Archive 55Archive 59Archive 60Archive 61Archive 62Archive 63Archive 65

Apologies

Hi, HJ; I've just noticed that I unthinkingly PROD-ed a Doctor Who article last night in violation of the terms of my unblock. I can assure you that this was an oversight and I will do my damnedest not to repeat it! Meanwhile, the PROD was removed and the article is now at AfD. Best, ╟─TreasuryTagsheriff─╢ 08:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

We have an article for the Christmas special? In September? Bloody hell! Still, don't make a habit of mistaken PRODs or they'll get you into trouble. I don't know how much you use PROD elsewhere, but you can disable it in Twinkle if you you want. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom: doesn't add up

Harry, your statement says you want 18 arbs, and that you want to establish a 60% S/(S+O) threshold. How will the election fill all of the vacant seats? It wouldn't have last year: we'd have been three short of the 18 the community decided should be the number. Are you thinking of holding supplementary elections? Perhaps royal intervention: Jimbo chooses his own arbs bring the numbers up? I just don't get it. And you seem to be proceeding in the belief that a tactical oppose vote, clicked in SecurePoll, means "I don't think that candidate is suitable". I will be voting Oppose for every candidate I don't vote Support, simply as a tactic to maximise the power of my supports. This is what SecurePoll makes so easy, and the stats bear this out, strikingly. Tony (talk) 09:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I said I want a committee of 18; I said that reducing the number of arbs would be a sticking plaster on a bullet wound until they realise that having 18 editors read all the evidence and all the principles/remedies/etc in every case is unnecessary replication of effort. I'm also strongly opposed to the SecurePoll method, but the solution is not to appoint arbs who got more opposition than support. I would start a motion of no confidence in any arbitrator who couldn't get 50% support, because it is much more important that ArbCom have the community's support (at least at the beginning of the year) than having an arbitrary number of seats filled. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:19, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
You're assuming we actually read the evidence/workshop? I just use the tried and true coin flip method! –xenotalk 15:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC) On a serious note, there are generally at least a few arbitrators who will flag themselves inactive on a case simply because they feel their efforts would be better directed elsewhere.
Well, you have first hand experience as an arb, so I'll pick your brain while you're here: would two committees of nine (or half the number of arbitrators) hearing two different cases simultaneously be a disaster? And what do you think is the minimum/maximum number of arbs the committee could function with? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:44, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it would be a disaster, but I think it would be a mistake to specifically say "this is committee A" and "this is committee B" and not be able to have any kind of lateral movement between them. Personally, I think that any less than 8 arbs active on a case could be problematic. So around 15 total arbs would be needed to ensure this minimum on cases (as arbitrator activity level do tend to fluctuate somewhat regularly), as well as ensuring appropriate coverage of the other responsibilities on the committee's plate. –xenotalk 15:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Oppose votes in an RfA are not tactical, but the opposers may be heavily grilled. Oppose votes in an Arbcom election are often tactical and they can be made without penalty, so long as we use a secret ballot. I don't see how any particular threshold for election can be meaningful in the presence of tactical opposes. Agree with Tony's comment above. EdJohnston (talk) 17:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Now, would splitting arbcom into two be a community-directed proposition or could arbcom do this themselves? Because to be honest, it's something I've been thinking ArbCom should do ever since I started following the comittee's work. N419BH 17:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Ed, that argument essentially treats all opposes as tactical and doesn't recognise that some opposers will feel that a particular candidate just shouldn't be on ArbCom. But even putting that aside, you're talking about appointing arbitrators who attracted more oppose votes than support votes. That's hardly a recipe for community confidence in ArbCom. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:44, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Legislative elections in most countries don't allow for 'Oppose' votes. Whoever gets a majority usually takes office. What would you propose in that case? I'm sure there must be elections where both candidates belong in jail, but in a democracy, somebody will be declared the winner and will get the seat. Do you have any idea for filtering the tactical opposes from the 'unfit' opposes? EdJohnston (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Either approval voting or open voting. Or both. Secret balloting is practically an invitation to make crappy votes or tactical opposes. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:01, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Wow, someone else who knows about approval voting! I agree that's the best means of voting. But in the many consensus process based in-person groups I've belonged to, there was such a thing as blocking(aka opposing), and none of it was secret. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Ohio legislators

It looks like editors are blocked from re-creating the Ohio legislator articles you deleted. These are notable people. Can you remove the protection on them?

Designate (talk) 19:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Notability isn't the issue; the issue is that these articles have been repeatedly re-created by a banned user. If you want to create draft articles for them in your userspcae, I'll gladly move them over, but if I unprotect the red links, they'll just become targets for ban evasion again. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

International Space Station

Wow, up early or up late. I noticed your edit, thank you, and as you seem to know that policy could you please give me some suggestions on how I am allowed to improve readability of that section, so people can pick out the titles, I'm guessing just pop the title first in the paragraph ? anything else I can do ? I'll do it, and to the pressurized modules section, I expect the modules there will need a similar treatment. Any tips you can give would be WOW. Ta! Penyulap talk 04:08, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Late; far too late! The titles of works are generally italicised, but bold is reserved for the title—in this case, "The International Space Station is..." You should also consider the amount of weight an encyclopaedia article should be given to one work which mention the ISS in comparison to all the others and to the description and history of the station itself (so perhaps make your addition more concise). Other than that, just make sure it's sourced, and you shouldn't have any problems. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:06, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Heather handpicked

Thought you might like to know that I refrained from blocking User:Heather handpicked because, as the softerblock template states, the account clearly represents a single individual named "Heather", so that template isn't really applicable. The fact that the username discloses a COI isn't really a violation of the username policy, since it does represent an individual person. We have some precedent for leaving such accounts unblocked. I remember one example in which the community, after discussion, decided to leave a similar account unblocked (the user was open, up front, and constructive, and made a good case for including the name of his pharmaceutical company in his username, which was clearly personally his). I can't remember offhand the name, though. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the discussion (or anything beyond CAT:UAA, I was just cleaning it out), but I think different admins take different views on usernames like that. They come up at UAA at least every few days, and quite a few of the regular admins there will block them, while others won't. I didn't know this had been declined elsewhere (if I had, I would have left them alone), but my own opinion is that the name represents a company and so a block is in order—it's not "Heather who happens to work for some company", but "Heather who has come to Wikipedia to write about the company whose name is part of her username". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:59, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

User:ScrantonBuzz

Hey HJ. Not looking for a block of this user, but just want to explain what I did. There is a company in Scranton, Pennsylvania called "The Buzz" [1]. Given that, I placed the uw-coi-username on their talk page. Subsequent to that, they made a (perfectly legitimate) edit [2] regarding a college in Scranton. There may or may not be an association between this person and the business, but the warning was appropriate given the precepts and given the subsequent edit. Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 12:50, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering, because your warnings are normally so accurate. Still, their one edit so far looks legit and the username is ambiguous enough that it could have no connection to the company, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Thanks for explaining (it makes much more sense now!). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:44, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the compliment :) Yeah, about 90% of my uw-coi-username warnings are to blatant ones that I find clear, distinct evidence of on the net. This one falls into a group that I sometimes warn when there appears to be a company being represented, but it's not as clear cut as something like User:JohnDoeEnterprises that has a website johndoeenterprises.com. I find myself waffling at times about whether to warn such users as in this case. In this case, I decided to warn because I could imagine "The Scranton Buzz" being another name for a local newspaper of some sort. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
  • By the way, for what it's worth: When I do find what appears to be a solid match, I often follow the template with something like "(johndoeenterprises.com) --(sig). Example: User talk:Nandupress. This doesn't cover all of the 90%; sometimes there's multiple potential hits, but it's pretty clear they're representing a company. For example: User:Onlinereputationmanagement1. Google search returns a broad swatch of potential hits. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Unblock on hold: LondonPass

Hello HJ Mitchell. LondonPass (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), whom you have blocked, is requesting to be unblocked. The request for unblock is on hold while waiting for a comment from you.

Just dropping this off for your information. Cheers, m.o.p 20:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't have time to look at this right now, and it might be while before I can get back online for any significant length of time, so I'll have to leave it to the admins who have commented there. If an unblock is being contemplated, I would suggest making sure they fully understand NPOV and COI before that happens. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:19, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

News and progress from RfA reform 2011

RfA reform: ...and what you can do now.

(You are receiving this message because you are either a task force member, or you have contributed to recent discussions on any of these pages.)

The number of nominations continues to nosedive seriously, according to these monthly figures. We know why this is, and if the trend continues our reserve of active admins will soon be underwater. Wikipedia now needs suitable editors to come forward. This can only be achieved either through changes to the current system, a radical alternative, or by fiat from elsewhere.

A lot of work is constantly being done behind the scenes by the coordinators and task force members, such as monitoring the talk pages, discussing new ideas, organising the project pages, researching statistics and keeping them up to date. You'll also see for example that we have recently made tables to compare how other Wikipedias choose their sysops, and some tools have been developed to more closely examine !voters' habits.

The purpose of WP:RFA2011 is to focus attention on specific issues of our admin selection process and to develop RfC proposals for solutions to improve them. For this, we have organised the project into dedicated sections each with their own discussion pages. It is important to understand that all Wikipedia policy changes take a long time to implement whether or not the discussions appear to be active - getting the proposals right before offering them for discussion by the broader community is crucial to the success of any RfC. Consider keeping the pages and their talk pages on your watchlist; do check out older threads before starting a new one on topics that have been discussed already, and if you start a new thread, please revisit it regularly to follow up on new comments.

The object of WP:RFA2011 is not to make it either easier or harder to become an admin - those criteria are set by those who !vote at each RfA. By providing a unique venue for developing ideas for change independent of the general discussion at WT:RFA, the project has two clearly defined goals:

  1. Improving the environment that surrounds RfA in order to encourage mature, experienced editors of the right calibre to come forward, pass the interview, and dedicate some of their time to admin tasks.
  2. Discouraging, in the nicest way possible of course, those whose RfA will be obvious NOTNOW or SNOW, and to guide them towards the advice pages.

The fastest way is through improvement to the current system. Workspace is however also available within the project pages to suggest and discuss ideas that are not strictly within the remit of this project. Users are invited to make use of these pages where they will offer maximum exposure to the broader community, rather than individual projects in user space.

We already know what's wrong with RfA - let's not clutter the project with perennial chat. RFA2011 is now ready to propose some of the elements of reform, and all the task force needs to do now is to pre-draft those proposals in the project's workspace, agree on the wording, and then offer them for central discussion where the entire Wikipedia community will be more than welcome to express their opinions in order to build consensus.

New tool Check your RfA !voting history! Since the editors' RfA !vote counter at X!-Tools has been down for a long while, we now have a new RfA Vote Counter to replace it. A significant improvement on the former tool, it provides a a complete breakdown of an editor's RfA votes, together with an analysis of the participant's voting pattern.

Are you ready to help? Although the main engine of RFA2011 is its task force, constructive comments from any editors are always welcome on the project's various talk pages. The main reasons why WT:RfA was never successful in getting anything done are that threads on different aspects of RfA are all mixed together, and are then archived where nobody remembers them and where they are hard to find - the same is true of ad hoc threads on the founder's talk page.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 15:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC).

I've offered to mentor TreasuryTag

I think it'd be best if I sought your approval as well as his. The three of us ought to work together if this is to have a chance of working. If you'd prefer me to butt out, I won't be offended and will assume all sorts of lovely reasons are behind the "no thanks".Yes, I agree, I am far too good an editor to spend time on it etc --Dweller (talk) 14:38, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

If he'll work with you, and you have the time to spatre, then by all means, yes please! I'm unlikely to be on much for the next two weeks or so (until I get my own Internet connection, so any assistance would be appreciated. Might be an idea (TT, if you're watching, think about it!) to persuade him to leave Doctor Who articles alone for a little while of his own volition, since that seems to be where most of the trouble originates. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
OK. Assuming TT says yes, please drop me a line when you return and we'll catch up. --Dweller (talk) 15:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations!

I am pleased to inform you that you have been elected as a coordinator of the Military history WikiProject. Congratulations on your achievement, and thank you for volunteering!

Discussions of our plans for the coming year will no doubt begin in the next few days. In the meantime, please make sure that you have the coordinators' discussion page on your watchlist, as most of the relevant activity happens there. If you have not already done so, you may want to read the relevant courses in the project academy, as well as the discussion page and its recent archives.

If you have any questions about your work as a coordinator, or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask me directly. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

  Thank you Muchas gracias, merci, vielen Dank and many thanks for your trust and voting me into the team of coordinators. MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:50, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill, and congrats MisterBee—I'll look forward tow orking with you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:32, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Tks for standing mate, and congrats on a fine result! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

MilHist IRC

Hi HJ Mitchell, I'm not sure you're aware of it, but MilHist's got an IRC channel at [3]. I'm getting some people to join it, and because you're a coord, I'd like to ask you to join to make yourself available to others who need help. Dank, The Ed17, Adamdaley, Ian Rose and a few guys are on it, so please join and tell others about it as well. Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 01:02, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


re: your message

Hi HJ, I've left a reply to your message on my talk page -- Marek.69 talk 15:22, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations!

 
Coordinator of the Military history Project, September 2010-September 2011

Congrats on your election as Coordinator of the Military history Project! In honor of your achievement, I present you with these stars. Parsecboy (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Milhist FA, A-Class and Peer Reviews Jul-Sep 2011

  The WikiChevrons
By order of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, for your devoted contributions to the WikiProject's Peer, A-Class and Featured article reviews for the period Jul-Sept 2011, I am delighted to award you the WikiChevrons. Cheers, Buggie111 (talk) 21:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Scarlett Johansson

I noticed that you protected this article just over two weeks ago. I am not here to complain about that, as it was quite obviously a necessary course of action. What I find amazing, though, is that there is no recent discussion on the talk page, not about page protection, the violation of BLP, any discussion whatsoever about what content is relevant regarding the recent contretemps, nothing whatsoever, in fact, since November of last year. I regard this as pathetic, and just thought I'd say so. It is possible protection would have been inevitable, but talk page discussion always some chance of avoiding this if involved editors will discuss the matter. But, this is a well-traveled article, and the idea that nearly a year can go by with no talk page discussion is disheartening. All the best to you. ---RepublicanJacobiteTheFortyFive 17:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not normally standard practice for admins to discuss protection on the talk page, especially not in cases of unambiguous BLP violations; in fact, I think I would have been derelict in my duty had I not protected that article. As to the dormant state of the talk page, I agree it's perhaps a little disheartening for such a high-profile article, but I don't really have any involvement with it—I only watch it because it was a vandal magnet when I added it to my watchlist; the overwhelming majority of my edits to it are reverts of vandalism or semi-protections. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:49, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

English!

Hi, can you advise? Is there a template for use when reverting text in a language other than English or when the English is totally unintelligible? Thanks Denisarona (talk) 15:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle malfunctioning?

Is Twinkle working for you? It just disappeared somehow from my options. What happened? • GunMetal Angel 06:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) See the last thread on WT:Twinkle; apparently its some sort of a problem for people with older browsers that happened after the site maintenance earlier today. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Older browsers? Damn, I should start using Firefox again • GunMetal Angel 07:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Treasury Tag

Sorry - I failed. --Dweller (talk) 10:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

FYI. (FWIW, I don't fault you for this.) –xenotalk 21:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Dissapointing, as you say, but not really surprising. His conduct has barely changed since he was unblocked. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:35, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Hicklin test review request

Would you like to review Hicklin test? After looking at your profile and edit history, I thought it'd be great if you could check or improve readability of that article. Thanks! --Fayerman (talk) 03:14, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a look, but I can't promise it'll be soon. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, Sir. --Fayerman (talk) 13:12, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Schoolblock notice

You just beat me to the draw to block 194.80.20.223 just now. When I put a sharedipedu on the talk page, I notice that you hadn't added a "schoolblock" notice. I added one, and the only reason I'm mentioning it is that maybe you were using a script, and a lot of scripts seem not to be working right after yesterday's Mediawiki upgrade (see WP:VPT#1.18 issues); you might like to know if your script is not behaving as you expect. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 11:35, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't using a script, it just slipped my mind (lack of sleep, trying to get too many things done at once...), but thanks for the note. When I can get back to my laptop and I'm not stuck using the library's outdated version of IE, I'll have to make sure my scripts are all in order. Only on Wikipedia does an "upgrade" break everything! ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Oh, no - wait till you "upgrade" to Windows 7. Old joke: man goes into bank and says: "Your ATM machine outside has swallowed my card and not given me the money!" Cashier: "I find that very hard to believe sir, we put new software in that machine only this morning." JohnCD (talk) 12:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Finished my trial run with Pending Changes

Since the postmortem analysis of Pending Changes is finished, I would like for my reviewer rights to be removed. I doubt that Pending Changes will be ever accepted by the community here, and I've finished testing it. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 21:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 22:03, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
No problem. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II ... again

Hi HJ. Thanks for your help in working on McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II. As you know, its Milhist A-class review ran out of time, but, undaunted, Sp33dyphil has nominated it at FAC. (He's recently managed to get a second aircraft article to FA, and is therefore full of optimism!) I know you're a bit snowed under at the moment, but would you have time to continue your work on it at some point? It'd be greatly appreciated. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yay!!

OMG!   I haven't been able to edit this page for ages!   Shock and Surprise!

Oh yeah. Hi HJ!   - 220.101 talk\Contribs 08:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Well keep it to yourself! ;) I'd rather be able to leave it open. And hi, how are you? Have you still got the same IP? I've never seen an IP that didn't belong to a school or a big business stay assigned to one person for so long. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:22, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Shh. I won't tell anyone!  
I'm doing alright on the whole. What about you? OMG no internet connection? How bad can that be? What about your prior 'underemployment'?
re. IP, I have been editing from work a little (got meself a laptop!   ) and my IP does change, a little. I think if I edit from home using the Lappy it uses still another IP too, so it seems to be 'locked' to the actual PC I am using. Or actually a combination of the PC, modem and Unwired access point I am using, as a different modem I have won't allow me to access the Net, without setting up another account.[citation needed] (have to check that) - 220.101 talk\Contribs 18:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

User:TreasuryTag

I wish to point out that he reverted your removal of the archiving thing.

Just wanted to point that out. LikeLakers2 (talk | Sign my guestbook!) 17:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) there is nothing in the rules that states explicitly that archiving of unblock notices is forbidden. I would leave it be. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
That may be true, but HJ Mitchell himself had done the second of the two edits. (this one) I figured I might as well let him know. LikeLakers2 (talk | Sign my guestbook!) 17:57, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Correct me if I am wrong, but WP:BLANKING says that "relevant information about a currently active block or ban" may not be removed. LikeLakers2 (talk | Sign my guestbook!) 18:01, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Nevermind, apparently he made an edit to prevent archiving. LikeLakers2 (talk | Sign my guestbook!) 18:07, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Archiving isn't the same as blanking. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Spelling tip.

You may want to watch your spelling, from is spelled form at the top of your page. :)

Oops; tanks. I've fixed it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:12, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
My mistake, HJ. :) Swarm 01:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Fall Out Boy

Hey, HJ. Was curious if you could offer some help with these two talk page entries, they've been going on for quite awhile, and we just can't come to a consensus. The entries in question are here: Talk:Fall_Out_Boy#fansite_tag, and here: Talk:Fall_Out_Boy#Brandon_Hamm

Thanks, Jer Hit me up 00:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
I left a comment on one of the threads, and I'll keep an eye on it, but I don't have time to get intimately involved at the minute. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:17, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
That's fine. Any input on the situation helps! Jer Hit me up 01:28, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Please review these blocks

There was a bug in MediaWiki 1.18 that caused blocks made via the API to have talk page access disabled when it should have been enabled. This also affected scripts such as User:Animum/easyblock.js. Please review the following blocks to make sure that you really intended talk page access to be disabled, and reblock if necessary.

  1. WhiteShirtLongJacket (talk · block log · block user) by HJ Mitchell at 2011-10-10T21:40:48Z, expires infinity: [[WP:BAN|ban]] evasion: [[User:OSUHEY]]

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to post at User talk:Anomie#Allowusertalk issue. Thanks! Anomie 02:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, talk page access was meant to be disabled there. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:40, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Style reverts

Dear Mitchell, you reverted an edit on Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein regarding styles with the following reason: "consensus has repeatedly been against these, as well, mainly because they're mostly guesswork and lack encyclopaedic value" (Latest revision as of 13:03, 14 October 2011). Could you please show me this consensus is and where this was decided after general agreement? Thanks! Mr. D. E. Mophon (talk) 14:41, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

This thread is relevant (though more to my first edit today). I can probably find other discussions, but it'll take me a while to find them. The main arguments are essentially that a lot of the titles are guesswork, original research, or novel synthesis; that (for military officers) dates of promotion should be in the prose anyway; and that a section listing various titles is of little encyclopaedic value. Not to mention that MOS:BIO advises against the inclusion of common title like "mister" and academic titles. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:41, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

A beer for you

  Thankyou for participating in my request for adminship. Now I've got lots of extra buttons to try and avoid pressing by mistake... Redrose64 (talk) 15:59, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Suspected sock to confirmed?

Hi, I'd need a bit of advice, w.r.t. Antichristos (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log· investigate · cuwiki), whom you blocked in January 2011. He clearly is back at it. You find some evidence layed out in this edit that I just made in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics explaining the link between Antichristos and a handful of currently disruptive IP's all belonging to one person. Some are blocked, some aren't, but the article and its talk page are currently semi-protected.

I wonder what could (or should?) be done to turn these socks from status suspected to status confirmed. Is there some sort of automatism that is set in motion by having put the tag {{ipsock|Antichristos}} on their IPuser pages? This was done for the oldest IP in January, but it still appears to be in status suspected. Cheers and TIA. - DVdm (talk) 22:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I remember Antichristos. If I recall correctly, his IPs are too dynamic for blocking to have much of an affect, and there was too much risk of collateral damage. There's probably not much we can do beyond semi-protecting the affected pages. As to changing confirmed to suspected, it doesn't really matter. Those categories are only for tracking purposes, and whether a sock is categorised as "confirmed" or "suspected" doesn't make much difference. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:43, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Ok, that's good to know. Another thing I was wondering: when an ipsock tag is removed from an IPuser page, is there some kind of red light flashing somewhere, so to speak, or does the IP simply disappear from the category page? DVdm (talk) 09:51, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
It might be tracked by the edit filter, but most IPs change hands from time to time, so keeping track of IP socks is difficult at the best of times. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Sunday meetup...

HJ, ref the email, I won't be back in London until first thing Monday, so won't be around at the meetup on Sunday... Hchc2009 (talk) 07:13, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Luther Strange article

Hi there HJ. I recently discovered that the Attorney General of Alabama, Luther Strange did not have an article. Thinking that was a bit odd, I located his bio on the Attorney General's Office website and a couple of other reliable sources and went to start the article. I found that the article was deleted on 3 September this year, and its further creation blocked. Apparently a banned user had written the article. I found where another admin had userfied a previously deleted version, so I cleaned it up and moved it to AfC Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Luther Strange. Is there any way that you would be able to approve that version and move it to the main space? I imagine that it will take an admin to do so since article creation seems to be blocked. He meets the notability requirement for a politician since he was elected to a statewide office. Cheers. EricSerge (talk) 14:04, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Done. The background is at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/OSUHEY/Archive#03 September 2011 if you're curious—it was created by a sock of a banned user, which is why it was deleted and salted, but I've moved it to mainspace for you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:05, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks much, I saw the investigation. That sock seems a determined one too. Thanks again. Cheers. EricSerge (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

David Amram article

Something seems to be definitely amiss at the David Amram article, but I'm not sure exactly how to classify the issue or what needs to be done. Seven of the latest ten edits were made by DavidAmram (talk · contribs), including five consecutive ones summarized here, the end result of which bears a remarkable resemblance to the David Amram blog. Thoughts like "copyvio", "SPS",and "COI" come to mind, but they seem mutually exclusive to an extent (can you really violate your own copyright, if it's really you doing it?) Can you take a look and see what you think? Thx. Fat&Happy (talk) 23:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Unblock on hold

Please see User_talk:LondonPass. It says this user's request is waiting on a response from you. Since they have had plenty of communication, both on their talk page and at unblock-en-l, you might consider declining their request pending an answer to the question about COI. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 03:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Allegaeon (band) wiki page

It shows that you have deleted Allegaeon's wiki page for "Unambiguous advertising or promotion" I would like to request that the page, or at least the title be unlocked so that I can create a new page for them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian10962001 (talkcontribs)

(talk page stalker) Most users would try to create a draft of the article in their userspace that meets the requirements of WP:MUSIC ... then show an administrator that the article does, indeed, meet those requirements. Since those are pretty tough for bands, it's your best way forward (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I have created the draft under User:Brian10962001/Allegaeon If I could get some feedback on it that would be great. I believe it is fully in compliance with the requirements of WP:MUSIC as I understand them.

A barnstar for you!

  The Admin's Barnstar
For your sterling work as an admin, and a good GA reviewer to boot. Cloudbound (talk) 18:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! I'm glad to see you're around again. It always makes me smile when I see a username I haven't seen in a while pop up again. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Small problem

You seem to have put your Awards page instead of your main user page in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to consider placing self-requested blocks and similar ones. I don't know if that was done for humorous purpose or whether it was an accident, but I'm more inclined to think the latter. (I have no intention of requesting a self-block, I merely had a look at the category to see how many admins are in it). Have mörser, will travel (talk) 04:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Woops! Thanks for letting me know about that! Bad cut-and-pasting! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible to search through the articles in the pending list? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pending_AfC_submissions)

I want to know if 'the death cure' by james dashner is pending.

How long does it typically take for a best selling book by a famous author to get an article, from the time of publication?

Control-F will get your computer to search for specific text on the page if you're using Windows. Otherwise, I'm afraid I have no idea. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
(talk page stalker)Command-F performs the same function on Macs. — Oli OR Pyfan! 06:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Possible?

I notice that the page "Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion" does not include even a hint that, even if not suitable for undeletion, an editor might request userfication of a deleted article so that they might improve it if able outside of article space. Perhaps the page could include or offer a simple link to Wikipedia:Userfication as a possibility? Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:12, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Well REFUND does act as a central location for userfication requests. I guess it could do with being made a bit clearer, but it's not something I like to advertise, because some see it as an invitation to permanently host an article that won't ever be suitable for mainspace. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
I think a spot of clarification is all that is needed, thank you. And pereception of improvable versus unimprovable is the crux and calls for a bit of latitude. Similar to a request for undeletion, the requester should make a decent case for userfication and support his argument to do so. Whichever admin grants or denies the request will weigh the requester's argument just as he might for undeletion, but with less onus for immediate perfection. And if something has no reasonable argument that it has any chance to be improved, the request will not be granted. And as we both know... if something "unready" sits too long in userspace it's likely to be be sent to MFD. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 01:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey! Hey you!

Sign here to sell your soul. Also, to me your heading is broken. That's not good. PanydThe muffin is not subtle 02:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes ma'am! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Guess whose back!

Thanks for the advice, I look forward to working with you again as always. You got a Talk-page stalker back.--SKATER Is Back 13:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Great to see you back! I'm not ever so active at the minute, but I'm still keeping an eye on my talk page and watchlist, so let me know if you need anything. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:22, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

James Inglis Hamilton

Hello HJ. I'm copy editing James Inglis Hamilton and noticed your suggestion to remove the "Inglis" from the article's title. As it appears to have become part of the family name, I am uncertain about this and have re-raised the question on its talk page. I'm not sure whether I'm right, and am hoping you'll be able to give guidance there. Best, --Stfg (talk) 09:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey

Heya HJ, I'm not sure if you are tied up right now, but could you perform a move and history merge of User:Raintheone/Aden Jefferies to Aden Jefferies?RaintheOne BAM 22:59, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure; done. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Thankyou so much. :)RaintheOne BAM 00:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Block reason

Does the new, refreshed Twinkle block-reason functionality look good to you? — This, that, and the other (talk) 03:35, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I like it. It seems like it would be more intuitive to a newer admin, and it's nice to see more block templates being added in. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 04:09, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Installing a wikipedia page for Semantic Designs: notability?

Hi. I'm the principal at Semantic Designs, a small Texas company. (User:idbaxter, idbaxter@semdesigns.com, Ira D. Baxter, PhD).

The wikipedia page for adding Semantic Designs says you apparantly deleted an entry for Semantic Designs due to non-notatibility back in 2009. (See the deleted entry for "Semantic Designs"). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_Designs&action=edit&redlink=1

I believe my company to be notable. We aren't big and visible like IBM, so I'd like clarification as to what makes us notable.

I have several "notable" items, I think.

The first item is how SD was founded, as a US Dept. of Commerce/NIST Advanced Technology Fund Research Grant for $1.9 million in 1995. Such funding was predicated on a) defining and implementing a solution to difficult software engineering problems for large scale software, and b) taking that research prototype, converting to a marketable product, and shipping it to real customers. (Most research prototypes are really just demos and never make it into practice). See NIST's own summary at http://www.atp.nist.gov/gems/semantic-95-09-0059.htm Of particular note (see "Grant Status") is that ATP ranked the results of that research funding as "four stars out of four" from their point of view.

The second item is the result of research, a software tool called the "DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit". I'm pleased to say this is already a wikipedia item. DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit. DMS is documented in 2004 in a refereed paper in the the premier Software Engineering research journal, the Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering, see http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=999466 Google says this particular article has 216 citations to it from other technical/research papers in the literature.

The third item is the execution of complex software reengineering tasks by Semantic Designs. The one we like best is the conversion of large (1.2 million lines) mission-critical "operational flight program (OFP)" software for the B-2 Stealth Bomber, from a legacy computer language (Jovial) for which you cannot find programmers or development tools, to a more modern language, C, for which you can find those resources, which means you can continue to enhance the software. Without this, the B-2 would be stuck in 1985 in terms of integration in the US Air Force. See http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=145810

A similar task was accomplished for Boeing for the C++ language, which is known to be extremely hard to process automatically, and documented in a refereed paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584906001856

Finally, Semantic Designs has won several Small Business Innovation Research Grants, including a latest one to achieve the holy grail of building refactoring tool for the C++ language (to support scientific computing). See http://science.energy.gov/~/media/sbir/pdf/awards%20abstracts/fy11/FY-2011-Phase-I-Awards-Sorted-by-Topic.pdf under "TOPIC: High Energy Physics Computer Technology"

Semantic Designs has been doing very difficult automated software reengineering tasks since it founding in 1995. We build a remarkable variety of software engineering tools. See http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/LanguageTools/

If I take the basic deleted article, and add some of the above items as references, would that be "notable" enough? Idbaxter (talk) 05:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC) (User:idbaxter ... please send me an email note indicating you have responded if you can).




DrKiernan

Hello, HJ Mitchell. Sometime ago you blocked me for 24h over a dispute with DrKiernan in the article about the Brazilian Empress Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies. I told you that I had no fault and it was an unfair punishment but you did not care then.

Recently, I added a piece of sourced text into the article about Afonso, Prince Imperial of Brazil and DrKiernan reverted it by adding unsourced content.[4] Another editor called Paulista01 undid DrKiernan's edit.[5] DrKiernan once again reverted.[6] Paulista01 undid a second time complaing that DrKiernan had changed sourced content for unsourced content.[7] DrKiernan reverted yet again.[8] Once I saw that he had added something that made no sense I undid his edit.[9] He reverted again! [10] Another editor, Astynax reverted DrKiernan's edit.[11]

Seeing that DrKiernan had gone too far (he reverted four times), Astynax filled a complain about him over edit warring. Not content enough, DrKiernan added tags into the article (since he noticed it would be better for him not to revert once more).[12] This time, a fourth editor appeared, Tonyjeff, and reverted his edit. He picked a fight with four different editors.

And do you know what is ridiculous? Is the fact that he had never truly contributed (unless you count the time he edited when I nominated it to FAC) to this article. He has never collaborated before with any of these articles about 19th century Brazilian history. Both Afonso, Prince Imperial of Brazil and Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies are articles which I, Lecen, worked on and successfully turned into Featured Articles. This is not a dispute between an editor who really cares about the subject and other four editors.

You told me before to stay away from him and vice-versa. I did as you told me to (in fact, that was quite easy because I never work on British history-related articles, where DrKiernan can be usually found) but he did not. Enough is enough. Something must be done about it. I don't want him to be blocked, banished or anything similar. All I want (as I practically begged you before) is to is be left alone and to have him prevented from messing with the Brazilian history-related articles ]. --Lecen (talk) 01:55, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I tried to do as you asked me but it seems you chose to ignore my plea. I'm sorry to have bothered you, it won't happen again. --Lecen (talk) 12:57, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
It was nearly 3am where I am when you posted that. You're not going to get any useful response out of me at that time of the morning. I can't force DrKiernan to stay away from you, but I can ask him to if you want. There's nothing more I can do, though, as he hadn't edited in six hours by the time you posted here. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
No, he hasn't edited in Prince Afonso's article, but he has edited in Pedro II of Brazil,[13] Princess Maria Amélia of Brazil [14] and in Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies.[15] None of those articles (all of which I worked on and brought to FA status) has he ever trully contributed. Now, all of sudden, he is interested in all articles about Brazilian royals which I contributed after he was reported for edit warring? And you still believe that he is not provoking? See the hours of every single edit. All of them made today after he was reported. --Lecen (talk) 16:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I think the edit summary you supplied for the posting above ("Thanks for answering back") demonstrates quite well what at least part of the problem is here. Your English isn't quite as good as you think it is ("answering back" doesn't mean what you think it does), and you have been continually arguing with editors who are native English speakers, with many FAs to their credit, over the correct use of English. Malleus Fatuorum 16:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

DrKiernan has reverted for a fifth time the page in less than 24 hours.[16] --Lecen (talk) 19:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I kinda need you to weigh in with something (or any other admin here)

I don't really feel like directly just building up with templates for this guy, but he is constantly reverting people's edits on this page, reverting sourced content, calling it "vandalism" and citing stuff like iTunes or Myspace as his sources. I've already left on his talk page the effects of ownership, along with many others and myself reverting his edits and stating that these are not sources but he won't listen. Just look at the history for that article if you need to see more. It's pretty ridiculous. He needs a real talking to before he ends up being blocked. • GunMetal Angel 22:34, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Seems he may also be a Genre Warrior--SKATER Is Back 01:19, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
I think its more of a WP:COI, but all the same, all its doing is causing a huge disruption. - Jer Hit me up 01:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
I've protected it for a few days, as that seems the easiest way to end the disruption without potentially scaring off a new user. It seems to me that he just doesn't understand or know about the relevant policies, so perhaps try cutting him a little slack and explaining things (with appropriate links). Then we'll know if we need to take a harder line if the trouble continues in a few days. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Even if I do, he won't listen because I've already put up a section on his talk regarding what isn't sources and what isn't associated acts and what he is doing wrong and all that jazz. So no matter what could be said, he'll still just disregard it all, think that he's right no matter what, and would probably in the end say it's all just StickyDrama before he has to be shown that he dun goofed with a block. So maybe, that would be the best solution, next time he reverts one of many users that have reverted him, a final warning template should come to order before his block so we can finally end this ordeal. It's annoying how uncivilized people chose to be. • GunMetal Angel 02:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

On a sidenote, is a complete edit protection not a bit much? I mean, it's just that one editor that needs to change his or hers attitude. In the mean time, the article is still in pretty bad shape. No chance of giving Ylightflight a 24 hour editing block or something? --Soetermans. T / C 12:25, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Agreed with above, he was the only actual one - other than IP addresses - that were causing problems. So if anything, semi-protect the page and block him for a day, then if he does anything again, I'll give him one warning before he needs to get blocked for a longer time. Sounds good to be, what do you think, HJ? • GunMetal Angel 14:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC) Update: now that the page is protected, he's resulted to the article's talk page for further argument and disruptions. And still saying Myspace is a source. He just doesn't listen. Yeah now I'm totally certain he needs a block. Just unprotect the page and block him so we can get on with our harmony. • GunMetal Angel 18:19, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LXVII, September 2011

 

To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. EdwardsBot (talk) 02:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)