial arts so suggest that you get feedback from editors in that area. PamD 21:58, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PamD Thanks point taken I haven't written it out properly yet my main concern is will the article stand up to notability given its current sources, much appreciated. (Australianblackbelt (talk) 02:23, 4 January 2017 (UTC))[reply]

]

Please see new note on your DYK nomination. Yoninah (talk) 16:54, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Ohconfucius, I wanted to make a request for

]

Hello again. Don't know if this section got overlooked or what, but I'm still curious what your thoughts are on the matter. — Huntster (t @ c) 10:55, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Schwede66 00:02, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there. Would you care to review or comment at

]

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2017

Your scripts-assisted editing of the article on the

]

• Thanks for the fix. I cannot see where it could have come from, and it didn't show in the diff before saving. It seems to have taken you a while to find it yourself. Anyway, thanks. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:59, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  The problem was in changing the hyphen of |year=2016-17 to a dash. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:50, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting to know. Thanks. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:42, 28 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I noticed you updated the articles Alastair Storey and Sanjay Jha to conform to the manual of style, and as part of that you've added "df=yes" to Template:Birth year and age. However, df/mf aren't valid parameters for the birth year and age template, so it caused an error with the template. I found the error because I've been working to clear out and keep clear the maintenance category Category:Pages using birth year and age template with unknown parameters and these articles were automatically added because of the df parameter. I don't know if you're already aware of this and mistook the templates for the birth date and age template, which does use the df/mf parameter, but I thought I should drop you a note just in case. Thanks for your time. Marianna251TALK 05:10, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Marianna251:Thanks for alerting me to the error. I wasn't aware of the error as the error doesn't show in the diff, but you are right. It was a careless piece of coding and I have now fixed it in the script. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 23:01, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I have noticed you have been removing the flags from pages depicting state visits by heads of state. I do not really have a problem with that. However, would it be possible to maintain the internal link to the country's pages? Sputink (talk) 16:27, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It was not funny.[2][3]--QBear (talk) 16:50, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I must have been eating peanuts while dreaming. Wake me up when it's over -- Ohc ^¡digame! 12:06, 9 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can I enquire of the rationale behind this edit? I am referring to the removal of the Use Indian English tag placed in May last year and replacement with an Engvarb tag.

]

• I would refer you to the template definition. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 11:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The ping is for this discussion which I archived after an established user choose to edit war on my talk page. -

]

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at

]

MOSNUM script

Hi Ohconfucius, the MOSNUM script doesn't appear to be working for me--it doesn't load in my toolbar. I removed everything from my common.js file and it still doesn't load in my toolbar. I'm curious if you think it could be conflicting with one of the things I have engaged in my Preferences or some gadget or something. Are there any known conflicts? I tried disabling the wikEdDiff, but that didn't do anything. If I could find a history of my changes to my preferences file, I could probably track down the change by cross-referencing against the default edit summaries the tool produces. Any thoughts? I know, it's vague. "My tool doesn't work, figure it out against a thousand possibilities!" Thanks... Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:02, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Cyphoidbomb: The only known conflict that I am aware of is WikiEd (see User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM_dates#Known_conflicts). Hope this helps. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:13, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks mate. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, a follow-up question--I just spent 15 minutes deactivating gadgets in my Preferences trying to figure out why the "Use DMY dates / Use MDY dates" links no longer appear under my tools sidebar. Did you change the interface to just say "Foreign dates"? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:04, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That all seems rather bizarre. There's nothing in your Commons.js that I recognise as causing potential issues when installed with my scripts. I haven't changed anything in the MOSNUM script in over two months, so there's no reason at this end for the script to have stopped working so suddenly. In any event, the buttons are present when I load it. "Foreign dates" is one module in the MOSNUM script that transforms dates like 12. Dezember 2007 (German format) into 12 December 2007, and I can't really explain why one module is loading and the others aren't, although I suspect there's still a conflict with one of your gadgets if all your other scripts have been disabled.

One suggestion: try loading only MOSNUM script into your vector file and switch to the Vector skin in Preferences, and see if it appears in the sidebar in edit mode. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 21:37, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just figured this out! I have the EFF Chrome extension "Privacy Badger" installed, and it was suppressing the script for some reason. I whitelisted Wikipedia, and now it works fine. Probably should have started with the extensions... Thanks for your brain power on this, though! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:45, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your time and edits. It is very much appreciated. Do not know why, but it was surprising to me that you went through from beginning to end. Mcb133aco (talk) 00:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)mcb133acoMcb133aco (talk) 00:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have noticed that you (and people using your scripts) have made several edits such as this one that added a mangled {{URL}} template to citations. These all changed something like website=http://www.opcw.org/news/article/he-dr-fauziah-mohamad-taib-malaysia|accessdate=11 August 2014 to website={{url|opcw.org/news/article/he-dr-fauziah-mohamad-taib-malaysia|accessdate=11}} August 2014, which is obviously very broken. I suspect that most of the pages listed at https://tools.wmflabs.org/bambots/TemplateParam.php?action=paramlinks&wiki=enwiki&template=URL&param=accessdate and https://tools.wmflabs.org/bambots/TemplateParam.php?action=paramlinks&wiki=enwiki&template=URL&param=publisher are a result of your script. You seem to be assuming that a |website= parameter must be in an infobox without actually checking, but you are ignoring the fact that it is also used by {{cite web}} and other templates. I've fixed up a few of them, but perhaps you could come up with a fixing script that does a better job. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:59, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging User:Tony1, who also operated the script on many of the affected pages. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:10, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FYI to all, having a full URL in |website= is an error in a Citation Style 1 template. See Category:CS1 errors: external links for more information. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but eating the accessdate or publisher field inside {{URL|example.com|optional display text}} isn't the correct solution either. I went through all the pages I could find, removed the {{URL}} template, and truncated down the URL to just the website name, but there may be some that I missed. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:18, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ahecht, thanks for your alert. BTW, please consider a talkpage link that is less ... what do I say ... glary. Perhaps a little smaller and rectangular? Thx. Tony (talk) 01:42, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht: Thanks for reporting the glitch and for fixing the articles where it occurred. It seems that the examples you found date back to 2014/2015. Kindly let me know if you find any other more recent examples of this error. The script evolves, and I believe that the glitch may have been ironed out at since 2015. When I reperform the edit with my current version, the error is no longer made. In addition, I may be responsible for some but not all of the instances of the URL template in this and this (not that I know what these are meant to show). Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 23:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In a recent edit to the page Emmanuel Macron, you changed one or more words or styles from one national variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use

, such as Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author of the article used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. AusLondonder (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @
  WP:ENGVAR. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 22:41, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply
  ]

I strongly disagree.

WP:TIES does not apply here. TIES only applies to English-speaking nations, which obviously excludes France. AusLondonder (talk) 00:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

The French "never" use -iz words? Someone forgot to tell France24 or the French Embassy in London or the French Foreign Office. Apply British spelling to British articles and I'll support you totally. But trying to extend "strong national ties to a particular variety of English" to the whole of Europe and there will be resistance. AusLondonder (talk) 00:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was referring to the existence only of morphemes -ise(r) and -isation in the Franch language – pronounced [s] (with a soft 's') – not -ize(r) and -ization, as witnessed in French dictionaries. Therefore, it's always "comptabilisation" and never "comptabilization"; "défiscalisation" and never "défiscalization", so even

Oxford English would be pushing the boat out despite the fact that the EU uses British English. Please refer to the relevant section of the EU publications style guide. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

I'm fully aware that the institutions of the European Union, which the UK is departing, use British English. That's why we use British English at

WP:TIES and change from one variety of English to another. AusLondonder (talk) 04:33, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Whether Britain leaves the EU probably has little bearing on this. I personally can't see them abandoning English as an official language because of Brexit, despite what some bureaucrats might have been quoted as having foolishly said. I think I already explained that the proximity of the spellings here make it more natural to use British English (with s-words) than american spellings. A French person writing articles here is more likely to do just that. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:23, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

AusLondonder: This Guardian article explains what I meant in my above statements. This constitutes fairly strong justification for using British English in continental European articles, depending on the country, of course. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 22:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for showing me that article. The graph actually shows, for example, that France uses American spelling just as much as British spelling. Did you not see that? The graph shows Germany, Italy, the Netherlands prefer American spelling. AusLondonder (talk) 09:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Living languages are dynamic, and the graph shows that there is increasing adoption of American spelling and vocabulary even in Britain. It's a fact that some terms, such as

WP:ENGVAR at some stage in the future. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

May 2017

In a recent edit to the page François Fillon, you changed one or more words or styles from one national variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use

, such as Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author of the article used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. AusLondonder (talk) 02:05, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would have been an error: Ohconfucius is an expert on engvar. I occasionally do this too. There is SO much to clean up, and so few people operating scripts to do that. I hope you're forgiving, and thanks for bringing it up here. Tony (talk) 02:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just letting Ohconfucius know I disagree with that particular change. No hard feelings at all, I know Ohconfucius does a lot of great work in this area. AusLondonder (talk) 08:10, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fillon's wife is British, and this would be the strongest claim of

Ohc on the move (talk) 05:41, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

You might not have noticed that this edit introduced "favor/favour" in an ambiguous combination, and this edit is the first use of s-/z-words in the article, which BTW is still there in the article. It would therefore not be appropriate to force a change of British English into American English because subsequent additions flood the article with words spelt with the latter code. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:46, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Love your MOSNUM script. Is there a reason there's no option to convert MDY or DMY to ISO (yyyy-mm-dd)? There are a few articles I contribute to where that is the accepted and/or predominant format for reference dates and access-dates but a few MDY formatted dates have crept in and I'd like to fix those automatically using MOSNUM... but that doesn't seem to be an option. There's "Access 2 ISO" but not "ALL dates to ISO" or "Pub dates to ISO", etc. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:04, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All -> ISO is inappropriate per

MOS:DATEFORMAT. Those articles should be converted away from ISO. --Izno (talk) 19:11, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Well "All to ISO" may be inappropriate but "Pub dates to ISO" or "Ref dates to ISO" would not be. —Joeyconnick (talk) 04:54, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I am well aware that WP does in no way advocate using ISO dates. However, I adopted "ISO" as shorthand for the yyyy-mm-dd string because of the superficial similarities to the year-month-date string in numerical form that we use (and I seem to recall stating that in the script documentation ) I didn't write such a module because Plastikspork wrote a simple script that does the job just fine so I saw little point in reinventing the wheel. Let me know if this does not meet your needs, and I could look at how to solve the problem. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cool... thanks for the pointer. However, that script only adjusts the "date" parameter in citations, not the "access-date" one. Basically, the article's overall format has dates in mdy and access-dates in yyyy-mm-dd. I'm looking for something to automate ensuring all the access-dates are in yyyy-mm-dd. Oh... wait a sec, okay, your script's "access 2 ISO" is buggy, which might be what's confusing me. When I click MOSNUM options normally, the changes are made and submitted into "Show Changes" with an auto-generated edit summary. Clicking "access 2 ISO" makes the changes in the main edit window but doesn't do the auto-submit and auto-summary to the Show Changes view.

On top of that, it looks like if you have access-date={{date|2017-05-15|mdy}}, the "access 2 ISO" option doesn't strip the {{date}} and convert it to just 2017-05-15 (every other time I've used MOSNUM, any date template stuff is stripped). Is this stuff that can be addressed? Because then the "access 2 ISO" option would work as expected.—Joeyconnick (talk) 20:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Joeyconnick:I have tweaked the script to incorporate the features you asked for, namely conversion of publication and archive dates, as well as added a diff to the script. The button has been renamed "Big-endian ref dates". Kindly note that there may be false positives because there seem to be an increasing number of templates that now have the |date= parameter. The script does not know to distinguish between the date parameter within different templates. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 07:27, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! A few things:

• It seems to be working on |date= rather than |access-date=; the previous version was entitled "Access 2 ISO" i.e. access dates, not the actual dates of the references
• it's not doing the auto-diff once you click it like the other script links do; I have to manually click the [Show Changes] button after I click the "Big endian ref dates" link
• relatedly, it's not putting in a custom edit summary
• if the |date= parameter contains a {{date}} template, like so: |date={{date|2016-10-23|mdy}}, it is erroneously just eating the date and coming back with |date (without the "=" so the actual parameter isn't just empty, it's broken) instead of |date=2016-10-23

What I was expecting it to do was go through and switch all instances of |access-date= or |accessdate= to use YYYY-MM-DD format. I've tried to take a look at your code but the regexps are too advanced for me, unfortunately. —Joeyconnick (talk) 09:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:MOSNUM in that all access dates and archive dates can be of the same format, while publication dates stay unchanged as dmy or mdy. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame! 11:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Seems to be working perfectly—thank you hugely! I use your script every day, pretty much. 👍 and kudos! —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:34, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm simply following the model of

]

• Referring to your edits for
  Reactions to the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. A list article it is less constrained for space and tends to be fleshed out, sometimes overly so. In its current form, it matches the Orlando nightclub reactions article. In the future, please mindful of this. Also be sure to test your markup before making edits, as you made the source unreadable and the page wasn't in much better shape. -- sarysa (talk) 19:41, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Sarysa, could you be more specific; it will help when Ohc is next online. Tony (talk) 08:05, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Making an edit that turned the Country list WIP from this into this, and then "fixing" it into this and leaving. It was extremely disruptive, took several minutes to revert due to the high volume and I ultimately had to roll back. The code was unreadable as all spacing was gone. About three edit denials later, I wrote my original post here in a rather furious state. In any case,

WP:BOLD has limits. -- sarysa (talk) 01:39, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Sigh, it's bigly annoying to see editors copying others by using articles that do not conform to our style guides as reference for creating articles. This normalises bad behaviour of such as ]

Request for an edit

Greetings and felicitations. This may be overly formal, but I'm asking here because the subject is on one of your user pages. In User:Ohconfucius/USE disclaimer would you please be so kind as to change "Singapore English, South African English." to "Singapore English, and South African English.", since "South African English" is the last item in the list? —DocWatson42 (talk) 12:14, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. —DocWatson42 (talk) 15:56, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Anastagia Pierre is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anastagia Pierre until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. ---

]

Great Western Cotton Factory

Hi Ohconfucius, thanks for your edits to the above page. I've added an 'external links' page with the link to Bristol Archives just so that its as easy as possible for researchers to find the primary material, I hope that's ok? BRO MarkS (talk) 10:08, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Ohconfucius! I was wondering if you could help me out here... I tried adding your script and have purged my browser but the tools aren't displaying under the "Tools" section on the left. The only page they seem to show up is here. What did I do wrong? Thanks, Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 17:12, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oops... probably helps if I hit the edit button! Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 17:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Corkythehornetfan: I suspect that it may be due to tools or other gadgets loaded elsewhere. I loaded your commons file and I get all the script buttons in the LH tool bar (in other words, everything appears normal). To progress with your troubleshooting, which is usually by process of elimination, you might try editing WP using another browser, and failing that by checking what else you may have installed in your WP user preferences. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, i fixed this one. But you should also really convert that to use click handlers, instead of using javascript: links and global variable names. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:07, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you. I tried copying the same code to some of my other scripts. Hope I got them all. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 22:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oldid 788291738 (on 2017-06-30) replaced URLs (and other things) by

   ⍌225⍍

and other such arrows-plus-numbers. I'm guessing it was a temporary glitch in one of your scripts, but I mention it in case it's significant. --Mathieu ottawa (talk) 04:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Most "-ize" verb spellings are fine in UK English as well. Have a look at a few in a dictionary and you'll see what I mean. So no point in changing them back and forth. Here's a short account of the situation: [4]. Just mentioning it to save you copy-editing time. Best wishes, Brian Bmcln1 (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ohconfucius, your script has damaged two references. Have a look at your changes and the missing references handbookA and optimaA. --GünniX (talk) 16:57, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• humpf. If only people would use the proper/conventional tag (<ref name=handbook/>) instead of <ref name=handbook></ref> for a repeated ref. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 18:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See here where the script changed {{cite encyclopedia |author=Lewis, C. P. |url= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/95594 |title= Companions of the Conqueror (act. 1066–1071) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online Edition |format={{ODNBsub}} |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=February 2009 |accessdate= 23 September 2009}} to {{cite encyclopedia |author=Lewis, C. P. |url= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/95594 |title= Companions of the Conqueror (act. 1066–1071) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online Edition |format={{ODNBsub}} |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=February 2009 -09-23}} and {{cite encyclopedia | author=Round, John H. |authorlink= John Horace Round | title=Abetot, Urse d' (c.1040–1108) |others= Mason, Emma (revised) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2004 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28022 |accessdate= 3 February 2009 |format={{ODNBsub}} }} to {{cite encyclopedia | author=Round, John H. |authorlink= John Horace Round | title=Abetot, Urse d' (c.1040–1108) |others= Mason, Emma (revised) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2004 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28022 -02-03 |format={{ODNBsub}} }}. The edit also stripped out all the non breaking spaces .... Ealdgyth - Talk 17:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More errors at this diff where it strips out the accessdate and plugs something mangled into the publisher field. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:27, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another one here Keith D (talk) 19:40, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keith D, User:Ealdgyth: Thanks for your help. I've reverted the most recent change to the script module that caused the problem and I've gone back on the articles edited and fixed those that haven't already been fixed. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:04, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the framework that EngvarB is based on, has been deprecated since 2012 and superseded by meta:TemplateScript. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:22, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can your script quit changing dates in references like here? Your script has done several in the last week while I've been on the road...very annoying to fix on a tablet.Ealdgyth - Talk 11:35, 25 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to ask the same. Why is your scrip changing eg 25 July 2015 to 2015-07-25? And for that matter why is it removing the column for the reference template? Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk 21:38, 25 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Gaia Octavia Agrippa: I don't know about the date but it's removing the width parameter from {{reflist}} because that template is now responsive by design i.e. a column width doesn't need to be specified—it will automatically render multiple columns depending on the viewer's screen width. —Joeyconnick (talk) 00:56, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In my long experience, the script does the opposite: 2015-07-25 -> 25 July 2015 (or mdy if indicated). Tony (talk) 04:13, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that a very large proportion of articles have access dates and archive dates in yyyy-mm-dd format, so I made the decision to switch over. What's more, it's usually the publication date that people rely on most, and the other are useful for maintenance. The different formats enable the two sets of dates to be immediately distinctive visually of each other. It's typically hard for us script users to arbitrate when working at some speed through a swathe of articles – either one changes all to dmy/mdy, or one aligns the publication dates and changes the access dates and archive dates to yyyy-mm-dd. Either way, one would get complaints potentially compromising productivity. Any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks to Joey for explaining the new default of the {{reflist}} template. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:56, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Tony .... it is doing the dd full-month-spelled-out yyyy to yyyy-mm-dd - see here, where the ONLY edits were to change the already consistent date format to an inconsistent format as well remove the column formatting and switch around some template dates. One solution would be to NOT change anything if the only change is one date format change in the refs where there is no other change. Quite frankly, I don't buy the need to make the accessdate visually different than some other date. Can you please figure out something because this is getting annoying and it's violating

WP:ARTCON. There is no need to remove the column format either - it's still perfectly fine to specify ... so this looks like a case of imposing personal preferences on a wide swath of articles via script/high speed editing. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:50, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Changes to Brian Mathew article

Hi, some of your changes to Brian Mathew are covered above: you should not be changing yyyy-mm-dd dates in |accessdate= and |archivedate= formats, since these are allowed to be in this format.

Other changes were because you did not check the ENGVAR template on the talk page; I've added it as a page notice now which may help to prevent such errors.

An interesting question is your change of " : " to ": " in book titles. Many books have the title written on two lines, with one part in larger type and the other smaller, as if they were the main title and an addition, but without punctuation between them. Library catalogues usually add some kind of punctuation in this case; commonly either adding " : ", where the spaced colon indicates that it's not there in the original, or "," or ";" – see for example this entry. I think the spaced colon is correct in all the cases you changed. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:27, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Noted, with thanks. I would suggest tagging similar articles with {{
  Use British (Oxford) English}} instead of using the editnotice – it's simpler to execute, and obviates the need to create new editnotices. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • There's no guideline for spacing before any of these punctuation marks in English. In French, yes. Not English. WP is not a library catalogue, and your claim has no reliable source (even if it did, minority library practice wouldn't count for much). Academic journals, to my knowledge, do not insert spaces before any punctuation but a dash. Tony (talk) 15:17, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    @Tony1: the point is that the ":" isn't present in the source, so to me there are two choices: (1) omit the ":" altogether, so that the title of a book with a "continuation title" on a new line is given as one long string, or (2) use some standard convention to indicate the new line. The practice of library catalogues is well understood. Look at this for example: each line is gathered from a separate library's catalogue. Whatever solution is adopted here, using an unspaced ":" is just wrong, as it implies the ":" is in the source – either leave it alone or delete it.

Looking at another book I have on my shelves and have used as a reference in articles about plants, I see the title on the title page as the following:

BULBS

The Bulbous Plants of Europe and their allies

So how would you present the title of this book in a citation? As |title=Bulbs The Bulbous Plants of Europe and their allies? Or as almost all library catalogues do (see here) as |title=Bulbs : the bulbous plants of Europe and their allies? This has the merit of being a clearly sourceable way of mapping a two-line title into a linear one as well as removing the inconsistent capitalization. Or in some other format? I try to use what I find in the OCLC WorldCat (surely a reliable source?), so I'd really like to know what you recommend. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:56, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Peter, most style guides, including WP's, draw a line somewhere between slavish reproduction when extracting from an original source, and falsifying the intended meaning. For example, you're not expected to use the same font and font-size. Curly quotes need to be changed into straight quotes. The titles of papers can (probably should) be converted to or from sentence and title case, for internal consistency in our lists (these things every publisher does). Just why we'd want to import spaces before colons defeats me. They are harder to read, rare in Egnlish, and deprecated by most stylists. In French, it's the opposite. Tony (talk) 05:06, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, I agree entirely about not slavishly reproducing the style of originals, and I regularly convert fully capitalized titles inserted by other editors (often against sustained objections). However, I notice you didn't actually answer my question: how would you render the title of the book I used as an example above? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Peter, I guess: Bulbs: The Bulbous Plants of Europe and their Allies. The capping is inconsistent. This might be possible: "Bulbs: The bulbous plants of Europe and their allies. As an aside, it's a terrible subtitle ... European allies or allies of European bulbous plants? I seriously don't know without going to the source. Tony (talk) 03:35, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ohconfucius: why have you yet again changed consistent and acceptable access dates? Stop! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But they're usually not consistent. And they're highly inaccessible to many readers. You don't have a god-given right to that format—especially when it's necessarily different from the dmy or mdy format used in the main text. I can't imagine why you're finding so much energy within yourself over this trivial issue. Tony (talk) 11:37, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If they are not consistent, it's a different matter, although there is then a procedure for determining the style to be followed involving the first major contribution/expansion.

@

MOS:DATEFORMAT and explicitly allowed in access and archive dates, so it should not be changed. It's a MoS-given right, which is all that matters here. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:17, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

The emotional dimension is impressive. I don't understand the rationale. But it doesn't seem to be a productive conversation right now. Tony (talk) 13:18, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is no productive discussion – it's all emotional. As seen from this and above threads, somebody complains if you put dates uniformly into dmy because they prefer yyyy-mm-dd, somebody complains if you put ref dates uniformly into yyyy-mm-dd because they prefer dmy dates. It doesn't matter if the article was initially in dmy or yyyy-mm-yy, people don't care because it's not what they want to see. It's never productive. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:26, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

for clearly Australian articles ? JarrahTree 10:31, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Indeed. please refer to documentation at Template:EngvarB. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:18, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop changing date formats without consensus. Per

]

@NinjaRobotPirate: this is essentially the same point I made above; I hope that Ohconfucius has understood that this has to stop. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I should have chosen a better example diff because in the article I linked above, the first contributor used American date formats. But that doesn't change the wider point I'm making – that indiscriminately changing date formats is disruptive. It's frustrating to find that half the articles on your watchlist have unilaterally had their date format changed even though it was stable since creation. Sometimes articles drift from one format to another, making it a bit of a mess. Alright – using a script to fix that is warranted. Sometimes I screw up and use the wrong date format for an article. But why would you unilaterally change every ISO 8601 date to something else? That's just plain disruptive. I like the MOS more than some editors, but I don't go around making unilateral,

WP:MEATBOT-style changes without getting consensus first. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:58, 8 September 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Methinks you use "disruptive" to mean

WP:IDONTLIKEIT—an emotional rather than systemic and logical line of argument. Any edit "disrupts", if you like: it disrupts the previous version. I've been harmonising date formats in articles for years. Regrettably, in my view, this ref. list vs main text disjuncture is optional. Many other editors are of the same opinion). Occasionally people decide to pile on objections. But the question is why do you care so much about introducing two different types of date format in the one article? It can't possibly be to save electrons. Ref lists are not space-constrained. Tony (talk) 05:11, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

@

WP:CITEVAR. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:05, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Sorry? Why do the phone-number dates—unintelligible or at the very least difficult-to-decipher for many of our readers—de-emphasise less-important dates? What are they? Tony (talk) 10:28, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the place to discuss a date style for which there is a clear consensus in previous discussions, and I shouldn't have taken your bait. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I get it. It seems that NinjaRobotPirate created the articles concerned, or is their major contributor, and so is naturally upset. Use of ISO8601 isn't endorsed on WP, although many people confuse acceptance of yyyy-mm-dd format as endorsement of same. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:00, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I'm leaving you a message regarding your change to the above page[5]. I stumbled upon the article and was very surprised to see a large number of cite errors in the references section considering the fact that the article had only recently become a Featured Article. Looking at the page history, I noticed that it was the removal of this[6] which (I think) created the issue. Was this a mistake or is this a bug with one of your scripts? –72 _(talk) 14:27, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, and thanks. I apologise for the cite errors introduced by my script. It was exactly as you diagnosed, caused by a line of regex that was aimed at removing the defaulting column width for citations. The bug has since been corrected. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:34, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, and thank you for fixing it! –72 _(talk) 19:34, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please check the output of your script. I changed "Re-epicheep" back to "Reepicheep" in the Narnia articles. -- Elphion (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Ugh, these manufactured words :-( -- Ohc ^¡digame! 15:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have noticed you changed the District Council (Second) to District Council. District Council (Second) is actually the official name of the constituency. Lmmnhn (talk) 06:30, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Kindly take care with your edits. I've had to revert several of your careless edits at the above article. Akld guy (talk) 22:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I believe there may have been some problems with the constructions used in the article that caused the "careless edits". -- Ohc ^¡digame! 18:40, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please review

]

Script and government

In Clare Gerada your script got it wrong - not everything ending in ".gov.uk" should become "Government of the United Kingdom" as a lot are local Govt units like Medway Council here. PamD 21:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC) PamD 21:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ohconfucius, that spelling is BrEng too (re: Comfort Momoh).[7] I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't change these in future. I'm trying to do my bit on WP to maintain some corner of a foreign field with that spelling. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:43, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thank you. [8] SarahSV ^(talk) 20:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Today, I fixed about 25 articles that you mangled, and I keep finding more. this one is particularly bad. (1) you changed [[The Volokh Conspiracy]] to [[The Volokh {{subst:lc:Conspiracy}}]]. which is wrong for many reasons. (2) you changed |country=|language = English to |country=glish (3) you changed |caption = Cover of the 2010 first edition|author = [[Frank Dikötter]] to |caption = Cover of the 2010 first edition [[Frank Dikötter]]. you need to used context when making transformations: (1) you cannot use subst: inside of references, it just doesn't work, (2) you should not be changing quotes, book titles, organisation titles, etc. (3) clearly glish is not a country and the author of the book is not the caption for the image. Frietjes (talk) 13:32, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just in case you haven't seen them, I've left you a couple of messages about the sources script. "Fix SOURCES" no longer appears in the in my tools, dunno if it's just me... Thanks, Mattythewhite (talk) 14:21, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I thought you might like to know that I have requested that

]

Nomination for deletion of Template:HK Election committee

Template:HK Election committee has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:32, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Paradise (Anohni EP), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Paste (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:44, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I note that you are currently trawling schools articles, and automatically decapitalising the term "Independent School". In the process, you are decapitalising, and thereby redlinking, the proper names of a number of organisations, such as the Independent Schools Council and the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Please desist, or check what you're doing. I have manually reverted a few. Eric Pode lives (talk) 22:55, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Can you please be careful when running scripts not to change em dashes to en dashes in discography sections? It appears you have a script set to automatically change all instances of em dashes to en dashes, and the current standard for discographies (per the Discography WikiProject and its style guidelines) is to use em dashes for releases that did not chart. It's creating work for others to clean up. Thanks. Ss112 20:03, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a mite confused by your recent edits on the Peppermint Patty article. You site

]

• Yes, my bad. Apologies. I see that my change has been reverted. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:28, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, there's a complaint on my talkpage about this issue. Thx. Tony (talk) 22:25, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Soprano is not (only) a voice type, but describes what the person is doing = occupation. See as mentioned Maria Callas: "was ... a soprano" (not: is an opera singer of the voice type soprano), or if you need an infobox, Gwyneth Jones, or hundred others. Please revert yourself. It helps the reader to be more precise. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:49, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't think a voice type is any more an occupation than a position on the playing field of a footballer or similar sportsman. Footballers have their own infobox, where the person's profession isn't even mentioned, and their position is demarked as such. That's what we need, wouldn't you agree? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 15:44, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify why you did this please? Per WP:BNA, we were asked to include this in any citations of BNA articles. Thanks. --Michig (talk) 17:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

? --Michig (talk) 18:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for drawing my attention to this issue. This is first time I've come across it. I frequently see the |via= parameter get used by editors as a substitute for |work= or |publisher=, which is incorrect. Therefore, I adapted my regex to switch to one or the other of the latter whenever this occurs, because it's more often than not incorect. I'll try to tweak the script to ignore such instances. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 19:06, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, thanks. I think 'via' is certainly appropriate for these. --Michig (talk) 19:50, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • It should also be used for scans of books at Google Books, Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg; and for news publishers re-publishing a story from another publication, and many other cases. Too often people who even understand the difference between work and publisher misattribute a republisher/distributor as the publisher. E.g., a copy of a UNESCO report at a university website gets credited to the university as the publisher, and that's wrong.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  10:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't do this. I can't imagine how all of that red got past your careful preview. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:23, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• It is caused by a glitch in user:GregU/dashes.js script, so I have disable calls to that script for the time being, pending a fix. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:22, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miss_Sahhara&oldid=808434493 Hello dear, Thank you so much for the contribution to my article about Miss saHHara. You changed the title text from Miss saHHara to Miss Sahhara. Unfortunately, that is not how her public name is spelt. Can you undo the changes you made please. Below is her website where she stated how her name is spelt and BBC did referenced it too. She uses her stage name Miss saHHara only because of the death threats she gets from Nigerians. I hope you can help. Thank you. Regards.

http://www.misssahhara.com/disclaimer/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-36168661/trans-woman-i-left-nigeria-to-save-my-life

(Phoenixqueen (talk) 11:26, 3 November 2017 (UTC))[reply]

• It is a Wikipedia guideline to avoid the use of
  Camel Case, so your presentation is not acceptable. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:27, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am a bit confused. Can you explain further, because the carmel case in this case seem to be accepted from the quote below gotten from the

Camel Case

page:'In the case of this exception, rephrase to avoid beginning sentences with such trademarks: avoid: eBay is where he bought his iPod. instead, use: He bought his iPod on eBay.'

(Phoenixqueen (talk) 13:48, 3 November 2017 (UTC))[reply]

Third party here. I don't think that

WP:Title applies directly here, rather Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). the eBay example doesn't really apply here, the example would be better if the company was EBay. In that case, I think the name of the article would be EBay rather than forced to Ebay. And we do have a secondary source in the BBC site on that capitalization.Naraht (talk) 16:26, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

This is also a

MOS:CAPS matter: WP doesn't do any unusual stylization unless reliable sources do it with near-uniform consistency.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:37, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

MOSNUM script again

Hello Ohconfucius. I am current running both MOSNUM and the Wikitext syntax highlighting beta feature, and on Google Chrome (I'm not sure if this is on other browsers), the page seems to lock up when I try to set a date format on a page. Is there a way this can be resolved or a workaround apart from temporarily disabling the beta feature? Thanks!

]

• I'm aware that there may be conflicts with other scripts, gadgets, add-ons etc. It's indeed possible that the problem is browser-specific, but I've not been far down that road. I've helped troubleshoot specific conflicts and develop work-arounds (please see my talk archives) but I have never been able to "solve" it. Does the script work correctly if you disable the Wikitext highlighter? I use Safari, and perhaps you might try a browser other than Chrome to start with. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but if you find out anything that would help other users in the future, I would be most interested. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 21:22, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ohconfucius.

Please see my revert of your edit on ACT Policing. Seems something might be wrong with the srcipt you are using. Regards. Aoziwe (talk) 10:30, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]