User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2007/July

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Lightmouse. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

kbps vs kbit/s

You've changed your name and you've changed all of the kbps on the Digital Audio Broadcasting page to kbit/s. I asked you not to do this on your talk page when you were called Editore99, but you didn't see fit to reply, and now you've done it again, so I will repeat what I said then:

"I've just changed your changes on the DAB page back to 'kbps' but with a link to the kbps page. The reason I did it was because if you see the units for 1000 or 1 million bits per second you invariably see kbps or Mbps used - e.g. on an advert for a broadband package or in the Properties in a media player - and you never see kbit/s. I would therefore argue that it is more useful for a layman to see kbps rather than kbit/s, because they may have come across this term before, whereas they won't have seen kbit/s used.

In the literature, e.g. for DSP, audio coding, digital communications etc, kbps and Mbps are very widely used as well - probably about 50/50 in my experience - so whether someone uses kbit/s or kbps is down to personal preference rather than being right or wrong, IMO. If you do change kbps to kbit/s, could you at least put it in a link to the kbps page?"

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.224.201 (talk • contribs) 10:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem with the bps/Bps/BPS formats is that they are ambiguous as to bits and bytes. The 'b' and 'B' are supposed to disambiguate but editors are not reliable enough. You can see: 'KBPS', 'kb' and 'b/s'. It is also inconsistent with the kilobit format i.e. 'kbit'.

With kbit and kbyte, there is one unambiguous form. It can be used with or without division by seconds i.e. kbit becomes kbit/s. I presume that is why it dominates Wikipedia pages for 'kilobit' and 'kilobit per second'.

I don't believe that anyone is confused by the format 'kbit' or 'kbit/s'. So I do not see what value a link would add. Furthermore, a link to 'kb' and 'kbps' gets redirected. Take a look.

Since this is of general interest, perhaps it should be discussed on the wp:mosnum talk page? Lightmouse 16:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Date links

You removed date links from Maurice Couve de Murville citing wp:context. I see from this talk page that you have been asked before not to do this. I am asking you again: please do not do this! Scolaire 08:35, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Could we at least agree that there is no need to link 'February'? Lightmouse 11:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I also find this a bit annoying (in my case at reinforced concrete). In the absence of any policy prohibiting single-year links, can I ask you to hold fire until it has been discussed a bit more at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)? -- Kvetner 11:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

My intention is to improve articles, certainly not to annoy you. Thanks for taking it there. I look forward to seeing the debate there. Lightmouse 13:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Indisciminate mass year-delinking is forbidden, just like other stylistic-warring campaigns (e.g. BC/AD vs BCE/CE or "American" spelling versus "British" spelling). Please cease and desist, in the lack of a consensus in your favour. I don't mean to sound unpleasant, but if you persist you are liable to be blocked -- even permanently.
-- Lonewolf BC 21:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

This is your last warning about your indiscriminate mass de-linking of year-alone dates.
I am sorry to see that you have returned to this activity. Stop these edits now, and desist from them them unless you managed to get consensus to make them. The language at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) remains the same, and you do not even appear in its talk-page history between 12 June and now. It therefore seems that you have not even tried to get consensus for these edits, but instead have just waited a month (or perhaps less, depending on how long ago you resumed) and then begun them again, hoping that it would be overlooked. Don't expect to be warned about this again.
-- Lonewolf BC 22:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

My intention is to improve articles. You will notice that before I edited them, the articles had stupid links to days of the week like Tuesday or to months like June. Alternatively, there were other problems with the articles that I fixed.

You have not mentioned an article. Pick one and we can debate it. A good debating question would be:

'Has the article been improved?'

Lightmouse 16:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not questioning your intentions, nor your de-linking of months and of days-of-the-week. Those are not the issue, and you've been given no reasonable cause to suppose that I think they are. Nor it this an issue of any one particular article. The issue is your indiscriminate de-linking of years across many articles, and the standing is that you need consensus before you may make such edits. Mixing them with other kinds of edits does not affect this; if anything, it makes them more troublesome. Whether year-delinking improves articles or not is precisely the crucial question upon whose answer a consensus would need to be achieved. You are welcome to try; Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) is the place to do it. I frankly think that you would be wasting your time, given that the matter has been argued to death in the past, without being resolved beyond that there is no consensus (and some quite strong opinion in both directions).
For your own sake, and the sake of the peace of Wikipedia, please do not continue on the path which Bobblewik trod to his woe -- the path of stubbornly carrying on with these edits regardless of opposition and lack of consensus. No one needs the aggravation. -- Lonewolf BC 17:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Your de-linking of dates has been brought up on WP:ANI. Please desist until a consensus has been formed for such de-linking. Failure to do so will result in your being blocked without further warning. --Richard 01:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

Following on from the discussion of your formatting edits at WP:ANI, I would like to offer to help coach you towards making more productive edits. I too see certain problems with your edits, though they are undoubtedly well-intentioned.

If you are interested in working with me to make your edits less problematic to some in the community, please reply here or in my talk and I will discuss further with you my proposals. Best wishes. --John 22:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean.

You imply that my edits are not productive and I think they are, otherwise I would not be making them. If you want to discuss a specific page edit, feel free to name the page. If you want to discuss general style, then the talk page of the styleguide may be a better place than here. A debate about style will be of interest to many. Regards Lightmouse 00:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Certainly, I take your point. Unfortunately as I observed at the AN/I board, previous central discussions have not proved fruitful in achieving consensus. The complaint about you, as far as I can understand it, centres around the fact that most of your edits are minor ones, and that such minor edits changing one style preference to another are deprecated here. I would be happy to work with you in more detail to improve your edits, which have caused at least two people to ask you to stop. I would not have offered to help you if I did not believe you were adding value to the project; I am offering to show you how to add even more. Best wishes, --John 00:33, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate your positive approach. Compare main page articles with 'what links here' for date-bit articles such as June. The former have few date-bits linked, the latter have many. There are many weird formats out there such as [2nd] or [June 2|2 June]. Several hours ago, I voluntarily and temporarily halted fixing year-only links. I do not believe that there is ban on such edits and I hope that greater clarity for implementation of main page style can be provided in the styleguide.

Actually, I am sure that a systematic approach would be better to address this. Leaving it up to individual editors to edit article-by-article does not seem right for such a widespread problem. I am sure that I am not the only one that notices. Regards Lightmouse 01:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, here are my suggestions. First one is you could try and find a way to generate a community-wide consensus that (for example) delinking standalone years is worthwhile. Unfortunately don't think there is a stylistic consensus to be had on this issue at present. Don't let me stop you trying though.

Secondly, you could take a little more time and correct other formatting and stylistic errors as you go. Capitals in headings, links in headings, date formatting, reference formatting, unit formatting, and of course spelling errors (I just use the spell checker in Mozilla Firefox; but be careful about WP:ENGVAR when doing this.) Amazing prevalence of POV qualifiers like "actually", "interestingly", and my real bugbear "ironically". I would say that people are less likely to question what you are doing if it is accompanied with real and visible improvements of the article rather than just a stylistic change.

It's also maybe worth bearing in mind that in the unlikely event we ever do get a consensus to delink all years, we have bots to do stuff like that.

In summary: Make real improvements to articles; even formatting and especially spelling corrections are valued, but multiple edits which only or predominantly delink (say) years are highly frowned upon. I frown upon it too even though I agree with your stylistic preference, and here is why; for those like me with very many articles on our watchlist, it is time to check each edit isn't vandalism. Making many edits which only make small formatting corrections is ok, but I would rather see you making fewer edits and correcting more of what you work with.

Finally, always leave a good edit summary, like "copyedit, spelling; delink date fragments" so that people may scan your contributions and get an idea what you're doing. You're doing good work and please don't be put off by the suspicion you have encountered; it's just that this sort of issue has been the focus of needless conflict in the past, which is no fault of yours. Best wishes, and I really hope these ideas are some help, --John 06:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

First off, my apologies if my communication to you yesterday were brusque and confrontational. I was reacting to your exchanges with (and apparent blowing off of) LonewolfBC. I was under time pressure so I took the easy way out of threatening to block you rather than seeking to engage you as John has.

Let me make one more argument why you should abandon this campaign to de-link years. What you have to consider is that years are linked in many articles and they are linked because many editors like them to be linked.

Now, you may argue that this is irrelevant because those editors are wrong and you are improving the articles. However, even if it is true that you are right and that, where you de-link years, you are improving the articles, this doesn't mean it is useful or effective for you to spend your time de-linking.

You see, unless you can convince the editors who are watching those articles that you are right to de-link the years, all you are doing is aggravating them. If they dislike your de-linking, all they have to do is revert you and, by the way, all your other edits get reverted at the same time. What have you accomplished? Very little except to aggravate those other editors.

This is why it is incumbent for you to edit within the framework of a consensus rather than outside it. The collaborative nature of Wikipedia is such that your contributions will be edited mercilessly whether or not they add value to Wikipedia. It is better to operate inside consensus than to be right. Sounds strange but it's true.

If you don't think you can form a community-wide consensus for de-linking years, then try forming such consensuses on an article-by-article basis. This may seem tedious but it's likely to be more effective than getting your edits reverted. Try leaving a note on the Talk Page of each article to the effect of "I plan to de-link years in this article if nobody objects within the next 24-48 hours." This at least creates the possibility that someone who objects will notice and let you know so that you don't have to waste your time.

Hope this helps.

--Richard 09:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The Apprentice UK

Hello, Lightmouse/Archives/2007/July and thank you for your contributions on articles related to The Apprentice UK. I'd like to invite you to become a part of WikiProject The Apprentice UK, a WikiProject aiming to improve coverage of The Apprentice UK and related articles on Wikipedia.

If you would like to help out and participate, please come over and visit us here for more information. Thanks! Dalejenkins 13:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Air America Radio

Hi, I noticed you were doing a little minor editing on the Air America Radio page. At the time, I was doing a massive rewrite, and it may or may not have wiped out some of your changes. It looks like most of your changes were adding wiki links to dates, etc. Take a look at it and see if your changes are represented. Thanks.--Fightingirish 14:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks letting me know. No worries, I went through it again. Lightmouse 14:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Harold Shipman

Hi again Lightmouse. This relates to comments I made above, under the heading "Proposals". I noticed your edit to an article on my watchlist, and I applaud the minor changes you made. If you look at the edit I made after you though, there were a few spelling (this is clearly a UK-related article and so should use UK English spelling per WP:ENGVAR) and one date formatting fixes that you missed. While there was nothing at all wrong with your edit, I suggest slowing down from your present rate in favour of a more thorough copyedit. Please don't take this as a stern criticism; it is intended as constructive commentary with a view to preventing any more complaints about your editing pattern. Best wishes, --John 15:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I understand your comments are intended to be constructive. I sometimes make edits of copy but it is not really my thing. If I notice something wrong in the same way across many articles, I like to fix it. Wikipedia improves because there are a range of edits, from sweeping copy changes to pedantic nit-picks of detail.

I believe that there are many editors that operate like this. Wikipedia thrives on all and improves through all types of edit. I would not enjoy failing to apply a known improvement just because I can't find other improvements to make in the article. Delaying the application of a good fix is not a benefit to Wikipedia readers because delay is similar in effect to denial. Lightmouse 16:04, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. If you could even ensure that you completely fix date formatting errors though, that would be great. For example in the Shipman article there was a date you missed of the type "25 March". These should always read 25 March. Similarly I noticed at least one instance when previously reviewing your edits for the AN/I discussion where you omitted to wikify a date in the form 11 February 1970 to 11 February 1970, as should always be done. You may find there is less opposition to your edits if you are perceived as adding formatting to the articles you edit instead of always taking away, even though I hasten to add there is nothing at all wrong (in my view) with reducing overlinking. A useful rationale for reducing overlinking may be Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context, and under that I believe you can justify removing links to date fragments. However (and this is of course no fault of yours) there is a historical antipathy to editors who systematically strip out (or add) links to years. I'm very sure that if date fragments are delinked as part of a more general wikification, you are less likely to receive flak for it. Once again, please take my comments in the spirit in which they are intended. --John 16:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Your suggestion of linking full dates is one that I have considered several times. It would give a useful psychological impression and possibly make my life easier. It has already occured to me that adding and subtracting might be perceived or defended as neutral. However, I would be acting in a somewhat fraudulent manner. The fraud would be that I would be doing something that I have not yet been convinced is the best way of preventing edit wars over date preferences. The cure seems worse than the disease because of the unintended consequences (e.g. popular misconception that all date fragments must be linked). I just now did a bit of digging round and found that I am not the only one.

Quote 1 Given the unfortunate technical situation, in which dates can't be autoformatted without linking them, I'm now refusing to link any dates. I suggest that you do the same until the situation is resolved. Tony 22:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Quote 2 While the auto-formatting and linking functions are still the same, despite concerted attempts to get the techs at WM to fix this, I just don't care. I advise all WPians not to link any dates at all, and to choose the formatting they prefer, as long as consistent within an article. Make them fix this issue. Tony 14:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Quote 3 My own vote would be to not routinely link any dates unless the link is specifically relevant to the article, and instead to use separate notation or software parsing to convert dates to each user's preferred format without requiring links, as discussed in the bugfix. - Mglg 19:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I try to stay away from involvement in the solution that I think is flawed. However, I do sometimes act contrary to that policy. For example, I do edits such as [17th April] -> [17 April]. This is despite my belief that Wikipedia should permit '17th April' to remain visible to readers. Can't such things be permitted? Anyway, if you are really suggesting that delinking+linking would go down better, perhaps I might bite my lip and do it. But I don't know if it would. Lightmouse 19:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. While those quotes from other users were interesting and I have a lot of sympathy for the sentiment that it would be better if date formatting could be done independently of linking date elements, we have a duty to follow policy as it is now. It states unequivocally that dates should always be formatted in the form 1 January 2000. Have a think about it; I am appreciative of all the good work you are doing, but I want to maximise the utility of what you do for the project, and minimise the friction that your edits are causing among a section of the community. Best wishes, --John 23:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I will think about it. It would mean a lot of extra code and testing. Lightmouse 23:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. Have you ever thought about joining WP:TYPO? Loads of fun for us wikignomes... --John 04:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Undid deletion of construction and citations tags in IDEA article

Moved to Bot Requests. Lightmouse 10:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Flag icons

Thanks. I don't even have a monobook, I've been trying to avoid one. If I get def up completely, I'll take you up on it. :) Corvus cornix 02:10, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

You are welcome. I don't know what 'def up completely' means, but good luck. Lightmouse 09:52, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Kachess Lake

Besides that I don't understand the relation to dates, is there a particular reason why you delinked the scale page ([[1 E8 m2|163 km²]]? I guess it's debatable if (0.2947 km³) or (295,000,000 m³) is preferable, so I wouldn't go through changing it. -- User:Docu

Links to [1 E8 m2] seem wrong to me. I prefer unit values greater than 1 but I might have used 0.3 km³. On the occasions when I use units less than one, they tend to have only one, and rarely two, significant figures. A unit less then one and with 4 significant figures looks wrong to me. Quoted volumes for water are usually less than 1 cubic kilometres, often a lot less. I reduced it from 4 to 3 significant figures. Three significant figures seems to me to be about right for volume derived from imprecise estimates of the three dimensional shape of a lake. Feel free to disagree and change that.

Conversions are part art and part science. No matter what somebody does, somebody else can always suggest an alternative. I did question whether write 'million' or '000,000'. But it is not very important. My primary concern was to add the m³ volume to the obscure volume unit of 'acre feet'. It is of secondary importance to me whether it is m³ or km³ and how it is formatted. If you prefer it another way, feel free to edit it to the way you want.

Regards Lightmouse 19:09, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[[1 E8 m²|163 km²]] is a usual scale link, though the link should probably be calculated by a template.

0.3 km³ seems like a good solution.

The infoboxes for lakes currently use various formats for volume, more or less the format used in the articles. The list at [1] should be updated in a week or two (the current version is outdated, but can give an overview). I'd be glad if they were standardized in one way or the other, preferably using templates such as {{AcreFeetToM3}}. If you like to help compile an update once the new version (with approx. 3000 entries) is available, I should be able to find a way to upload it. -- User:Docu

I do not see the point of scale links. So I am not the person to discuss nuances of them. There are millions of values of around 100 km, 100 miles, 100 kg, 100 lb, 100 seconds, etc. Either they should all be linked or none of them. Since I do not see a benefit, the inconsistency is just one more reason why they look wrong. Perhaps there should be a widespread policy so we all know what is going on.

That list is interesting, if you made it editable I might help with metric values. It would help if there were good source data. Clearly there is a lot of variation. The more that I think about it, the more my head hurts. Templates do seem to be popular, although I have yet to decide whether they are a net benefit. They do have many advantages but a big disadvantage is that editors cannot immediately see how to fix precision errors. The AcreFeetToM3 template is used in one place (Lost Creek Lake) and that instance looks wrong because it has one more significant figure than the unconverted value. When I see template errors, I do not know how to fix them without deleting the template. The '{{convert' templates look like they are on the right lines because there is a field that should be 'significant figures'. But it fails for me because it is not 'significant figures'. It is not even 'decimal places'. Lightmouse 11:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Once a more recent version is available, I could try do an upload based on a list with "article name", "value before change", "reformatted value".

{{AcreFeetToM3}} needs a rounding parameter as there is on {{convert}}. It might be sufficient to round the volume by default to three digits (significant figures would be better, but I'm not sure if I could have this calculated in a template easily). For area and elevation, I started using {{converta}} which adds a few defaults to {{convert}}. -- User:Docu

Seasons

Hi again. I noticed your continuing formatting fixes. On this one, you delinked Spring (season); you can actually go further than this as, according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Seasons, "Because the seasons are reversed in each hemisphere—while areas near the equator tend to have just wet and dry seasons—neutral wording should be used to describe times of the year, such as "in early 1990", "in the second quarter of 2003", "around September" or an exact date, rather than references to seasons, unless there is some particular need to do so (e.g., "the autumn harvest")." I hope this is helpful rather than irritating to you but I thought it was the sort of thing you should know if you are going to do this sort of edit. Best wishes, --John 17:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not irritated at all by your suggestion. I appreciate that you are trying to support the work. I know that you want me to dilute nitpicking with copyediting. But it is a doomed strategy for me because I like nitpicking and don't like copyediting.

Internationalisation is a 'good thing' and seasonal terms can cause problems in some text. I support the guidance for copyeditors but only to the extent that problems are real. For nitpick delinkers, the additional effort of copyediting is non-trivial. So I have to look at the benefit before going further.

In many cases the text is already unambiguous due to context (e.g. "Canada Day is Canada's main patriotic holiday, often a time for outdoor activities in the early Canadian summer"). In such cases, rewriting the text would be of little benefit in real terms and may even be badly received. I would rather give up correcting seasonal links than be obliged to reword copy. A survey of the first 10 of 'what links here' for [summer] shows 10 out of 10 are unambiguous. Look at a sample of articles in this way for yourself. I do appreciate your feedback. Lightmouse 19:27, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I see your point. I generally assume the use of northern seasons, and simply substitute spring xxxx -> early xxxx, summer xxxx -> mid-xxxx, autumn/fall xxxx -> late xxxx. Winter is more of a problem as it covers two years; fortunately its misuse seems less prevalent. Keep up the good work, --John 20:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

ANI again

See here. I want to make it clear again to you that there is no consensus for mass delinking of dates. If your edits are, or are perceived to be, mainly delinking dates, there is a precedent for being blocked. This is because mass minor edits are deprecated, because of the principle embodied in "Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists." That's from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser; I know you were not using AWB but the same principle applies; unless you are adding value to these articles, these edits solely to remove date links will attract criticism. --John 04:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)