User talk:Shortsword

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Shortsword is a member of Guerilla Skeptics on Wikipedia.

Striving to fight pseudoscience, alternative medicine, superstition, and other forms of woo with rationally critical thinking. Shortsword (talk) 04:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On 27 April 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ed Krupp, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Ed Krupp has been director of Griffith Observatory for more than half of its existence? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ed Krupp. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Ed Krupp), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:03, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Shortsword - I noticed that you mentioned this exellent award in the Martin Gardner article. Do you think that Pantheon of Skeptics might merit its own article in WP? It is mentioned on quite a few WP pages.--Toploftical (talk) 10:56, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Toploftical: First, you are very welcome for the addition to Martin Gardner's article. Second, I am currently going down the list of Pantheon members as published on the CSI website and adding something to each members WP (at least for those that have a WP, and only found one so far that does not.) Third, I think that a WP on the Pantheon would be short and sweet, and almost immediately we would find it in the AfD list. But, I just checked the CSI WP and there is no mention of the Pantheon there. So, what I do think is that a small section should be added to that page. So, when I am done adding the Pantheon to the various member's WPs I will take that on as my next small project (later this week).

Of course, if you are looking for something to do, and wanted to add that section to the CSI page, I don't think I could complain much, since it was your suggestion, that prompted me to think up this alternate idea. But, if you don't take it up first, as I said, I will do it later this week. It is a real good idea. Shortsword (talk) 11:38, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Shortsword - See the new section I just added at Committee for Skeptical Inquiry#The Pantheon of Skeptics.

The original source page for The Pantheon of Skeptics has the following errors and minor misspellings:

T.X. Barber is Theodore X. Barber

Milbourne Christopher is Milbourne Christopher

Francis H. Crick is (I assume)

Francis C. Crick

L. Sprague Decamp is L. Sprague de Camp

Paul Maccready is Paul MacCready

Walter Mccrone is Walter McCrone

Robert Baker is Robert A. Baker

William V. Mayer has no WP page

I expanded and revised CSICOP's description of some of the people when I created the new table. You may want to check my work.

Feel free to praise, condemn, revise, delete, or otherwise change this material. I am not the least bit sensitive about my writing. Perhaps this is enough for now and no separate article on the subject is needed.--Toploftical (talk) 23:44, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Toploftical: I had a quick look, and it looks pretty good to me. I have to go eat dinner now (the wife is chomping at the bit. So, later I will take a closer look. Francis H. Crick is actually Francis Harry Compton Crick. However, the name of his WP is simply Francis Crick. I agree with all the other name massages you listed and am impressed that you found Theodore X. Barber, whom I could not find. So, now that is one more page for me to go add the pantheon too before I am done.

I thought that I was done, and had also made an edit to the CSI page, and directly after I sent my edit in, I realized that I had a new message here from you. So, I quickly reverted my edit. My edit was a little different from yours, but that is OK. You got there first. (I did start my edit before your response appeared here. Shortsword (talk) 00:52, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Toploftical: I took a closer read and did change a few things. In the introductory paragraph I changed CSICOP to CSI, which reflects the correct name in April 2011. And, yes I know that CSICOP is used just a few short section above in the Founder Award section. But, in 1986 that was also the correct name. I also know that some folks use CSICOP and CSI interchangeably, a practice, that frankly, bugs me. And, the time line through this article is a little blurry at times vis-a-vis CSICOP versus CSI. But, it would take a complete rewrite, to straighten that out, which is more than I signed up for on this project, and I will bet more than you signed up for too. if you change the CSI back to CSICOP, I will not argue with you.

I changed a few of the wikilinks to display text as closely (but correctly as per the incorrectnesses you pointed out and I also saw) to the name as listed in the source. Where that was different than the name of the actual WP, I made the wikilink link directly to the WP (including bypassing any redirect page) but display the name correctly. I agree that it should be McCrone, McCready, if only to keep my ancestors happy in their graves, and L. Sprague de Camp. I found it curious that Crick's name is Francis Harry Compton Crick, and someone created a Francis C. Crick redirect to Francis Crick but not a Francis H. Crick redirect. This probably means that Crick did not use the Harry initial/name much but did use Compton. Any way, here are the wikilinks I changed.

| Francis H. Crick || Nobel laureate molecular biologist

| T. X. Barber || psychologist

| D. O. Hebb || neuropsychologist

I have gotten into the habit of adding the direct wikilink to the actual name of the page (bypassing redirect pages), and then putting in different display text if that is desirable. I believe that the redirect pages can disappear more easily than the actual page, and if they do the wikilink becomes an orphan (Red Link, see below). Of course, the same thing happens if the actual page is deleted, but if so, ....

I changed William V. Mayer to plain text (no wikilink) because I thought that was in concordance with WP policy. But, since I am collaborating with another editor, I thought I better be able to justify that attitude. And, I found out that the issue is a bit "complicated". What else is new? Long Story Short, I put the Red Link for Mayer back. I ended up here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link. If you are already familiar with the "correct" policy on Red Links and Overlinking, you can ignore that link. If you are not, I suggest reading it. To summarize, it turns out that the Wikimedia Gods believe that a minimum number of Red Links lead people to make contributions to Wikipedia to get rid of the Red Links and leaving a minimum number of otherwise valid Red Links is preferable to deleting all of them. However, it is also believed that an abundance of Red Links makes the article more difficult to read, so, don't overdo it (which is the policy I thought was completely correct). So, it looks like I have to learn new habits and curb my enthusiasm for deleting Red Links.

And, of course, one Red Link in an article this size, is definitely NOT overdoing it.

I think that is all for now. Oh yes, one last think. Good Job. You did it differently than I did, but that is OK.Shortsword (talk) 07:56, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Shorsword - I agree with your tweaks. Yes, the policy on red links is interesting. You may have noticed that I have been heavily involved in the Martin Gardner article and associated pages. Any time you want to work on any of these, let me know. Thanks for your fine work. --Toploftical (talk) 00:10, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I trust it was simply a mistake on your part, but you marked your recent edit on the above article as "Revert vandalism". That edit was most assuredly not vandalism. It might not have been constructive, as there is a separate list of state symbols, but it was not

the documentation for {{

infobox U.S. state symbols}} shows the list of valid parameters. if you use "show preview" it will provide you with the list of invalid parameters being used by the template. for example, the version that you reverted to uses |Marine Mammal=, |Capital=, |Wildflower=, and |Marine Fish=. none of these are valid parameters. next time use "show preview" before saving. Frietjes (talk) 19:15, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

@John from Idegon and Frietjes: First my apologies to Frietjes for the poor characterization of your edit. And, thank you to both for helping me learn to edit better. I am chagrined to be called out for not looking at the preview first. This being one of my pet peeves. Shortsword (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Sagal noticed the work you did on his page and mentioned it on twitter. I thought you might like to know. Thanks for making Wikipedia better! kmccoy (talk) 21:26, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kmccoy: Thank you for passing this on to me. Its kinda nice knowing that a mere mortal can reach out and surprise the famous among us.

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Hello, Shortsword. It has been over six months since you last edited the

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. N4izL3etsP44k (talk) 18:32, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello - my name is Susan Gerbic (Sgerbic) and I'm writing to you because at some point you joined Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism. This might have been months ago - or even years ago. With the best of intentions the project was created years ago, and sadly like many WikiProjects has started to go dormant. A group of us are attempting to revitalize the Skepticism project, already we have begun to clean up the main page and I've just redone the participant page. No one is in charge of this project, it is member directed, which might have been the reason it almost went dormant. We are attempting to bring back conversations on the talk page and have two subprojects as well, in the hopes that it might spark involvement and a way of getting to know each other better. One was created several years ago but is very well organized and a lot of progress was made, Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Skeptical organisations in Europe. The other I created a couple weeks ago, it is very simple and has a silly name Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Skepticism Stub Sub-Project Project (SSSPP). This sub-project runs from March 1 to June 1, 2022. We are attempting to rewrite skepticism stubs and add them to this list. As you can see we have already made progress.

The reason I'm writing to you now is because we would love to have you come back to the project and become involved, either by working on one of the sub-projects, proposing your own (and managing it), or just hanging out on the talk page getting to know the other editors and maybe donate some of your wisdom to some of the conversations. As I said, no one is in charge, so if you have something in mind you would like to see done, please suggest it on the talk page and hopefully others will agree. Please add the project to your watchlist, update your personal user page showing you are a proud member of WikiProject Skepticism. And DIVE in, this is what the work list looks like [1] frightening at first glance, but we have already started chipping away at it.

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Participants page has gone though a giant change - you may want to update your information. And of course if this project no longer interests you, please remove your name from the participant list, we would hate to see you go, but completely understand.

Thank you for your time, I hope to edit with you in the future.Sgerbic (talk) 07:31, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, the tool you are using is wrong. Removing a deprecated parameter is not test/vandalism. I was just removing a deprecated parameter that was causing a red warning on the edit page when you pressed "show preview" button. — YoungForever^(talk) 06:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Shortsword, I noticed on

?? --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 04:42, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, my name is Monika Jane Browatzki and Eric M Esquivel tasered me and sexually harassed me as a minor while he was my manager at Hot Topic. Please instruct me as to how to stop getting you to delete my addition of information. 50.24.89.84 (talk) 18:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Monika,

First, I am sorry for your experience. I know it is a painful memory.

To answer your question however, under Wikipedia's rules, you are not the correct person to make the edit you want to Esquivel's article. The reason for that is that you have a

WP: NPOV

(Neutral Point of View). And, Wikipedia considers that there is no way that you can have a Neutral Point of View.

A case can also be made, that you can not ask someone else to make the edit for you. That violates

WP: CANVASS

.

I do not tell you this to be harsh. Merely to answer your question.

Now, I have a couple of questions for you. 1) Was the incident(s) perpetrated on you by Esquivel investigated by law enforcement? And, 2) Was there coverage in the media of the incident(s)? Note, such coverage in the media does not need to state that Esquivel, in fact, molested you. It would only have to say that he was investigated for doing so. But, it has to be covered in a

WP: RS

(Reliable Source).

If you know of such coverage in a reliable source (multiple sources would be even better) and can point me to them, then I will gladly make the edit for you. I will do this even though it comes very close to being a party to breaking the

WP: CANVASS

rule.

Shortsword (talk) 18:50, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not add or change content, as you did at Meena (actress), without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. General Ization ^Talk 03:34, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Although I prefer BCE, that article has been stable as a BC article for a very long time. I've reverted you and of course the IP. Doug Weller talk 08:17, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How do you figure this is vandalism? – Muboshgu (talk) 21:35, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Muboshgu: Well I did not actually think it was vandalism, just an unnecessary conjunction. The vandalism description was inserted by the Double Check tool that pointed the edit out to me for review.

Had I noticed the context of a direct quote, I would not of reverted the edit. Guess I got in a hurry and did not look long enough at the context.

My apologies.

Shortsword (talk) 02:59, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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