This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation, January 21, 2012.
A barnstar for you!
The Technical Barnstar
Congratulations, Tom.Reding, you've recently made your 1,000th edit to articles on English Wikipedia!
Thank you for all the great DAB work you've been doing recently, and for all your contributions to the encyclopedia. Keep it up! :)
Maryana (WMF) (
talk) 23:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
For your incredible WikiGnoming over the past few months. I am in awe.
A2soup (
talk) 23:25, 22 February 2015 (UTC)reply
You have nearly single-handedly eliminated the minor planet notability problem, which had stood for seven years before you decided to tackle it, because nobody wanted to do the massive amount of work required. If this doesn't deserve a barnstar, I'm not sure what does.
StringTheory11 (
t •
c) 17:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For dealing with the minor planet clusterfuck as efficiently as you have! Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books} 04:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)reply
There's nothing quite like cleaning up a good, 'ol-fashioned clusterfuck. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :) ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 04:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)reply
BTW, this isn't just for the recent banner tagging, but for the shear amount of effort involved in cleaning up the mess for the past year or so. Possibly longer. Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books} 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Technical Barnstar
thanks for helping me with the search codes!
Jennica✿ / talk 20:10, 9 April 2017 (UTC)reply
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
please help translate this message into your local language via
meta
The 2016 Cure Award
In 2016 you were one of the
top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from
Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a
user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.
Your diligent work in the area of redirect categorization and improvement is duly recognized and greatly appreciated. You are truly one of the unsung heroes of Wikipedia, and we hope you continue to enjoy your improvement of this awesome encyclopedia! On behalf of your fellow editors—and the millions of readers of our work—I sincerely thank you for your contributions that have improved the encyclopedia for everyone. Senator2029“Talk” 08:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Editor's Barnstar
Thank you very much for helping and editing the Joe Campos Torres article, your assistance put a BIG SMILE on my face! Vwanweb (
talk) 16:53, 31 December 2017 (UTC)reply
My pleasure; that was a satisfying edit :) ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:56, 31 December 2017 (UTC)reply
Another barnstar for you!
The Bio-star
In recognition of your recent contributions to the
Life Sciences on
en:Wikipedia, analyzing and helping to improve the quality of articles, based on scientific data. Your efforts demonstrate tremendous potential into enhancing the scientific accuracy of The Free Encyclopedia.
I am tremendously appreciative of your efforts, especially on the preliminary
Taxonomic analysis.
Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as
Editor of the Week in recognition of your constant positive demeanor. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the
Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)
I am always on the lookout for potential Editor of the Week candidates, for editors that fly under the radar, whose efforts are unknown except to a few. They don't make a splash, they don't emit a 'notice me' kind of behavior; they just quietly tackle the hard jobs. Tom.Reding is that kind of editor. A while back he "thanked me" via the
Thanks Notification for awarding the Editor of the Week to a fellow editor. So, I looked into him and found an editor that does many important WP improving things. He is a working editor (535,847 live and undeleted edits) that fixes, populates, corrects, standardizes, cleans, parses, tries, peruses, adds, formats, listens, expands, updates, corrects, creates, assigns and (my favorite) "consistifies". A member of
Wikiproject Astronomy and
Wikiproject Tree of Life, he has recently been granted the page mover user right. He provides a human eye and understanding to "bot" problems that arise. In the area of redirect categorization he willingly puts his head together with other editors to work toward solution. A deserving recipient.
You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:
Fixing many depreciated syntax on infobox images.
Iggy (
Swan) 22:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
Olympic Barnstar
For your excellent work in getting the bot up and running to tag biographies for the Olympic Wiki Project. Thank you! LugnutsFire Walk with Me 10:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)reply
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
please help translate this message into your local language via
meta
The 2016 Cure Award
In 2016 you were one of the
top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from
Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a
user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.
Congratulations on being the seventh editor on the English Wikipedia to do over a million non-bot edits! ϢereSpielChequers 12:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC)reply
Thanks! I never thought I'd do so much, but I just keep finding things to fix/improve :) ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 13:12, 17 May 2018 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Space Barnstar
For your astronomic contributions! For taking up so much space!
7&6=thirteen (
☎) has given you a
Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it.
To give a Dobos torte and spread the
WikiLove, just place {{
subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.
OCD. It's not an affliction. It is a gift, and is part of the job description for being a
Wikipedia editor. See
WP:wikiholic.
"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Takes one to know one. Best regards. 7&6=thirteen (
☎) 16:36, 15 October 2018 (UTC)reply
7&6=thirteen, thank you :) And I really should take the test, but I can't be bothered while editing...perhaps that is or should be one of the questions?? ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC)reply
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
The 2018 Cure Award
In 2018 you were one of the
top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from
Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a
user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.
Jobe well done when it comes to the article on Prof. Helmut Veith (1971-2016).
Terrenus (
talk) 14:48, 26 November 2019 (UTC)reply
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
please help translate this message into your local language via
meta
The 2019 Cure Award
In 2019 you were one of the
top ~300 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from
Wiki Project Med for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a
thematic organization whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.
thank you for all your help here.
Paulhus15 (
talk) 09:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Original Barnstar
Just a barnstar for you!
Your userboxes were fascinating and you seem like a really interesting person. I also somehow see you on every page I edit.
Thanks for the contributions you have made!
Hhzhang2345
Hhzhang2345 (
talk) 16:16, 12 March 2021 (UTC)reply
A Barnstar for you!
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Thank you for helping edit Wikipedia and make the encyclopedia a better place for others. Thank you and keep up the good work. --
ThanosYourGod (
talk) 22:08, 12 March 2021 (UTC)reply
A barnstar for you!
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Thanks a lot for adding authority control to so many articles
Paradise Chronicle (
talk) 23:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC)reply
For improving Navseasoncats
What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
…or rather, what a succession of brilliant improvements you have made to {{
Navseasoncats}}! –
FayenaticLondon 19:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
Article confirmation
Greetings Tom.Reding,
After your previous assistance, my article is now available on Wikipedia, it is confirmed. And that inspired me, now I wrote more articles which are exist in other languages, but they are not confirmed yet. Can you please check them out for confirmation this time too?
Thank you very much
I appreciate it
-Film Contributor
Done ~ I went through the above pages and found no significant corrections. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 19:00, 12 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Request
Hi Tom.Reding, a couple of months ago you helpfully made an adjustment to the Module:Category described in year to add lichens. Since then, I've been populating the categories, and plan to continue doing so, as part of a long-term project to make article for all lichen species (especially those published after 2000). I was wondering if there would be a simple way to have the total number of articles in the subcategories displayed on the "Lichens described in the xxth century" page? I ask because every couple of weeks I manually add up these subcategory numbers to keep track of my progress, and I realised that there's probably a simpler way to do this that I'm not aware of. I think a "total articles" count would probably be useful for all of the "Module:Category described in year" iterations. Is this desirable/doable?
Esculenta (
talk) 20:31, 22 February 2022 (UTC)reply
@
Esculenta: if you have
WP:AWB, you can set "Source" to "Category (recursive)", and set as "
Lichens by year of formal description" your search category. Currently, this returns 1925 results: 1709 articles + 216 subcategories. There's no way to do this on-the-fly on the category page itself, that I know of, but you can use either of these 2 PetScan links:
with and
without autorun (it takes a few minutes to run). ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 19:40, 12 February 2023 (UTC)reply
Notifications
Hello, Tom,
I apologize for overwhelming your talk page with notices but I feel obliged to inform editors when a page they have created has been tagged for deletion. And it looks like you created the majority of categories in
Category:User pages with authority control information which were recently emptied (see discussion on
Template talk:Authority control).
There is no need for you to do anything, if the categories remain empty for a week, they will be deleted. Of course, feel free to remove these notices from your talk page when you return to edit Wikipedia so you can see more urgent messages. And thank you for all of your work with templates! LizRead!Talk! 20:10, 25 February 2022 (UTC)reply
@
Liz: well, good thing I'm not that busy! No problem. I created them simply to follow the existing pattern of tracking categories that existed prior to when I began being interested in {{
Authority control}}. I have no use nor interest in them, and, if no one else does either, then I'm glad to see them emptied. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 22:18, 25 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Help!
Hello, I hope you are well. Please review
Mehran Ghafourian's draft. I made some changes. If the article is rejected again, write the reason. Thanks for your following up
Amir ghpro (
talk) 19:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)reply
How can I fix “Grace City”
I added a history section. You removed it. What do I need to do to fix it?
Thanks,
Konroy
Konroyb (
talk) 20:37, 26 April 2022 (UTC)reply
Tom.Reding: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand
Wikipedia. Cheers,
RV (
talk) 01:42, 24 December 2022 (UTC)reply
Apologies for the late suggestion: How would folks feel about doing the wiknic at Dupont Circle instead of at Rock Creek Park? Dupont would be easier to get to for folks on the train. I originally chose Rock Creek Park because I was worried about the crowd getting too big (last time I hosted a CentralNotice'd event hundreds wanted to come!), but it looks like there have only been a small handful of signups, which makes Dupont plausible! I'll notify everyone who's expressed interest — please let me know if you have a preference one way or the other. Looking forward to seeing you all!
Hello, I'm
Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that
this edit performed by you, on the page
Philosophical poets, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
A "
bare URL and
missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (
Fix |
Ask for help)
I've noticed that the redirect page "Televisions" points to "
Television". In every case that I checked, it's actually being used as the plural of "
Television set", which is understandable, since television as a medium isn't normally pluralised. I'm bringing the matter to you because you were the last person to edit the redirect page, and because I'm inexperienced in these matters. Any thoughts?
Jean-de-Nivelle (
talk) 19:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Jean-de-Nivelle: I see your point, but I quickly found
List of Nokia products, where
televisions currently, and appropriately, links to
Television, not
Television set, given the immediately preceding text "Nokia divested itself of the industries listed below to focus solely on telecommunications."
I think in the case of "
List of Nokia products" the appropriate target is actually "
Television sets": the section gives a list of industries and products that Nokia is no longer involved with. It was previously a manufacturer of
television sets, not a player in the
television industry. If it had been, the appropriate link would have been "
Television", not "
Televisions".
I don't think disambiguation is the right way to go: I think the best solution would be to make "
Televisions" a redirect to "
Television set" since that's the context in which it's being used. I'm happy to check all the pages that link to "
Televisions" and make any necessary fixes.
Jean-de-Nivelle (
talk) 21:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC)reply
I've no strong opinion about what the target of
televisions should be. It is customary for plural forms to redirect to the singular, but this may be an exception. However, the disambiguation set-up was totally unnecessary. If it is changed to redirect to
television set, there should be a hatnote added there to [[television (disambiguation) rather than creating an unnecessary new dab page.
older ≠
wiser 01:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)reply
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Herpetogenesis}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the
Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)
Both articles are now about cardiac stenting - and PCI. I took the DES article on as a personal project and it has been fleshed out to include PCI and I have also attempted to follow best practices in the layout and structure for a GA type of article.
I am exploring how to merge the articles, they are so very similar but the DES article is I think a child of the CS article.
Just testing the waters - I think they can be rolled into one document - within the GA framework as described on the DES article tp.
Your name was on one or the other articles , and you are an experienced editor - so just politely reaching out.
@
BeingObjective: if the Venn diagram of DES vs. coronary stents shows considerable overlap, then merging probably makes sense, but that's about as far as my interest will take me. I see you've reached out to Maxim Masiutin, who will be much more useful than I am. I might swing by later, after the dust settles, for page and ref cleanup though... ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 15:09, 21 November 2023 (UTC)reply
Yes, I am working with Maxim M., he has been very patient and thoughtful offering guidance and links for me to read, the GA effort and proposal came from him.
As a total newbie - I just wanted to contribute and bring the article up to date - many comments seemed to have stalled out in 2009.
Any clean ups and such would be appreciated, I think the DES article is now 'static' so if your get the time/interest - any help/collaboration is appreciated.
Given the shear number of PCI/Stenting procedures performed in the US and EU, I think this an important article and the DES article seemed a little abandoned.
To be honest - I initially wanted to change only the design criteria section - and then my interest became broader - naturally scope creep can occur - but I do not really think so - if the two articles are combined - I think this makes so much sense, 90 percent of stents used are now DES - Maxim gave me a proposed GA framework - and it made sense to me.
I could not discuss DES design thinking without PCI - and modern DES offerings are really one integrated medical device. 20 years ago this was not always the case.
Hi Tom.Reding :) I'm looking for people to interview
here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested.
Clovermoss🍀(talk) 10:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Thank you
I was wondering why
Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects had dropped by about 1,000 since I last checked it, then I saw
Special:Diff/1188437036! Thanks for adding that - I have little to no experience in the subject area; but, on the face of it, it makes sense to me to separate the non-Wikidata-linked minor planet redirects to
Category:Minor planet object redirects missing QID (as you’ve done). Now to do some more work on fixing some unlinked Wikidata redirects
WP:TREE cleanup: would it be feasible to check whether Wikispecies or Commons have pages for a taxon?
At Asthenotricha amblycoma, you added a blank line after the taxobox, which I had asked for at
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_48#Mass_cleanup_edits?. The other part of your edit was putting {{
Commons}} and {{
Wikispecies}} before {{
Reflist}}, which I had not understood to be one of your proposed WP:TREE cleanup. There are many WP:TREE articles with templates for Commons or Wikispecies links that do not have corresponding pages on Commons or Wikispecies.
Would it be feasible for you to check whether Commons/Wikispecies pages exist in your WP:TREE cleanup efforts and remove the interwiki link templates when the pages do not exist rather than just reshuffling where the templates are placed?
Plantdrew (
talk) 03:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Plantdrew: I eventually stumbled across pages with {{
Commons}}, {{
Commons category}}, {{
Commons and category}}, {{
Wikispecies}}, etc. in other parts of the page (all over, really) that interfered with bullets #2, #3, #5, #12, #13, and #16, so I decided to add those templates to the etc. portion of #2, to move them to their correct locations.
I could certainly check whether sister-wiki pages exist, but there's some grey area there. Like for Asthenotricha amblycoma, the only
commons search results is for
c:Category:Asthenotricha, but not
c:Category:Asthenotricha amblycoma (strange that it shows up as blue here) - though presumably that's still helpful to show? Would it be better to only remove the templates if "There were no results matching the query", like for the
wikidata search for Asthenotricha amblycoma? However, after whichever templates are removed, is someone going to recheck these pages for non-null search results, and put the appropriate templates back, at regular intervals? My thinking right now is that it's better to have an easily accessible search link to quickly confirm/deny existence (and find whatever related pages the search results return) than to have none at all. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 14:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)reply
There are far more English Wikipedia articles where there IS a Wikispecies page but no {{
Wikispecies}} in the article than there are Wikipedia articles with OUT a corresponding Wikispecies page but with a {{
Wikispecies}} leading to no search results. So yeah, nobody is checking for non-null search results and putting templates in place at regular intervals. The fact that that isn't being done isn't something that seems to me to be an argument for having interwiki templates leading to null search results.
I would like to see links to Commons and Wikispecies made available in mobile view via Wikidata. Commons and Wikispecies links via Wikidata exist in desktop view, as do links to Wikipedia articles in other languages. In mobile view, other language links are available, but not Commons or Wikispecies. Adding the links to mobile view seems like a better long term solution than managing templates like {{
Wikispecies}} and {{
Commons}}.
Plantdrew (
talk) 17:58, 6 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Plantdrew: they typically belong at the top of the last section of the page, which is usually the EL section, but Do not make a section whose sole content is box-type templates, so on small pages with no, or an empty, EL, the templates end up at the top of the references section.
I'm ok with looking for and removing just the null-result {{
Wikispecies}}. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 18:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)reply
I'm confused: how is that a problem? I don't see what's in need to fixing. ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 10:30, 14 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Koavf: for example,
Simojärvi & 45 other pages from Jan 2012 use YMD dates,
The Tree of Hands has an MDY in the wikitext, and the rest either have no DMY, involve dates before 1000, have some sort of garbage littering 1 or more of the various
birth, death, age templates, or use them to create an MDY, either via |mf=y or by default, depending on the template. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 11:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Okay, but how is it better to have all of these in just one category that is all "DMY dates from December 2023"? Why do you change the dates of when the template was applied? ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 11:13, 14 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Koavf: because that's what it's for. Per
Template:Use dmy dates/doc, "Use the parameter |date= for the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting and fixed any found." ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 11:21, 14 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Well, let me change this subheading from "confusing" to "perfectly sensible" and thank you. ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 11:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)reply
"… and fixed any found." But the edit
Koavf pointed to, and many, many more, didn't need any fixes. Why can't those articles be left unchanged? --
Michael Bednarek (
talk) 01:22, 15 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Because the documentation says to update the date when it was checked. If you disagree with the template documentation,
Template talk:Use dmy dates is the right venue. I recommend that you check the archives of that talk page. It looks like the most recent discussion of this issue was held in 2019. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 02:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)reply
It seems I misunderstand what 'and' means. --
Michael Bednarek (
talk) 03:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)reply
"Zero" is a possible value of "any". The wording in the template documentation could probably be improved. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 04:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Please stop engaging in
WP:MEATBOT edits like
this and
this, that make no practical changes to the article from the readers's perspective and fix no actual broken code from the editors' perspective. There is no point whatsovever to twiddling with the "Use [xxx] dates" template's date-stamp when no dates' formats were corrected, nor replacing template redirects with the actual template name. All this does is annoyingly hit people's watchlists with pointless changes and waste all our time examining them. This problem is why we have MEATBOT. It is permissible to make non-destructive but not actually helpful twiddles of this sort only if they are made in the course of other changes in the same edit that are actually substantive. (e.g.
this was fine since it subtantively fixed a
MOS:DASH error in the course of making twiddles that were otherwise not objectively useful). —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
SMcCandlish: I'm not "sacrifice[ing] quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity"; I'm doing the exact opposite, checking each edit that is itself checking hundreds of templates to be in their correct location as per
WP:MOS/Layout. I decided to start at the shallow end of the "Use [xxx] dates" templates pool, with pages with relatively few, or 0, of these mistakes. Even so, I'm watching for frequent unintended results that need to be accounted for. I suppose I could make a
WP:BOTREQ for the pages with 0 other fixes, and they will likely be addressed by other editors by the time it gets approved, so 6 in one hand vs. half a dozen in the other.
Re: "substantive" - the edits are substantive because, if nothing else, they update a tracking category.
Re: "and fix no actual broken code from the editors' perspective" - the point of confirming that a page still follows an old date format (see right above @
#Confusing edits), is to allow editors to easily find the pages that do need date fixes.
But I'll address pages with more complex fixes to avoid confusion. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 00:34, 19 December 2023 (UTC)reply
But I'll address pages with more complex fixes to avoid confusion. Thank you. If the edit in question does something that is actually necessary for
WP:P&G compliance, repairs an actual technical error, or improves the content for readers, then no one is going to object. As for the other bits: sacrifice[ing] quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity is not the only criterion. In particular, bot-like editing is by definition editing that is like that of a bot, and bots are not permitted to make such non-substantive changes (by themselves) per
WP:COSMETICBOT. If you think you've discovered a loophole, you have not. (Various editors going around making trivial and costmetic edits of this sort have been topic-banned or blocked when they don't stop. It's not like I just made this up out of nowhere. I had to change my own cleanup-editing habits to compensate as a result, because I used to do stuff about the same as what you are doing.) There is no reason to update the tracking category if nothing at the article has changed; there is absolutely nothing wrong with an article that has {{
Use DMY dates|October 2018}} in it remaining in the Oct. 2018 category, if none of the dates in it were non-compliant. So, that is non-substantive. The fact that editors might like some kind of distingishing between two categories of articles (or articles that could be separately categorized by some criterion but are not yet), based on some formatting in them, is not a matter of broken code or other errors in the page code. That sounds like you are looking for some other kind of tool or process, and one might need to be created (e.g. automated analysis of date usage in an article and adding a tracking category when one is found to have a mix of date styles). But it is not a reason to go around changing hundreds or thousands of articles in ways that affect neither readers nor any editors other than you. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
SMcCandlish: the edits aren't
cosmetic, as they fulfill bullet #3, though I see how someone not interested in them might deem them trivial.
Re: "affect neither readers nor any editors other than you" - other editors I see operating in this space are
Dawnseeker2000 &
SSSB, which I believe I am assisting. If I'm not being helpful, please let me know. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 11:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Incredible progress we've made there in the last few days. Much appreciated. I've been working on that since July 2019. Crazy, right? I have a bunch of AWB settings files that I've been using in that space. The goal is to look at some of those articles that haven't been audited in some time and run Ohconfucius's module on them. I've modified it and the settings files to accomplish several tasks at once. It's only when I've exhausted all opportunities that I manually run the stand-alone MOS:NUM script (now actually testing a
version that was modified by DavidBrooks).
Dawnseeker2000 05:21, 20 December 2023 (UTC)reply
One more thing: I would be interested in seeing the outcome of an RfA (if the interested parties want to take it to that level). My interest would be in seeing if there's a better way of handling the date format categorization and tagging. I'd definitely participate as I've been working on date format auditing for a few years. Tagging folks that have commented on this in the last few days: @
Jonesey95, @
InfiniteNexus, @
Legoktm, @
Headbomb, @
Anomie, @
Primefac, @
Trialpears, and @
SMcCandlish, as well as @
Ohconfucius for their overwhelming work in this space.
Dawnseeker2000 23:59, 20 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
DavidBrooks (one more developer that's been helping refine AWB and the MOS:NUMDATES set of scripts.)
Dawnseeker2000 00:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Dawnseeker2000: my talk page is definitely not the place for so such a large discussion, though I would certainly participate in or at least follow it. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 00:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)reply
I assume that meant
WP:RFC not
WP:RFA. It could be addressed that way, I suppose, but I think that the community response would be "this is already covered by
WP:MEATBOT and by the instruction to human editors in
WP:COSMETICBOT, and by
WP:COSMETIC and by
WP:FLOODING and by
WP:SPECUSE". In short, no one cares if these edits, which neither improve the output for readers nor fix an editor-facing code problem, are done along with one or more substantive change in the same edit, but they are viewed as disruptive bot-like behavior when pursued as a purpose in and of themselves across a large number of articles, because the pound the watchlists of innumerable editors and waste their time examinging this pointless trivia for substantive issues that might need addressing. If this still isn't clear somehow, consider: "the community deems [costmetic edits] to not be worth making in bulk, even though those edits might change the output HTML or readable text in subtle ways" from
WP:COSMETICBOT; and this from
WP:FLOODING: "flooding or cluttering ... is one of the main reasons for the existence of WP:COSMETICBOT. The bot flag is designed to reduce the impact of flooding on
Special:RecentChanges and
Special:Watchlist, but will never completely eliminate it. Meat bots [i.e. human editors working in a bot-like manner] do not have access to such a flag." This necessarily means that meat-bot editors like Tom.Reding need to stop making these kinds of changes without also doing something useful (to others than themselves) in the same edit, because none of us have any way to suppress their flood of twiddling edits in either our watchlists or in RecentChanges. —
SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)reply
I don't entirely follow the rambling text above, but maybe
Template talk:Use dmy dates is the best place to have a discussion about that template, with an additional note at
Template talk:Use mdy dates pointing to that discussion. A concise statement of the problem and a proposed solution would be useful. –
Jonesey95 (
talk) 04:31, 21 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Are the regexes you're using taking these possiblities into account? Could be worth running a replacement on <nowiki>[</nowiki> to use {{
!(}}, {{
Square bracket open}}, or better yet {{
Bracket}}, for clarity, instead? --YodinT 15:55, 29 December 2023 (UTC)reply
@
Yodin: that was actually a
WP:GenFix that I thought was legitimately removing an extra bracket. Thanks for pointing that out, and the suggestion. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Ah! Ok, will raise it there; thanks for all your work on this 👍 --YodinT 16:10, 29 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Happy New Year
Came across your page, looking forward to learning more about Wiki & edits. Cheers.
IraPSilversmith (
talk) 22:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Date template updates
Hi Tom - I've seen a few edits where you've (and from other people as well) updated the date stamp in templates like
this one. What's the point of that? I'd think we'd want the opposite, as if to say, "this article has used DMY format since 20xx, so longstanding consensus is for it to remain that way". But I'm guessing since I've seen others doing it as well, there's a reason for it that I haven't thought of. Cheers,
Parsecboy (
talk) 12:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Thank you for your support on ANI (while I slept). As you know, I have a DYK on the Main page, but
my story would be different, about
Figaro, -
this Figaro. --
Gerda Arendt (
talk) 22:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)reply
It is very tricky to move categories which is why most CFD discussions end with bots moving categories around and recategorizing articles and subcategories. If you do move a category page, please make sure that all of the contents of the old category are recategoized so that they are in the category with the new page title. Many thanks. LizRead!Talk! 22:51, 29 January 2024 (UTC)reply
I've noticed you've been creating the talk pages of subpages of the current events portals. I really don't see the need in project tagging all of these especially when there is no need to do so.
WikiCleanerMan (
talk) 13:19, 21 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Hello. May I ask why you are mass-adding WikiProject banner shells to file talk pages
such as this one? In the RfCs discussing the redesign of the banner shell and the deprecation of project-independent quality assessments, there was only community consensus to perform those two tasks, not to mass-add WikiProject banner shells to talk pages, and especially not on talk pages where it would produce no effect (file talk pages are automatically classified as file- or NA-class, so your edits are tantamount to cosmetic edits). I am sure you are well aware that bot-like editing that does nothing except spam editors' watchlists is considered disruptive. Thank you.
InfiniteNexus (
talk) 20:18, 9 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I would request that the category be adjusted to remove file, template, and category talk pages, where quality assessment is automatic and WPBS serves no purpose. Pinging @
MSGJ.
InfiniteNexus (
talk) 20:33, 9 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Please fix AWB edits that are removing table end markup
RFA2024 update: no longer accepting new proposals in phase I
Hey there! This is to let you know that phase I of the
2024 requests for adminship (RfA) review is now no longer accepting new proposals. Lots of proposals remain open for discussion, and the current round of review looks to be on a good track towards making significant progress towards improving
RfA's structure and environment. I'd like to give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has given us their idea for change to make RfA better, and the same to everyone who has given the necessary feedback to improve those ideas. The following proposals remain open for discussion:
Proposals 3 and 3b, initiated by Barkeep49 and Usedtobecool, respectively, provide for trials of discussion-only periods at RfA. The first would add three extra discussion-only days to the beginning, while the second would convert the first two days to discussion-only.
Proposal 5, initiated by SilkTork, provides for a trial of RfAs without threaded discussion in the voting sections.
Proposals 6c and 6d, initiated by BilledMammal, provide for allowing users to be selected as provisional admins for a limited time through various concrete selection criteria and smaller-scale vetting.
Proposal 7, initiated by Lee Vilenski, provides for the "General discussion" section being broken up with section headings.
Proposal 9b, initiated by Reaper Eternal, provides for the requirement that allegations of policy violation be substantiated with appropriate links to where the alleged misconduct occured.
Proposals 12c, 21, and 21b, initiated by City of Silver,
Ritchie333, and
HouseBlaster, respectively, provide for reducing the discretionary zone, which currently extends from 65% to 75%. The first would reduce it 65%–70%, the second would reduce it to 50%–66%, and the third would reduce it to 60%–70%.
Proposal 13, initiated by Novem Lingaue, provides for periodic, privately balloted admin elections.
Proposal 14, initiated by Kusma, provides for the creation of some minimum suffrage requirements to cast a vote.
Proposals 16 and 16c, initiated by Thebiguglyalien and Soni, respectively, provide for community-based admin desysop procedures. 16 would desysop where consensus is established in favor at the
administrators' noticeboard; 16c would allow a petition to force reconfirmation.
Proposal 16e, initiated by BilledMammal, would extend the recall procedures of 16 to bureaucrats.
Proposal 17, initiated by SchroCat, provides for "on-call" admins and 'crats to monitor RfAs for decorum.
Proposal 25, initiated by Femke, provides for the requirement that nominees be extended-confirmed in addition to their nominators.
Proposal 27, initiated by WereSpielChequers, provides for the creation of a training course for admin hopefuls, as well as periodic retraining to keep admins from drifting out of sync with community norms.
To read proposals that were closed as unsuccessful, please see
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I/Closed proposals. You are cordially invited once again to participate in the open discussions; when phase I ends, phase II will review the outcomes of trial proposals and refine the implementation details of other proposals. Another notification will be sent out when this phase begins, likely with the first successful close of a major proposal. Happy editing!
theleekycauldron (
talk • she/her), via:
Hello, can you help me give it a linguistic and cleaning review as the user mentioned to me who is suggesting to link it to other articles that it is not very clear to me how to do it. thank you --
Acartonadooopo (
talk) 21:47, 30 March 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Acartonadooopo: I ran my cleanup settings over it, and the page looks ok layout-wise. I've no interest in doing much more than that. You appear to know how to link to other articles, since you have done so in this section's heading. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 22:31, 30 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Thank you very much, for the cleanliness, how to remove this template since that template is not at all clear to me, according to the user, I have a connection with the singer, I don't see where else, translating an article from Hebrew to English does not make me familiar at all to the singing person What happened
volume for the elimination of that templateAcartonadooopo (
talk) 22:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)reply
We recently changed the title structure for TV seasons to exclude parenthesis (e.g.,
Loki season 1 rather than
Loki (season 1). I have
a list of about 500 categories that need to be renamed to follow the article titles, which will require several thousand edits to recategorize all of the episodes listed in those categories. This could be done by a bot, but I tend to prefer more hands-on supervision. If you take this up, please remove completed categories from the list as you go. Cheers!
BD2412T 17:10, 31 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Tom, per your edits at
Template talk:1967 West Penn Conference football standings, and many analogous ones, articles and templates and the like that apply specifically to American college football or American junior college football are not within the scope of
WikiProject American football. The scope of WP American football includes general topics related to the sport and only specific team, league, player, and coach articles are do not fall under the scope of a more specific American football-related WikiProject like WikiProject College football or WikiProject National Football League. Thanks,
Jweiss11 (
talk) 16:08, 7 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Hello! My name is Laurie Koziba, I have been researching my last name for a long while. I have been trying to make contact with writers with no luck. I thank you for this update. Email laurie
173.189.199.234 (
talk) 20:20, 7 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Another barnstar for you!
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Congratulations on becoming the fourth-ranked editor by number of edits. I know exactly how difficult that is!
BD2412T 15:52, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Ras Al Khaimah
Hi Tom
I reverted a number of changes you made from Ras Al Khaimah to Ras al-Khaimah using AWB. Ras Al Khaimah is the spelling of the WP article, the currently used spelling and the locally used spelling. I haven't changed the template, but it really should be changed too. The al-Khaimah spelling is antiquated. Happy to chat if this raises any questions! Best
Alexandermcnabb (
talk) 09:39, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Since you clearly find value in a very similar category, is there any chance you and perhaps others from WP Biography could please vote Keep on the discussion? You might well see them as distinct for whatever reason... The prominent/accomplished administrator who nominated it thinks categories shouldn't be "temporary." Of course Wikipedia is updated to reflect current events like elections, and he has been unable to point to a formal rule requiring categories to be permanently applicable to biographies (i.e. not subject to regularly scheduled changes of employment). Still, he is undoubtedly respected on here. In that case I will of course respect your opinion too, but it was worth a shot!
Thank you very much for your consideration.
1Matt20 (
talk) 16:02, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Category talk pages
Hello, Tom.Reding,
Please do not make category talk pages for categories that the CFD bot has moved. It usually doesn't leave a redirect so there is no category page and these category talk pages just get speedy deleted as orphaned talk pages. I've run into this over a dozen times now with your use of AWB. I'm not sure where you are getting a list of category talk pages to create but it is obviously not up-to-date. I realize there has been a system lag over the past two days so perhaps that is part of the problem. Thank you. LizRead!Talk! 21:07, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
For some reason, you created a talk page for the maintenance category,
Category talk:Proposed deletion as of 10 April 2024, which was deleted as soon as it was emptied prior to you creating a talk page! And still you created a talk page even though there are never discussions on the talk pages of maintenance categories which is why they rarely are created. Please, do not randomly create talk pages through AWB for categories that have already been deleted, it just creates work for admins who must them delete them. I'm not sure in what other ways I can get this message across to you. You are responsible for all of your edits, including those with AWB so do not make any unnecessary page creations. Thank you. LizRead!Talk! 02:13, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Liz: yes, I created it accidentally and quickly blanked it. I checked for and excluded deleted cats yesterday, and again today after your first message. I'll be more stringent in the future by excluding cats with CSD/CFD tags on them, which should solve the problem. ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 02:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Liz: this morning, before
Category:Auburn, Alabama municipal elections was deleted, I excluded all cats that either didn't exist, or contained <!--\s*BEGIN. For good measure, I also excluded all cat talks that contain <!--\s*BEGIN, but clearly a different check is needed. What text did
Category:Auburn, Alabama municipal elections contain prior to deletion? Does the CxD text get removed prior to deletion, or does it remain on the page until the page is deleted? ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:56, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply