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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force opened

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You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force/Evidence. Please add your evidence by October 17, 2014, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 14:36, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 01 October 2014

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Wikidata weekly summary #127

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Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • Wikidata Toolkit 0.3.0 released - Wikidata Toolkit
    • ProteinBoxBot is making Wikidata the canonical resource for referencing and translating identifiers for genes and proteins from different species
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Investigated and fixed issues with time values
    • Investigated issues with coordinate value precision
    • Fixed a number of issues related to HHVM
    • Further work on usage tracking
    • Created smoke tests for items and properties
    • Created a widget to edit badges directly on the item without going through the special page
    • Prepared for a week of work with the WMF multimedia team and volunteers next week to get more planning done for structured data support for Commons
  • Monthly Tasks

The wonderful annual meeting! And more!

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Hello, fellow Wikipedian!

I am excited to announce our upcoming Annual Meeting at the National Archives! We'll have free lunch, an introduction by Archivist of the United States David Ferriero, and a discussion featuring Ed Summers, the creator of CongressEdits. Join your fellow DC-area Wikipedians on Saturday, October 18 from 12 to 4:30 PM. RSVP today!

Also coming up we have the Human Origins edit-a-thon on October 17 and the WikiSalon on October 22. Hope to see you at our upcoming events!

Best,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 21:20, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

RfD

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I see you are sticking your oar in at RfD but don't tend to follow up anything you write beyond your sagacious first opinion. oIt was very kind of you to let us retarget a redirect for you, if you pleased. I ain't going to bother: you look it up "If you find a better target, go ahead". I forgot you owned WIkipedia, the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.

I've run into you over the years and I know your style, which is always patronising and high-and-mighty. One day someone will stick up to you. Well, it's today. It's me. Your bots do more harm than good. Is that plain speaking? Si Trew (talk) 21:49, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Since Rich does not run any bots and has not for quite some time now, it would seem your opinion about his bots is rather...dated. As to your personal attacks upon him, I'm sure you've read Wikipedia:No personal attacks since you were blocked for violating that policy just a few months ago. I'm sure this was a slip up on your part and won't be repeated. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:32, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Aristarchus

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https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aristarchian_symbols&oldid=614833497

Making only the name "Aristarchus" visible in a link rather than Aristarchus of Samothrace was not a good idea. The fact that there were others named Aristarchus than Aristarchus of Samos isn't really at the tip of my tongue, and I doubt I'm anywhere near the only one. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:11, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I think first of the crater! Thank you for clarifying the text. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:38, 10 October 2014 (UTC).

The Signpost: 08 October 2014

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ApiErrorException

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Rich, it was good to see you in person at Wikimania 2014, however briefly.

The ApiErrorException Bug is preventing me from running AWB in a useful way. Any suggestions?--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:28, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you saw the response [/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#ApiErrorException here]. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 11 October 2014 (UTC).

Wikidata weekly summary #128

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Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

Proposed deletion of The 10 Legendary Singles

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The article The 10 Legendary Singles has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No assertion of notability as a one-off compilation.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:11, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the ad hom

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I made a couple of ad hominem attacks on you over at WP:RFD. I didn't actually mean them personally but only to kinda stir up a bit of a debate. I hope one day we will meet up and have a pint or two together. I do appreciate your hard work, and I think it is the kind of thing that face to face because of one's tongue in one's cheek it would be obvious I didn't mean it too seriously, but these things written down can sound far harsher. For that I sincerely apologise, I did not mean it as a personal attack but I probably put it very badly. Please accept my sincere apology. I am not here to hurt people but to try to make the encyclopaedia better.

Si Trew (talk) 05:34, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:58, 7 October 2014 (UTC).
Thanks. Si Trew (talk) 21:32, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of The 10 Legendary Singles for deletion

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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The 10 Legendary Singles 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/The 10 Legendary Singles 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. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:54, 14 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 15 October 2014

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Can you tell me how to fix refs for Matt Harvey (poet)

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There seem to be extra elements in the two publications when one gets down to the reference section for both the book I added and the one I fixed because it was attracting a note as incomplete Cheers, --Beth Wellington (talk) 17:38, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I changed two references to "Cite web", this has the effect that the title becomes the link to the URL. Similarly putting the URL in [] with a space then the title, which the other references do, works in the same way. I hope this is what you meant. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:58, 23 October 2014 (UTC).

Speedy deletion nomination of ISBN 0596000278

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A tag has been placed on ISBN 0596000278, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

This is the only article with a RD like this. This isn't how it should be referenced. Creates weird search results when searching for ISBN.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. ~Technophant (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is clearly not an R3 speedy. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:09, 20 October 2014 (UTC).

Wikidata weekly summary #129

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Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

LGlossary of baseball (O) listed at Redirects for discussion

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An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect LGlossary of baseball (O). Since you had some involvement with the LGlossary of baseball (O) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Fram (talk) 10:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GGTF arbcom

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Hi Rich, just a heads-up. Your evidence appears to be missing at least one word, right at the end - I'm guessing "implemented"? Was this the proposal that you were referring to? What ever it was, it might be worth linking for clarity's sake. - Sitush (talk) 20:46, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I got sidetracked with a missing diff. As usual it's not really good evidence but (I hope) closely argued reasoning - I find trawling for diffs so soul destroying. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC).

Anglicized

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Hello, Rich. For my own edification, can you inform me of the nature of the letter "z" in "Angliciɀed"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:42, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is a Z with swash tail, which closely represents how I like to write the letter. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:34, 19 October 2014 (UTC).
Ah, thanks. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:40, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Your thoughtful response in the gender gap task force arbitration case was brilliant, wise, and insightful. You expressed every concern I had in the most eloquent way possible. Amazingly done. v/r - TP 01:23, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I hope it has a positive effect. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:27, 24 October 2014 (UTC).

The Signpost: 22 October 2014

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Category:Radioactive Man albums

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Category:Radioactive Man albums, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:10, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata weekly summary #114

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Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Other Noteworthy Stuff
    • The Wikidata Game now has a 'Commons Categories' game
  • Did you know?
  • Development
    • Made significant performance improvements (to be rolled out next week)
    • Worked on usability improvements to the editing of sitelinks
    • When you link to an image on Wikimedia Commons in a statement it will now show up in “global usage” there.
    • Made the phpunit tests for Wikibase much faster
    • Wikibase phpunit tests on travis pass with hhvm now
    • Fixed label/description uniqueness constraint checks
    • Work on entity usage tracking
    • Year formatter now shows the year instead of the unformatted ISO string in case of a precision mismatch
    • Diff and old revision pages don’t run the JavaScript UI any more, should be much faster now
    • Introduced a Changers concept to the JavaScript frontend, wrapping the API and entityStore functionality
    • Identified issue causing content in the old serialization format to be included in XML dumps
  • Monthly Tasks

Category:Michael Ford (composer) albums

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Category:Michael Ford (composer) albums, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:27, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration clarification request(Pseudoscience)

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An arbitration clarification request(Pseudoscience), either involving you, or in which you participated has been archived. The request resulted in a motion.

The original discussion can be found here For the arbitration Committee --S Philbrick(Talk) 14:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

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noticing what is "soul destroying"
Thank you, Rich, third user to hit over a million edits, for the quality of those edits, helpful bots, articles such as Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, "assisting smaller language wikis with technical issues", for copyedit with added precision, for noticing what is "soul destroying", for support and trust - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (10 December 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! It's always good to be appreciated! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC).

It's easy to appreciate you who understands ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

merge proposal

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Hello, thanks for editing Heinrich von Louffenburg. Someone deleted the edits and redirected it to Heinrich von Laufenberg. I undid that and placed a merger tag. I'm new at this, will you look that over and see that I did that correctly? Dr. Mike (talk) 19:51, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dr. Mike: - It's good. The name of the article doesn't really matter I suggest. The only reason to redirect rather than merge would be if all the information in the redirect was in the target. I will add a merge tag to the article you created too, then everything is fine. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 29 October 2014 (UTC).
PS for practical purposes, though I have started a discussion over the preferred name, you could just go ahead and do the merge if you feel confident. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:12, 29 October 2014 (UTC).

Hey - slight problem with the French Commune template.

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Hey,

I was working on the Paris article for the first time since a while, and I noticed that its infobox has the city (commune, department) population way down at the bottom, and hardly recognisable as a population at all. I understand the logic going on here (if a commune's urban unit population is smaller than its total population), but in Paris' case the opposite is true, and the result is odd and even misleading to anyone not knowing any better. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. Here's the diff where you made the changes [1] (but it looks like you were just activating whatever you were working on). Thanks, and cheers. THEPROMENADER ✎ ✓ 23:58, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness this was a long time ago. The main thrust of the changes I made to the commune infobox was to translate it from French, and make it compatible with {{Infobox populated place}} (possibly then named {{Infobox settlement}}), with a view to using one as a wrapper for the other.
The change you link to, however, merely changes the include style, so that the documentation for the template is visible on the first screen.
The reason the population (and other text) is so low down the page is because the infobox contains so many images. The population figures are explained in the lead, so I'm not sure that it is much of an issue, nor what the solution would be if it is.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC).
It's odd that the {{Infobox settlement}} doesn't have this problem, only the "communes" 'son of' template does. But I've addressed the question to that template page (as I should have - sorry for bothering you with this). Cheers! THEPROMENADER ✎ ✓ 09:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See my suggestions here: Template_talk:Infobox_French_commune#Population_stat_order.3F. Der Statistiker (talk) 11:42, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry (you're not ; ), I managed to nail down the source of the problem. You just happened to eliminate the cruft above the template page (old version example), but I didn't catch that at first, so sorry for that. (looking down) 0.o - a million edits? Congratulations! Anyhow, wow ; ) THEPROMENADER ✎ ✓ 23:29, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good stuff. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:09, 2 November 2014 (UTC).

You've got mail!

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Hello, Rich Farmbrough/Archive. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 03:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Nikkimaria (talk) 03:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 October 2014

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Jabir edits

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I'm not entirely sure this is the right place, but anyway... I'm not against editing the Jabir section on mineral acids and alcohols; as it stands it is all rather unsatisfactory, but merely removing the Hassan comment and leaving the rather old one about distillation of alcohol isn't that great a solution. I've got the Hassan book, and he produces a number of examples of Arabic writings related to distillation. What of course is the problem is that this does not mean that the Jabirian corpus does actually contain definite proof of the distillation of alcohol. So basically can you give a reason for removing the reference to Hassan whilst leaving the rest there? Calcinations (talk) 22:42, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm not against removing the whole section. I don't think it served any real purpose, even the sentence I removed was not relevant to Jabir, but to al-Razi. The only reason I didn't remove the whole thing was a lack of BOLDNESS. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:50, 29 October 2014 (UTC).

Ah hah, I found the bit you wrote earlier, not that I really agree. The Jabir etc articles are a running sore on wikipedia, I've deleted some nonsense from Rhazi before but think I might now have enough academic articles to be able to re-write some of it. Unfortunately nobody has translated the entire Jabirian corpus into English, and Arabic alchemical sources are still greatly lacking in proper study. Achad Al-Hassan died last year I think, and his book is a bit too polemical to be entirely taken seriously, although there are many sections that make sense because they are based on specific translations from the Arabic that simply haven't been made before. Forbes is a good introduction to distillation, but also over 40 years old and based on the previous generation of research into alchemy etc, thus not up to speed, but people use it a lot simply because it's famous and avilable, never mind whether it is accurate or not. Calcinations (talk) 23:00, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ahmad Y Al-Hassan seems indeed to be on a mission. My view is that interpreting ancient texts, even in one's native language, is fraught with peril at the best of times. For example I was reading recently about the lines from The Wanderer

þinceð him on mode // þæt he his mondryhten
clyppe ond cysse, // ond on cneo lecge
honda ond heafod, // swa he hwilum ær
in geardagum // giefstolas breac(41-44)

The meaning of "swa" in line 43b is a matter of great controversy (or at least was between 1969-75) between people who read Anglo-Saxon for a living. Similarly with the Arabic word "taqtir". On this basis, and the facts which demonstrate al-Hassan is careless - 1. the Holmyard matter 2. the errors in his book that Ferrario points out 3. the use of "you're" for "your" - and the very great risk of confirmation bias in this type of work, if it is not undertaken meticulously and impartially, I do not consider his book a reliable source. And to add to this, Jebir (as opposed to pseudo-gerber, who al-Hassan denies) writes in code much of the time, and I have even greater doubts.

But to the point. The article is about Jabir. None of the four sentences in that section were - they were either generic or twelfth century related. I see little point in having a section on what Jabir did not discover. If at some later time there is consensus among science historians that Jabir "discovered alcohol" (which is not what even al-Hassan is saying) we can add it.

Al-Hassan cites Jarbir saying

.. fire which burns at the mouth of bottles of boiled of wine and salt, and similar things with nice characteristics...

in Chapter 9. This is not "discovered alcohol" and indeed it would seem that the flash point of strong wine is fairly low. But note that adding salt might well count as "taqtir".

(Much of the text, incidentally, is reused from or in "1001 Inventions: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization".)

Chapter 9 talks a lot about distillation, but by no means makes it clear, even if we take it at face value that araq or araqi is distilled wine (which I might, if I didn't have the reservations above) that relatively pure alcohol was produced.

Anyway I have gone on too long, as I always do, since I find these things quite fascinating.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:32, 30 October 2014 (UTC).
Many good points there. I suppose I'll add tidying up the Jabir and Geber pages to my list of things to do, I've got most of Newman's papers on the topic and Principe's "The secrets of alchemy" will do as a more up to date summary of a lot of issues. Calcinations (talk) 21:23, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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