Talk:Scientists report correlation between locations of Easter Island statues and water resources

Here's hoping

Two sources and only one day old (as it's now Friday on Wikinews). Sincerely hoping, here. --Pi zero (talk) 05:02, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I wrote it late at night and wanted to let it sit for a minute. Then sleep happened. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:47, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Been there, done that. --Pi zero (talk) 13:37, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

As have I :P BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 00:43, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

If nobody beats me to it (a fairly safe assumption, at this point, but you never know) I will see what I can do early afternoon UTC. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 00:43, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I added SciAm because I was on the fence about the reliability of NatGeo. I mean they're reliable in general but this looked like travel advocacy, so I added the Scientific American source for the content about the scientific speculation about the history of Easter Island. The only stuff supported solely by NatGeo is currently the distances of Easter Island from other landmasses and the dimensions of the statues, for which I am confident NatGeo is reliable.

Weirdly enough, the Scientific American article is in British English, "artefact" and all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:32, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: Looks like you've got the wrong URL for the SciAm article. --Pi zero (talk) 02:41, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, is "artefact" considered British spelling? I've never entirely trusted "rules" about what is American vs British. Local dialects and even idiolects may vary. Some of my usages are supposedly "British", likely because I'm a New England native. Though I'm no so keen on mixing conventions that I appreciate my laptop using an American spelling dictionary in my text editor but a British spelling dictionary in my web browser (or is it the other way around...). --Pi zero (talk) 03:23, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Well that's what dictionaries and style guides are for. Yup, "artefact" is as British as the tea and crumpets and knowing that Big Ben is the name of the bell and not the whole tower except it's sort of shifted to become the name of both. Darkfrog24 (talk)

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@Pi zero: most likely English US for the OS. Changing the language changes the keyboard and '@' swaps with '"'. Tilde's position messes up, too.
223.227.15.24 (talk) 05:50, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

The OS has been US English all along, yes. Other software sometimes comes with its own dictionary, so variety mismatches come and go.

Re dictionaries and style guides, I generally treat them as I would news sources, potentially insightful but not inherently authoritative, to be judged case-by-case. That's why e.g. when I resort to dead-tree dictionaries I usually consult several (we've got a compact OED (I mean the original, I avoid the new one), a Webster's Second (I avoid the third), a Random House Second, and, fwiw, a Random House First). --Pi zero (talk) 13:03, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Atm, I find by experiment, my text editor prefers "valor", my web browser, "valour". Though I deely disapprove, in any case, that automatic spell-checkers can't recognize when the rules change since they deal only with the forms of words, never the meaning of the text; as when one is quoting Shakespeare or, even more insidiously, shifting momentarily into Elizabethan mode. --Pi zero (talk) 13:25, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

My personal solution is to gradually add new versions to my spellcheck as and when I encounter them. With enwn global in output, it is useful and convenient to have them all covered and to choose which one manually. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:30, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

• I still have Things to Do in the Real World, but I'm still planing to review this on my return from meatspace. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:22, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, considering I was a WT:MOS regular and worked on articles about punctuation and language, a lot of my experience on Wikipedia with using style guides as a source has been that they're the best sources that exist for that subject matter, and sometimes the only ones. Whenever someone says "Don't use a style guide! Also you're wrong and I'm right." And I say "Well do you have a source that says you're right? You got an article from a linguistics journal? You got a book? A newspaper article? You got a blog post from a linguistics professor? Maybe a published lecture; there might be one on YouTube. Did Language Log ever cover this? 'Cause all of those are good sources. If you don't want to put it in the article but just convince me here on this talk page, you could tell me where you got what you're saying. Was it a college course on linguistics?" and then they shuffle their feet, change the subject and accuse me of being a %$##&ing $#@& who @$%#*s $#**@s. Generally, there don't tend to be sources that contradict the style guides. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:49, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

On one hand, despite the value of knowing one's way around such source material (which should not be underestimated), it's possible to be too fond of sources. Not all wisdom comes from sources; it's always necessary to think about the whole context of the situation. As I recall noticing from some articles we did a few years ago, the highest OECD literacy level is ability to assess reliability of sources, which they figured was a level of literacy only achieved by maybe a percent or two of the population even in the most literate populations. I remarked at the time, reviewers do that on Wikinews all the time, intensively, assessing sources.

But on the other hand, by that same belief in the importance of case-by-case context, it's hazardous to try to discuss something like this in the abstract. --Pi zero (talk) 17:05, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, any given project (WMF or otherwise) may have a good reason to do its own thing. My view is to do as the experts do unless and until you can convince me of a damn good reason otherwise. (Which, in practice, is do as the experts do: I can't offhand think of any occasion such a reason has ever actually turned up.) All of the sources you mentioned are respected for a reason, and we would do well to avoid conflicting with them unless they themselves were in conflict with some mysterious Other Consideration; the fact I can think of no such considerations thus far is self-evident of the amount of caution required to do such. Anyways, I'm going to start reviewing in a second. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:09, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

<nods> I've got a few minutes' worth of stuff to do off-line, and then I figure I'll dive into review-mode myself. --Pi zero (talk)

Review of revision 4458253 [Passed]

Revision 4458253 of this article has been reviewed by Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 17:50, 12 January 2019 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: Genuinely fascinating The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4458253 of this article has been reviewed by Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 17:50, 12 January 2019 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: Genuinely fascinating The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

wikify

{{wikify}}
103.254.128.86 (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I actively prefer the bracket style because it doesn't activate the green underlining. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Even after full archiving, though, we do put non-local links in {{w}} unless they specifically need to be permanently non-local, and even then I s'pose one might prefer to use {{w}} with foreign=force. I think I saw some links here to wiktionary using [[wikt:...]]. --Pi zero (talk) 03:24, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Evidently, not everyone understands what the template requests: avoid hard links where it should not exist.
•–• 04:17, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

I fully acknowledge that I do not understand a lot of this stuff, but that link just leads straight back to the article. Was it meant to go to some Wikinews policy or essay? At the time of my previous reply, there was a big blue box that read "An editor has requested to use {{w}} and {{wikt}} for linking instead of [[w:...]] and [[wikt:...]] respectively. Don't forget to wikilink keywords." Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:50, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Not everything is in the policy, not everything has to be in the policy. It is a no-brainer to make use of {{w}} and {{wikt}} instead of hard links to the project. Hard links should be used only when they are necessary.
•–• 03:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC)