User talk:DannyS712/Archive 1

New Hampshire crash kills seven, including former US Marines

Published. Congrats! There are, of course, plenty of lessons to take away from this first one for future articles; see my review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 15:52, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: thanks so much --DannyS712 (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Trump administration drops citizenship question from census

Unfortunately, Trump reversed himself again, de-freshening the article. --Pi zero (talk) 00:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

That's unfortunate. I'll try to update it with the reversal --DannyS712 (talk) 12:31, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

What do you think of adding a photo of Donald Trump to the article? Something from this year perhaps such as File:President Donald Trump April 2019.jpg.. Gryllida (talk) 23:48, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: My current focus is on getting it published while it is still fresh. --DannyS712 (talk) 06:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

WEST AFRICA ASK SCOTLAND TO ASSIT IN NUCLEAR

Your call was a good one. In fact, the same pagename had been created before, by an IP differing only in the last few bits. The first time I'd deleted it as a test page; this time I called it spam. --Pi zero (talk) 22:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I saw it a few hours ago, but figured it was just being developed - I'll remember for the future. --DannyS712 (talk) 22:42, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Re: US House of Representatives holds Barr, Ross in contempt

I've left a few remarks about the layout of the article, here. Please check. To reply to them, click 'edit' and add your comment at the end.

Thanks and regards, --Gryllida (talk) 00:44, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Responded there --DannyS712 (talk) 01:03, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

• See my review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

  I'm seeing this is now published as

  US House of Representatives holds two Cabinet officers in criminal contempt of Congress

  Congratulations DannyS712!!! Thanks for updating the story per the feedback.

  It is an interesting read; I have not heard of this event previously. Gryllida (talk) 23:51, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

  It was interesting to write! Thanks for the feedback --DannyS712 (talk) 23:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikinewsie cats

I've had moments like that myself, where I'll start doing something that seems like a good idea, and then as I get further in it looks more and more off-kilter. --Pi zero (talk) 03:36, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. For me, coming from enwiki, it seems like categorization here leaves a lot to be desired (no offense). I'll be more careful in the future. Is there a centralized place if I have a proposal about categorization? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 03:37, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Categories are used differently here than at Wikipedia, so that the concerns and challenges here are novel. (No offense taken. :-) I've also been quite heavily involved, over the years, in developing the category system at English Wikibooks, which is different again (and its development is partway through a major overhaul that's been underway since 2016). --Pi zero (talk) 12:13, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Maps

If you open visual editor on the four teenagers story, in 'Insert' menu, there is an option to add a map. I'd suggest to add " Clairton, Pennsylvania, " point on it and zoom out to a level that an international reader would understand. (Witohut visual editor, see mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer for an external tool that may help you generate the relevant wiki markup.) --Gryllida (talk) 07:03, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Done thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 07:16, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks and about renaming/moving

Thanks for catching that unprotected article in the archive. Another thing I want to mention is don't leave redirects when articles are in development stages. They often get renamed/moved multiple times and it just leaves a tangled web. Cheers, --SVTCobra 22:57, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I don't have the ability to suppress redirects... but can you delete the redirect I left behind? Also, can you move it to Tropical Depression Three approaches Florida? I don't want to leave another redirect behind. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:00, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

I keep forgetting that. I just assume it's an option everybody has. Sorry. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: not sure if you saw it - can you move the article? --DannyS712 (talk) 23:10, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

I could, but I don't like that title. I feel the title should be more unique. This basically describes an annual event. --SVTCobra 23:14, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. If it gets named it should be moved back to storm, but until then I guess this is fine. Also, is there any chance you could take a look at Four teenagers shot at Pennsylvania graduation party? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:16, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Four teenagers shot at Pennsylvania graduation party

Your article has been published, thanks. —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 01:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mikemoral: thanks so much. --DannyS712 (talk) 01:34, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Voter eligibility

Hi. You've been so active these past few weeks, I had to go back and check carefully to realize you're not eligible to vote in this year's ArbCom election — it calls for 250 edits before July 1 of this year, and you've only got, I think, 22. So I moved your votes to the respective comments sections. --Pi zero (talk) 01:39, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. Thanks for checking and letting me know --DannyS712 (talk) 01:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Re Tropical depression Chantal approaches Florida

What is a 'tropical depression'? Perhaps a note of this would be a nice addition to the story? --Gryllida (talk) 02:22, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: explanation added --DannyS712 (talk) 02:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Nice, thanks :-) Gryllida (talk) 04:56, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Argh. We lost freshness when the NHC update came out at 5:00 a.m. local (that's 0900 UTC). Their next update is due at 11:00 a.m. local (1500 UTC); we would then likely have a six hour window in which to update our article and review and publish. That six hour window is right in the middle of the local day for me, so there's a good chance I could provide the review part of the effort, if someone can update and re-submit the article within the first few hours of the window. --Pi zero (talk) 13:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I've updated it again --DannyS712 (talk) 18:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

<nods> And I'm taking a look. (Though I'm aware there's another article now on the queue marked for quick review.) --Pi zero (talk) 18:44, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Boris Johnson elected Conservative leader, slated to be Britain's next Prime Minister

Your article has passed review. —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 02:10, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mikemoral: thanks so much --DannyS712 (talk) 02:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I have to say, you certainly beat me to the story! It was the first thing in my news feeds this morning. Thanks again for writing, —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 02:22, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for reviewing --DannyS712 (talk) 02:23, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

About your user category, you can use {{topic cat}} and it will give you the standard category set up, with the chronological list formed using Dynamic Page Lists, like with Cat:Mikemoral (Wikinewsie). —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 02:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks; that's why I wanted to add them in order --DannyS712 (talk) 02:36, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

person categories

It's been proposed recently that we try to avoid putting person cats directly in topic cats (though historically we've sometimes done that), by instead putting the person cats into subcats of Category:People by occupation. An exemplar for that sort of thing is Category:Prime ministers of Pakistan. --Pi zero (talk) 04:10, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Heh. All those words and failed to get to the point. I'm suggesting we might want an occupation cat for US senators. --Pi zero (talk) 04:12, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I've set up Category:Members of the US Senate. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 05:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'm going to start creating a Category:US Presidents for the person cats --DannyS712 (talk) 14:07, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

(Goodness but this stuff is evolving fast atm.) --Pi zero (talk) 12:17, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Double spaces don't show

Hey Danny. You do know that double spaces don't render for the reader, right? Whether the Wikicode has one space or two, it will always show up as one in the readable text. There are two spaces before the T in this sentence. And there is one space before the A in this one. See how they look different in Wikicode but the same in final text?

I do not mind at all if you want to remove double spaces from text because it makes you feel better or for any reason whatsoever. I just wanted to make sure you knew that it was not necessary so you could spend your valuable time elsewhere if you prefer. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:38, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

/me looks at this with bemusement. Of course, the basic technical point is objectively true: the extra whitespace makes no difference in how things appear. My bemusement is rooted in suspicion I'm somewhat in the minority around here in believing text is better off having double-spaces between sentences because it provides useful meta-information when editing. --Pi zero (talk) 12:21, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

/me agrees with Pi zero that they are likely in the minority --DannyS712 (talk) 19:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Ooooh, yeah. Double spaces do provide a slight advantage. Nice. But the point stands: It is not necessary to remove them but no one's going to fight you over it. Darkfrog24 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:23, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

:-)  --Pi zero (talk) 03:05, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Conrad Burns

Thanks for keeping after this; it took a lot to shake my memory loose, but we finally got there. And, yes, it's another example of why it would be really nice to have a page that reminds us of stuff like this (rather than waiting on the fallible memories of, er, folks like me). --Pi zero (talk) 19:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: sure, I was going to see what happens to that category before filing a couple more DRs --DannyS712 (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

I should go back over the cats I've worked on lately; I may have walked right past one or more like this. --Pi zero (talk) 19:36, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: please see a starting list at User:DannyS712/empty for categories that could use attention --DannyS712 (talk) 19:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

geocats on articles

Another tidbit about geocats (evidently we are collecting them): on categories, we don't take the transitive closure of subcat relations, but on articles we do (for geocats, and some others, that is). This is because for DPLs there is no way to specify "list everything that's in this category or in any of its descendant categories"; so in order to get that effect, every article in Category:Puerto Rico also goes in Category:United States and Category:North America. (All this is different from categories, because we don't build DPLs of categories; so we don't list Category:Puerto Rico directly in Category:North America to avoid cluttering the ancestor category.)

(Yes, this is an imperfect system because it doesn't give us any way to mark articles that have to do with the United States as a whole rather than with some part of the United States. It's also of paramount importance, though, that our category system be really simple, so it's easy to use. There's a more elaborate system in place at Wikibooks, for classifying books by topic; it's got a hierarchy of bookshelves by topic, and each book is directly listed on certain shelves, indirectly on all larger shelves containing those, and it's possible to distinguish between direct and indirect listings because for each bookshelf there are two separate categories, the direct listings and the indirect ones. That particular machinery is specialized to the logistical and technical circumstances of Wikibooks, though.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:11, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know --DannyS712 (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the editing...

...of French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses the English Channel on the jet-powered Flyboard Air. Appreciate the minor but important changes. :-)

Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 07:09, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: no problem. I'm not a reviewer, but I'm just trying to make it easier for a reviewer to eventually publish the article --DannyS712 (talk) 07:15, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Userspacing articles

I see you've requested three articles be userspaced. We went through a brief phase where we were doing a bunch of userspacing for students, before which afaik it had mostly only been done for OR articles; the userspace parameter on the template got added during that brief phase. The phase didn't last because there turned out to be difficulties (such as copyright concerns), and then recently we got especially wary of userspacing synthesis because some people were using it so heavily it was edging over into "web hosting"; really, part of the reason Wikinews is able to function is that abandoning our unsuccessful efforts keeps us focused on current events (well... and curating our past mostly-successes, of course). At any rate, we're now fairly cautious about this sort of thing. We're not completely opposed, though. What's your thinking on requesting userspacing for these three articles?

• Tropical Storm Barry makes landfall on Louisiana coast, strengthening to category 1 hurricane
• Westfield Transport Inc. closes as Massachusetts' attorney general launches investigation
• US President Trump says he may use executive order to add citizen question to 2020 census

--Pi zero (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: both to keep them to learn from my mistakes and in case their content is ever useful - for example if there are more developments to the citizenship question story. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:16, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I looked at each, and one other also marked since, and decided to allow them. I'm wary of the concept going forward, as the boundaries of this sort of thing are unclear; but I reckon you're in good standing, and the problem of preserving object lessons in the early learning stages is something we've struggled with for years. --Pi zero (talk) 12:25, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: thanks. I'm glad to hear that I'm in good standing. --DannyS712 (talk) 12:26, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

:-)  --Pi zero (talk) 13:28, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Re: welcome-a-bit subscription

Hi DannyS712,

I've set up the list page, where your topics of interest are listed. Because you haven't selected any, it is the 'Developing' and 'Review' category names, where any new drafts would appear. The script will see it and send you an wiki message shortly, after a next draft is created.

As you're using the on-wiki subscription, please see this release announcement, which contains a user script that can help you clean up the notifications from your talk page.

When a new draft is created I personally prefer to leave a new message at the talk page of the author, where they discover it more quickly -- perhaps more quickly than at the talk page of the article. I personally prefer to not edit the article directly for the first 12 hours, so that they have an opportunity to do as much work as they can themselves; after that I aim to do everything I can to make the article ready for publication, and submit it for review, leaving them a note of what I did.

Please let me know if there are any issues with this message delivery. It is designed to encourage the recipient's involvement in helping newcomers, but simply testing the message delivery and reporting bugs would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks and regards, --Gryllida (talk) 00:40, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: thanks so much --DannyS712 (talk) 00:44, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

You're welcome :-)

Regards, Gryllida (talk) 02:35, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikinews recent additions 08:19, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

• Presunciones (Category(ies): Review; added by Kitoko investigador at 2019-08-09 08:12:40, epoch 1565338360) --Trigonidiida (talk) 08:19, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

--Trigonidiida (talk) 08:19, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Do you speak Spanish? What does the content mean? Gryllida (talk) 08:30, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: Some (not fluent), but I double checked with google translate - its very clearly out of scope. --DannyS712 (talk) 08:31, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I think it is alluding to events of years ago involving Lucio Gutiérrez, but either way it is nonsense. --SVTCobra 09:44, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Tom Watson announces retirement from competitive links golf

Hi Danny. I saw you worked a bit on this article. In the future, I hope you will recognize that Hecato was using the wrong focal event to keep the submission fresh. I'm sorry I didn't look at it sooner, but it had a built in focal event of Watson's last tournament around which the article could have been written. I know this is 20-20 hindsight, but I thought I'd point it out. Cheers, --SVTCobra 19:27, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I was just trying to clean it up, in case it was refocussed and salvaged. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 20:03, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Re: John Hickenlooper expected to end presidential bid, run for Senate instead

Couple questions at the article talk page. Please check. --Gryllida (talk) 04:32, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: thanks. Replied there --DannyS712 (talk) 05:04, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

This strikes me as an interesting exercise in article focus. Atm I'm thinking (a) it likely can be written up in a way that provides a newsworthy focus and passable article, though (b) it seems likely we'd run out of time, since the candidate is likely to make the thing official in a relatively small number of hours. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 06:50, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: thanks for the in depth review - I just finished reading your comments. At this point, I'll wait and see if there is an announcement before continuing. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:51, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

A big thank you...

...for your serious attention to detail, and how to write it consistantly in a way others can understand. I saw it at this article and was amazed how you and SVTCobra are working it out together. --Gryllida (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: thanks - just happy to contribute --DannyS712 (talk) 04:38, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikinews recent additions 22:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• South African 'Lion Man' killed by his lions (Category(ies): Review; added by DannyS712 at 2019-08-21 21:25:09, epoch 1566422709) --Trigonidiida (talk) 22:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

--Trigonidiida (talk) 22:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

In this story I think you might want to swap the last paragraph with the one in the middle. As I think the middle one is more like background. I am not sure... Gryllida (talk) 03:08, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Originally they were swapped, but since the middle one talks about how he couldn't be saved I thought that should be second instead of third. I don't have a strong preference though --DannyS712 (talk) 03:10, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Archival of notifications

Hi DannyS712

There is a script to remove talk page notifications. Please see it linked in one of the prior discussions at the technical water cooler. If you like. It helps to declutter the talk page somewhat.

There is another script to archive talk page conversations. I use it at my talk page. It is linked in my talk page history edit summaries. I find it a little useful for removal of all conversations which no longer need an action to be taken, to an '/Archive' sub page.

Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 03:07, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know --DannyS712 (talk) 03:11, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

On the campaign trail

You might want to check with User:William S. Saturn to see if he has already started working on some pieces. I don't know that we have any article with those words in the title which weren't Saturn's work. You probably saw already, but he posted an interview today which is in the newsroom. --SVTCobra 01:57, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: thanks for letting me know. I'm going to be really busy the next few months, but was thinking long term. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Miscellaneous neatifying

A couple of stray thoughts on neatifying articles. These are edging into territory where a mere gesture toward the style guide won't suffice.

• The ordering I've followed for trailing elements on an article has been, after the last section (which is usually Sources, unless an optional External links section is provided), {{publish}}, {{archive}} (once applied), categories, interwikis. Thinking back to where I learned that ordering from, I think our now-venerable review gadget was crafted to try to do things that way, only that particular bit of its code never quite worked right, so it was often necessary to move {{publish}} down after the gadget had inserted it in between two of the sources, or the like. That gadget is a major piece of our existing automation written in the Before Time (another major piece that comes to mind being makelead); that code is scary to contemplate changing much, so we mean eventually to replace it with an assistant based on the dialog tools, but meanwhile I think within the past few years the code has been tweaked so it just puts the tag at the end, which isn't what was intended either, and I fix it when I'm archiving each article, but at least it doesn't insert the tag into the middle of the list of sources.
• I've been observing your hardening of local links via {{w}}. Afaik everything you've done has been fine, but the nuances of using {{w}} are complicated, so I'll take the opportunity to ramble a bit on the subject. Before we deployed the current {{w}} template (in early 2011), all our wikilinks were hardcoded, and despite a long-established policy that local links should be used if available, almost all wikilinks were hardcoded to go to Wikipedia. The only local links were ones that everyone knew were sure to have local links; mostly, countries and US states. That makes sense because it avoids distractions from the really difficult fundamentals of news production (accuracy, neutrality), but it made Wikinews feel less like an independent project and more like an appendix of Wikipedia, and it created a huge amount of finicky busy-work if we ever dared to create a new category, which strongly discouraged expansion of our category hierarchy. As more and more of our articles (also slowly expanding backward into our archives) use {{w}} we can instantly shift existing links to a new category once it's set up, and the motivation has shifted from discouraging new categories to encouraging them. Category coverage has increased markedly, increasing fractions of wikilinks are local, and the project feels more independent. Meanwhile, at the level of individual wikilinks: part of my notion was that when {{w}} links to a local target, it categorizes the article in Category:Pages with categorizable local links, when it links nonlocally, Category:Pages with defaulting non-local links. The categorizable set are articles where one might consider adding the article to the corresponding category (if it's related enough); the defaulting set are suggestions for possible future creation of categories.

--Pi zero (talk) 14:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. If you want the gadget to put the publish tag at the end (or is there another place that is preferred?) I can take a look at the code. --DannyS712 (talk) 23:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Mugabe

Thanks for fixing NewsDay, I didn't know pubtarget existed as a parameter so we can pipe publishers. Anyway, I am going to continue writing the article now. I'll tag it {{editing}} just so we don't get edit conflicts. Cheers, --SVTCobra 19:41, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

No problem - I didn't either until I looked at the source for {{source}} --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Exceptional newcomer award

For demonstrating exceptional enthusiasm and skill in confronting the initial learning curve of our project, I present you with the Exceptional Newcomer Award. --Pi zero (talk) 12:37, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I realize I'm a bit late with this; you've already received a barnstar, and you've ten published articles — one more (with one on the queue now) and you'll qualify for a cub reporter award. Still, we've noticed the energy you've applied to learning Wikinews. --Pi zero (talk) 12:37, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: thanks so much --DannyS712 (talk) 16:44, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Contributing Reporter

This award is presented to Wikinews reporters upon their 11th published news article.

Congrats. --Pi zero (talk) 05:17, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 05:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Abbreviations and acronyms

Hi, there's absolutely not any written policy I can point to for this, but I think we should allow for more 'compression' in image captions and or image credits. I would never abbreviate w:United States Department of State as "DOS" in the body of an article, even though Wikipedia says it is the main acronym for the department. A non-American reader wouldn't know what "State Department" is, either, in my estimation. Most countries call it the Foreign Ministry or some variation thereof and a non-familiar reader would have to click the link anyway to understand what is meant. And in the image credits, especially, I feel it is only for the truly curious. Anyway, these are just my thoughts on it. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: sorry, I didn't mean to overstep. I just thought that, since it isn't used in the article, it shouldn't be cut to DOS. Again, sorry --DannyS712 (talk) 01:55, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

No worries. You are not wrong to do it. I know you are frustrated that our guidelines aren't fully fleshed out, so I just wanted to explain my thoughts. I haven't reverted your edit; I'm just saying imho (or maybe not perceived as humble opinion) it was unnecessary. You didn't overstep or anything. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:07, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the follow up --DannyS712 (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: do you think you could help me populate Category:Cabinet of Donald Trump? If so, please add the category to the following (protected) articles:

• United States President Trump dismisses Secretary of State Tillerson
• US House of Representatives holds two Cabinet officers in criminal contempt of Congress

And also add wikilinks to Cabinet of Donald Trump. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

A fairly bold addition, but I can't say I disagree, so I populated as best I could. I also tweaked the category page. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:43, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

See response on the category's talk page about your tweaks --DannyS712 (talk) 02:44, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

create missing comments page

Hi. I saw you created a couple comment pages for articles in the deep archive. I wouldn't do that until we get around to putting the {{haveyoursay}} button in the article. Also, it's a lot easier when the button is there because the missing page can be created with a single click. And there are thousands of articles which don't have comment pages yet.

Are you eager for something to tinker with? Are you familiar with Wikidata? --SVTCobra 03:19, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

I made a few, because I wanted to make sure I got it right when I created the comments for Riots in Tonga, which is linked from Sitting Tongan Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva dies aged 78 (currently on the main page). At some point, I'd like to be able to help out with cleaning up the archive, but since those pages are protected that isn't going to be likely. And yes, I am familiar with wikidata. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 03:21, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, it's not quite the archive, but a lot of our categories need to be linked with Wikidata. If you look at Category:Cornell University which you started the other day, I made some additions to it (not just populating the category). One of the sisters fields in {{topic cat}} is wikidata. It is missing for a lot of our categories, so it needs to be put in with the Q number. The easiest way to find it is to go through the Wikipedia page or Commons category which corresponds. And then, we need to update the Wikidata entry. Oh, shit LOL. I just saw you have 75K edits there. OK, then. Well, I'll change my tone, since that's your turf. At some point or other, somebody ran a bot or something. And our categories became associated with the Q number for "Category:Something" but we want it to be associated with "Something" directly, so when people look at Wikipedia's page for w:Cornell University they will see Wikinews right there in the left hand column under "In other projects".

You can see my wikidata:Special:Contributions/SVTCobra edit history for how I have been switching them over as I semi-systematically update our categories. Adding links to other sisters is also helpful. Images can be added, and where applicable, flags, location maps. I think {{topic cat}} has a list of the available parameters and optional parameters. Are you familiar with Wikidata LOL. --SVTCobra 03:57, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

On the other hand, maybe you came here to get away from Wikidata, so this might not interest you. Maybe you are interested in becoming a reviewer? You could read Wikinews:Reviewing articles and Wikinews:Tips on reviewing articles and do mock reviews on the two articles I have submitted. Make the changes you think are necessary and write a comment on the talk page. And then if Pi zero doesn't make any changes when he does his review, I'd say that's an A+ 100% score. Becoming a Reviewer is definitely the first step towards Adminship because without understand the review process we wouldn't let people muck about in the archives. Cheers, --SVTCobra 04:09, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: Yes, I've been thinking about that - I posted at User talk:Pi zero#Working towards reviewer a bit ago. I'll take a look at your articles though --DannyS712 (talk) 04:41, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

(cc SVTCobra) There was a bot that did a bunch of those, yes. That was one of the several times over the years I've politely left a note on someone's user page there letting them know there's a policy in place there about Wikinews topic categories. (I've learned to be decisive and friendly about it.) Which has had good responses in all but one case, where the person I contacted threatened to block me if I continued following the policy (that got quite unpleasant; but most Wikidatans in my experience have been quite friendly folks). At any rate, the bot hasn't run since. --Pi zero (talk) 23:56, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, btw (fwiw), there's a further complication when creating missing opinions pages for old articlesUser:SVTCobra: occasionally it turns out that there really is an opinions page, that was left behind by a rename after it had been created. So before creating a comments page for an article I always check the revision history for moves that might have left the opinions behind. --Pi zero (talk) 00:54, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the note --DannyS712 (talk) 03:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: Quarry:query/36472 lists the 7000+ enwikinews categories that have a wikidata item with the description "Wikimedia category" - I'll look into reducing that number, given the explanation above --DannyS712 (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: currently migrating categories from the category wikidata item to the topic's item --DannyS712 (talk) 02:42, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Legislation article

Thanks for your help with organizing the sources and various fixes and whatnot. I think it was good to separate out the news sources and the myriad legislation text sources. Thanks again, —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 21:47, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mikemoral: no problem - if you look above, I'm working towards becoming a reviewer, so I try to take a look at all new articles and help however I can --DannyS712 (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

It's certainly good practice for learning to review articles, and it definitely helps with clearing the reviee queue. —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 22:37, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Humberto

Hi. I am surprised you are not reporting on: this --SVTCobra 01:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: haven't had a chance yet. If you want to start something, I can be a second set of eyes? --DannyS712 (talk) 01:15, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra:  Doing... --DannyS712 (talk) 01:22, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

OK, good. Yes, I could write it, but that just puts more pressure on Pi zero, so thanks. --SVTCobra 01:45, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Pinging in edit summaries

Since templates don't get expanded in edit summaries, to get a working pin I think you need to code a wikilink (using double-square-brackets). --Pi zero (talk) 03:15, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: I realized as soon as I saved - I meant to use [[User:__]] Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 03:16, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Commons

You have some experience at Commons, what do you think of what I said here: Commons:Template talk:PD-CSPAN. I think that template is wrong. --SVTCobra 01:28, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Will take a look --DannyS712 (talk) 01:32, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Reviews

Hi Danny. I will begin the Trump taxes review shortly. If you are still pursuing reviewer rights and you have interest and/or time, perhaps you would like to do a mock review of one of the other two articles up for review. And I don't just mean doing copy-editing and adding categories, but writing your assessment on the talk page: Did you find the article ready to publish or not? If no, state why. If yes, state any changes you made which you felt the author should have gotten right before submitting. You've seen the type of commentary Pi leaves on his reviews; that's what I mean.
I think Wikinews would be well served by another active reviewer. It can quickly become a bottleneck because it often takes longer to review an article than it does to write it. Every fact needs to be confirmed in the listed sources. Cheers, --SVTCobra 18:38, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I wasn't comfortable leaving this on the talk page, so writing here; I took a look at Swedish academy announces 2019 Nobel Prize winners in physics.

• While the sources use "Universe" (capital), generally its used as lower case, so I switched it, but it wouldn't be wrong to use uppercase here
• Both sources use "James", not "Jim" - "Jim" can't be found anywhere in either article. I'm sure there are sources that use "Jim", but none that were cited, so I switched it to be using "James". The enwiki article, however, is at w:Jim Peebles, so I had to pipe it.
• Given how long its been since it was submitted, I updated the date and phrasing to reflect that its Thursday (when it would most likely be published; Friday would be getting close to stale)
• Total edits made: https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_academy_announces_2019_Nobel_Prize_winners_in_physics&type=revision&diff=4520756&oldid=4520271
• Verdict: If I were a reviewer, I would publish the article, specifically Special:Permalink/4520756
  1. Copyright - pass
     • Earwigs flagged phrases "the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics" and "scientists have been able to", both fairly common
     • The quotation was also flagged, but it is properly attributed
  2. Newsworthiness - pass
     • Specific -
     • Relevant -
     • Fresh - , but not for long
  3. Verifiability - pass
  4. NPOV - pass
  5. Style - pass
     • I switched "Universe" to "universe", but, as noted above, "U" would probably be acceptable
     • Headline - personally, would prefer "Swedish academy announces winners of 2019 Nobel Prize in physics" or "2019 winners of Nobel", but "Swedish academy announces 2019 Nobel Prize winners in physics" meets the requirements

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 09:39, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: was published by Pi zero - see edits made: https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_academy_announces_2019_Nobel_Prize_winners_in_physics&type=revision&diff=4521029&oldid=4520756 --DannyS712 (talk) 23:44, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Looks like most of the changes made by Pi come down to personal preferences. Not sure why Pi deemed that one fact about the number of exoplanets needed to be attributed while the others were fine. So, I'd say you did a fine job. BTW, what is this 'Earwigs' tool you speak of? Cheers, --SVTCobra 12:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/ --DannyS712 (talk) 06:51, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712, SVTCobra: Though I aspire to apply maximal expertise to each decision, that's not at all the same thing as "personal preference". To test the question, I've gone through and scrutinized each of the edits I made.

• diff — The concern here is straightforward, though the application was an interesting challenge as I remarked in the edit summary. Use of "America" to mean "US" is inherently non-neutral. In my experience, there's a very strong correlation between people who complain bitterly that this usage is not biased, and people who live in the US.
• diff — This addressed two concerns at once. One concern was that there was a phrase here verbatim from source. That phrase was a bit over the length threshold (nominally four consecutive words, by the rule of thumb); there is a certain art to judging this, to do with when a sequence of words becomes such a cliche (stock phrase) that its selection by the writer can be treated as more-or-less a single choice and thus, for purposes of word count toward the rule of thumb, more-or-less a single "word"; but when in doubt, breaking up such constructs is preferable. The other concern was with the use of the word "discovery". In the interest of neutrality, when science reporting discusses interpretation of empirical data, avoid terms such as "reveal", "show", "discover" that carry a suggestion that truth is being uncovered; we seek to not endorse such interpretations; this shouldn't be an obstacle to reporting, with attribution, that the scientists gave this interpretation — and with avoiding words like "reveal", "show", etc.
• diff — Subtle little violations of WN:Future can be easily overlooked, and catching them is all the more valuable for that.
• diff — Here again, two concerns. The first concern is that, to be precise, these exoplanets were already there so some precision is called for. The second concern is the attribution; and SVTCobra questioned, above, why this fact should want attribution while the other did not. It's because numbers are much easier for people to have different takes on and thus harder to pin down as generally-agreed-upon-common-knowledge than are simple discrete points like 51-Pegasus-b-was-the-first-exoplanet-discovered (yes, that's more like an observation than an interpretation, so "discover" is fine).
• diff — Another distance-from-source case; as I recall, a rather long verbatim passage whose last word was the "while" that I eliminated there; a tiny decrement to very-close-similarity-of-phrases.

Regarding the aforementioned tool, iirc I took a look at it once-upon-a-time and concluded it was unsuitable for use in review because (I'm merely describing what I remember concluding at the time) unlike dupdet, which lists specific details of particular passages the human operator can then reason about, that other tool generated a lump conclusion which the operator was supposed to simply accept. (It also seemed complacent about specific concerns that I would find very concerning.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Did you mean to say "slightly ambiguous" instead of "inherently non-neutral" in regards to the US/America thing? --SVTCobra 20:18, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: No. Granted, it is sightly ambiguous. --Pi zero (talk) 20:27, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: OK, then we need to talk about it elsewhere in the future as this is not the proper forum. --SVTCobra 20:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I concur that this would not be an appropriate place for a discussion on the matter. Note, fwiw, that the concerns mentioned re both "America" and "discovery" are included in WN:Neutrality (sections #Avoiding phrase bias, #Scientific results). --Pi zero (talk) 21:22, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

thnx

for the help. Baozon90 (talk) 20:39, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

No problem --DannyS712 (talk) 20:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

US announces restrictions on flying to Cuba

Hi. I really hesitated over the neutrality aspect of this article, actually doing the whole source-check while mulling it over (everything checked out, btw). The first thing I noticed that concerned me was the lack of variety in the sources; but of course it's not all that complicated a story. And I wondered about the "why" of the thing. (Kudos, btw, for reporting it as a claim of motivation; nicely played. :-) Poking around to see what more far-flung sources have to say on it, I noticed on one hand that nobody really has much to say about it yet, and on the other hand, that what almost everyone does mention is a bit of historical background (that's how I noticed that CBS News was exceptional by having no match for a string search on "Obama"). Anyway, it doesn't look to me as if much is needed, but after giving it all time to sink in, I honestly felt something is needed. --Pi zero (talk) 15:50, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I'll try to add some history --DannyS712 (talk) 15:51, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Re: Richard Spencer

Hi DannyS712

I am intermittently online this quarter of the year but just saw the very detailed and informative story about Richard Spencer. In the story the headline is in passive tense, can this be corrected without making it too long?

Thank you greatly for your continued effort and commitment. It is amazing. I do not cope with following local news beyond the local suburb these days and appreciate your attention to the detail.

--Gryllida (talk) 23:41, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: I'm in the middle of something on enwiki right now, but have no objections if you want to rename the article. If not, I'll try to take a look soon --DannyS712 (talk) 23:42, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks; I am afraid that I lack the background knowledge to do a rename sanely. Look forward to your assistance. Gryllida (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I couldn't think of a good, active, title. I'll leave it for now. --DannyS712 (talk) 04:02, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I would perhaps suggest to merge the first two paragraphs

--Gryllida (talk) 02:29, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Assuming this is US House of Representatives impeaches President Trump, I was trying to follow Wikinews:Style guide#The first paragraph, but no objections if you want to merge them. My priority is just trying to get this published asap, as it is breaking news --DannyS712 (talk) 02:30, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking about answering the 5Ws. It answers the Why. I am not sure what is the best way to go from here. Gryllida (talk) 02:41, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida: I've added a why to the first paragraph --DannyS712 (talk) 03:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

mainspace disambigs

This is a grey area. The style guide, which says to use a mainspace redirect instead of linking directly to a category, is about writing an article. I've been linking directly to categories in the disambig pages. Whether that's what we should do... is less clear to me, atm. Maybe I had in mind some reasoning on why to link to the categories directly in that case; if I did have some reasoning in mind, it has not yet come back to me. Do you have any thoughts? --Pi zero (talk) 01:07, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Not an big-scale ideas, but we should be consistent about where we link to redirects vs directly to the categories. If articles use redirects, thats fine. What should disambiguation pages use? What should other namespaces use? (Content, not talk) --DannyS712 (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

In most situations, we go through the mainspace redirects. Any exception ought to be for a specific reason.

• The preload page for disambig pages illustrates linking directly to category pages. {{mainspace disambig/template preload}}.
• The purpose of a mainspace redirect is to provide a link based on a "keyword" independent of the target namespace; ultimately, this is extended through {{w}} to wikilink syntax independent even of target project.
• The purpose of a wikilink in a disambiguation page is, ordinarily, to link explicitly to a category. There is no intention to be independent of target namespace.

So I guess I'm leaning again toward linking directly to categories in this situation; the confusing think here was that the second option on the disambig page used {{w}} because there was no local target.

Does my reasoning sound plausible to you? If we're going to do things that way, we should look for ways to further document the practice, so that hopefully folks in future can more readily see that it's meant to be done that way. --Pi zero (talk) 04:33, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

So use direct links to categories, or {{w}}? I suggest making a discussion somewhere so this can be agreed on, and then I can go through (manually or via bot) and apply the new scheme --DannyS712 (talk) 04:37, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Sigh. It's already done in a consistent way, set out when the disambig-page arrangement was first set up and followed ever since (till now). Blood Red Sandman went along with it, as I recall. Seems like escalating the discussion is only needful if we're looking to change the arrangement, and honestly, as I think about it I have no desire to change it. I admit, on reflection I can see I was hoping you'd agree it was a plausible arrangement, and we could simply look for ways to improve its documentation, and continue it. --Pi zero (talk) 04:47, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

It seems that there are a lot of things that are the standard/general way of doing things here, but that aren't documented anywhere... --DannyS712 (talk) 04:53, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah. Historically, Wikinews has been more of a living tradition, passed on directly from user to user rather than through documentation pages. A Wikinewsie from an earlier era than I remarked, some time back, that small news orgs usually aren't well documented, as folks are too busy writing news to write about how they write news; it's the really big orgs that have massive documentation (like AP, or BBC). The shortage of Wikinews documentation makes reviewer-reporter interaction, especially review comments and also notably edit-summaries during review, extremely important, as a major vector for passing on know-how. Part of what I've done here has been to deliberately try to soak up all the lore I could from past generations of Wikinewies so I could continue passing it on to later generations (a temporary arrangement; I mean to make myself unnecessary in the long run). I have tried to extend our documentation; notably, WN:PILLARS is mostly a compilation of sentences each of which I'd written hundreds of times in review comments till I could recite them in my sleep. I also hope to embed further know-how into the semi-automated tools I hope to develop (yet another thing making that development more daunting). --Pi zero (talk) 05:29, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Automated tools? Coding? Javascript? Dibs :) - let me know if I can help. --DannyS712 (talk) 05:30, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Heh. I'll try to remember to provide you a bit of background on what I've been doing (not just atm; time for me to turn in, and tomorrow morning I anticipate reviewing). --Pi zero (talk) 05:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Two technical questions

• How have you been going about finding those old unprotected articles? (Because I can think of a way, but am curious whether there's another that I'm overlooking.)
• How have you been going about looking for external archives of broken sources? (Because it seems I've sometimes succeeded in that where you'd reported failure.)

--Pi zero (talk) 05:33, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm sometimes really bored - some experimenting with the api / database queries / looking through logs

I've been putting the url in the archive.org search

--DannyS712 (talk) 05:36, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

archive.org search? Hm. Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever tried that. When I've got a broken source url, I just manually prepend

https://web.archive.org/web/*/

producing things like

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://somenewssite.com/articlename

which seems to work if anything will. --Pi zero (talk) 05:56, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll try that next time --DannyS712 (talk) 05:57, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, what was the way you could think of for finding them? --DannyS712 (talk) 05:57, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh, for a moment I thought I saw a way to do it with a DPL; but on second thought I decided I'd been wrong about that. --Pi zero (talk) 05:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Category:Diplomats

Hello. Not sure about adding Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to this category. I think there is a difference between Secretaries of State / Foreign Ministers (yes they’re involved in diplomacy) and ambassadors / high commissioners / consuls (commonly agreed diplomats). Thoughts? -Green Giant (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Given how small the category was, I couldn't tell what the intended scope is. I think that Foreign Ministers that are involved in diplomacy (not sure about all of the countries) and the US Secretary of State should be included, even if they are not career diplomats, since they are still diplomats (political / appointed). --DannyS712 (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmm... this may be a cultural thing but I see your point. In the UK we don’t regard the Foreign Secretary as a diplomat. We would reserve it for ambassadors and other envoys. I think they’re almost all career diplomats, whereas in the US there are some ambassadors who appear to be appointed for other reasons. The recently dismissed Gordon Sondland is an example of this. -Green Giant (talk) 00:14, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I think I understand why the divergence - in a parliamentary system like the UK, the Foreign Secretary gets to make policy, while in the US, the Secretary of State mostly implements the President's policy. Thus, in the latter the role includes more diplomacy. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi DannyS712. Please check this space.

--Gryllida (talk) 04:55, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@Gryllida: I'm afraid my wiki-related coding is mostly taken up by phab:T159299 at the moment. Also, that post is addressed "To reviewers", which I am not one, and I prefer to spend my script development time on scripts that I will be able to use (if only so that I can test them and make sure they work as intended). Hopefully that'll change soon (Wikinews:Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions#DannyS712 (talk · contribs – Edit rights) is still open) but for now I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to help. Sorry, --DannyS712 (talk) 04:59, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

RFP

I had in mind to give you some constructive advice, when closing the RFP; alas, when I knew what I wanted to say, there was some activity in the discussion so I figured to wait a bit, and in the interim I've lost track so will have to try to reconstruct suitable remarks. If I don't get back to you on this, eventually it'll be time to remind me. --Pi zero (talk) 06:17, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I intend to apply again soon, though hopefully the community can decide what the image guidelines are! I'm going to be posting someone where central soon (once I'm done with my current article). Are you on IRC? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:20, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Interwikis

Hi, I have seen that you have added interwikis to some articles. I think this should be handled on Wikidata. I use interwiki links in articles only if they link to or from Incubator. Maybe even that could be done through Wikidata, I don't know. - Xbspiro (talk) 19:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I have just tried it, Wikidata still doesn't support interwikis on Incubator. - Xbspiro (talk) 20:56, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

At least for now, wikinews uses local interwikis, even if they are also on wikidata --DannyS712 (talk) 21:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

<dropping in> It was a pretty solid consensus here on en.wn; I hope we'll always retain explicit interwikis. The fundamental principles of local visibility and local control featured prominently, and there's no technical change at Wikidata that could redress those. (Though there are measures that could be added to combine the strengths of local interwikis with the advantages of the central clearinghouse at Wikidata.) --Pi zero (talk)

Sorry guys, I did not know about the community consensus. There were instances (Q81776283, Q80792090, Q81328192, Q81482849, Q81718305) when interwikis were not added to the article, and I thought it is the norm not to include them - so adding them to the article seemed strange to me. (These pages had been protected by now.) - Xbspiro (talk) 00:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

We don't necessarily expect them all to be added (though it's a positive thing when they are); we do like to add them at opportunity, and we don't remove them merely because the information is also on Wikidata. --Pi zero (talk) 00:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Categorisation

Hi. I noticed you created a new category, and did a bunch of other things. The ideal procedure is:

1. You prepare the category.
2. On its talk page, you compile a list of articles that would be in this category, and it would be better if you provide rationale, and tag it with {{Fill this category}} (FTC request).
3. Then compile a list of redirects that should be created for that category.

This procedure works best for the archived articles. And when an admin/reviewer pair is unavailable to sight the edits immediately. We tend to avoid doing that out of order.
•–• —Preceding comment was added at 06:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I would tag it for edits I couldn't make myself, but I could edit all of the articles myself. I've created Category:Qasem Soleimani, Category:Impeachment of Donald Trump, Category:COVID-19, Category:Elijah Cummings, and Category:Roscosmos (as well as a few others). For the first 3 listed, I could edit all of the articles myself (as was the case here) and doing so was fine. For the last 2, I posted on the talk page with {{Fill this category}}, and while Category talk:Elijah Cummings was responded to, Category talk:Roscosmos has been unchanged since October. In this case, a search (https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=Pete+Buttigieg&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns14=1&ns0=1) showed that all of the pages that I would think of adding were recent enough that I could still edit them, and so I did. While the procedure you give above makes sense "for the archived articles", it doesn't seem to apply here. Is this "ideal procedure" documented anywhere else? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:46, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Please, check your IRC memo for the reply.
•–• 07:27, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Note for myself that this was Done --DannyS712 (talk) 08:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Reviewing your Super Tuesday article

I hope to complete the Super Tuesday review this afternoon; taking a detour first for acagastya's railway article, which I hope will go reasonably briskly. --Pi zero (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 18:53, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikignome stuff

Thought you might appreciate this bit of wikignomery. The {{w}} template is designed to flag out pages where it links locally, through a hidden category (c); the idea is to leave it in place until after adding the article (or deciding not to add it) to the locally linked target category. It's possible to do the categorization via HotCat and harden the link in the same edit, by clicking the "+" on HotCat to add a category, and entering the name of the category to add, but then instead of clicking "ok" to add that category, click the "+" to add another category; that causes HotCat to provide a "save" button at the start of the list of categories, which you can then click on, and instead of immediately submitting an edit to add the category, it gives you an edit panel with the categorization all lined up. You can then edit the page to also harden the local link at the same time. --Pi zero (talk) 03:07, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Cool --DannyS712 (talk) 04:32, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

I just click on the (+⁺) near the word "Categories", then the + to add the categories in one go, then clicking "Save".
•–• 09:49, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Goodness!

This is long overdue! --Bddpaux (talk) 19:45, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

		The Order of the Modest Pencil For completing 5 edits.
		Great work! Keep it up! --Bddpaux (talk) 19:45, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 21:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Spaces

Could you please not remove them? If the author has used it, please keep them as they are.
•–• 12:04, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure --DannyS712 (talk) 14:41, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Deleting redirects

While tagging redirects to be deleted in the pre-publish state, make sure you break the redirect. Just a head's up.
•–• 23:48, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

What do you mean by "break the redirect"? I put the deletion tag at the top of the page, so it shouldn't work as a redirect... --DannyS712 (talk) 23:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Re: Third death from Covid-19 reported in Singapore

Please see a question HERE. --Gryllida (talk) 01:38, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Will do when I have a moment, I'm busy coding, sorry --DannyS712 (talk) 01:41, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Handling archived articles

This is a pretty specialized situation, but it did come up, so: When editing an archived article that is directly categorized in Category:Archived rather than using template {{archive}}, do not remove the category before adding the template. Doing so could (depending on the date of the article) cause the article to appear on newsfeeds as if it were a recently-published article. I realize that might have been just an oversight, in the case that arose last night, but: that should never happen; please be very careful not to let it. (The same goes, btw, pretty-much infinitely more, if ever touching an old article that is categorized directly in Category:Published rather than using template {{publish}}; think of those as death traps, not to be touched unless you know precisely what you're doing lest something irreparable happen.)

I also strongly recommend against using, for this purpose, the trick I described to you a while back for combining customized edits with HotCat. It's way too important to avoid accidentally removing the category before adding the template, so an unacceptable risk of manual error would come from using HotCat for the purpose (because then you'd be telling HotCat you wanted to remove the category before manually adding the template, and it would only take a tiny slip with HotCat to cause the category to be removed first, which must not be allowed to happen). So, edit the article, manually add the template, be absolutely sure the template is correctly in place (use preview and carefully observe that the page is typeset correctly), and only then remove the direct category, either manually in the same edit (being very, very sure you've got the template correctly set up) or even in a separate edit to be super sure. --Pi zero (talk) 13:23, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I wasn't thinking (I know about DPL going based on order) --DannyS712 (talk) 14:34, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Categories

Hi DannyS712 (What does that "S712" part mean?...)

Just checking that you are aware that HotCat can add multiple categories in one edit? I learned of it a few months after I started using it, but when I did, it was okay.

--Gryllida (talk) 04:35, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm aware of that, yes (the S712 means nothing) --DannyS712 (talk) 04:37, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Any problems that you are facing with that, DannyS712? I mean, you don't have to save and let the page reload all the time: if you are not doing that, there must be something the gadget is lacking, maybe one could improve the tool.
•–• 08:36, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Nope, no problems --DannyS712 (talk) 12:52, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Okay. If you were to wrap them up in one edit, that would make it easier to monitor the RC and it is less likely for an admin to miss a spam revision.
•–• 13:08, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Noted. I find it easier to follow the edits if they are separate. --DannyS712 (talk) 13:11, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally I like separate edits for article content, but as few edits as possible for maintenance tasks like category adding. That makes things easier on me in any Wiki, including here. There isn't any requirement to do everything in one edit though. — Gopher65_talk 06:14, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gopher65: Yes, everyone has their own way of doing things :) Welcome back, by the way - I saw your last edit was in July --DannyS712 (talk) 06:47, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

US judge rules Ocean City, Maryland, ban on public nudity legal

I really am sad about missing this; I'd just completely failed to register it was on its last day yesterday, or I might have reviewed it yesterday afternoon instead of the Bernie article. --Pi zero (talk) 19:01, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

I'll see if it can be refocused in any way --DannyS712 (talk) 20:29, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

expiry

I was surprised to see you'd filed requests on those other two de-crat noms. We hadn't really discussed it yet; and, as I pointed out to the nominator, the policy does not require removal, merely authorizes it. I was advocating pinging them and giving them a chance to comment (in fact, I had queried TUFKAAP, but there certainly hadn't been nearly enough time to reasonably expect a response yet). --Pi zero (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Even if they had commented, the policy authorized removal for lack of bureaucrat activity, and simply commenting, while satisfying the editing requirements, doesn't satisfy the use requirements. The policy does not require removal, but it authorizes it, and so I asked those with the technical ability to do so to take the authorized actions. If the community wants to change the policy, that is the community's perogative, but until any change is agreed to the policy as it stands should be put into practice. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:58, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Putting into practice the policy as it stands does not imply such a hawkish approach. Just saying. --Pi zero (talk) 22:38, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't consider it hawkish to follow the policy as written, but noted --DannyS712 (talk) 23:00, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Relicencing

Hey, just a head's up: "Public Domain" is not a license. The closest you have is CC0. And regardless of they choose to release their work in CC0 or CC BY 2.5, they need to state is unambiguously. Right now, looking at the discussion, it is not clear if they were trying for CC0, or CC BY (version has to match too). You must clarify at the talk page: not Public Domain, but CC0. (@Green Giant: in case if we need a second opinion on licensing)
•–• 19:06, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I know its not a license; I might have phrased it poorly in the module. In the discussion, it is clear to me that all are okay with releasing their contributions into the public domain and/or licensing it under CC0. --DannyS712 (talk) 19:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

They need to state it explicitly. One of them mentioned releasing it in public domain. It is not a license in which you license your work. They need to state explicitly "I release my contributions to this module under CC0 1.0/CC BY 2.5 license". Since the first one started with public domain, there is a domino effect. Please get it in explicit words in a license that actually is valid.
•–• 19:20, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

If its in the public domain no license is needed, but I'll ping everyone again --DannyS712 (talk) 19:22, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
yeah, getting explicit statements would be good. Point to note, PD is not a license so if you are looking for that, make sure you use CC0 1.0 in future. They are not the same, but often people use it interchangeably. Please be careful from now onwards.
•–• 19:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I know it is not a license. I was careful, though I may have phrased myself poorly on the module page (no idea, you deleted it with the rationale "License concerns" despite it having been released into the public domain) but whatever, lets just go through another round on dewiki --DannyS712 (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The reason why I deleted is because the contributors said "I release it in public domain" and "I agree". You can't release something in public domain: it is not a license, and therefore, it is a meaningless sentence. Unless stated explicitly, those sentences would have no meaning to it. If someone says they released their work in "public domain", it is a meaningless thing to say. There is a reason why about the "Save changes" it is not written "copied from a public domain license".
•–• 19:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

You can release something into the public domain, even though it is not a license. See, eg, https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/ - "There are four common ways that works arrive in the public domain:" including "the copyright owner deliberately places it in the public domain" --DannyS712 (talk) 19:41, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

A classic blunder photographers make is saying "I allow my photo to be used by Wikipedia". It is a meaningless sentence and does not tell anything about the license and is therefore discouraged.
•–• 19:36, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the photographers example has to do with anything - this is contributors understanding licensing requirements and agreeing the put their contributions in the public domain, not just "allow[ing] [their contributions] to be used by Wikipedia" --DannyS712 (talk) 19:40, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

CU of LTAs

Hi. Can you share the link to the place where the recent LTA's CU is taking place? Or is it behind the closed doors?
•–• 22:07, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Behind closed doors - these are well known ltas, quickly locked, and whatever open proxy the used is also gblocked --DannyS712 (talk) 22:08, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay. Must say, they are getting good at finding open proxies. Would like to discuss this in private.
•–• 22:11, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Why? Just don't post the names and it should be fine --DannyS712 (talk) 22:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Why? Because discussion about the potential solutions if done in public can be easily abused.
•–• 22:27, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Then please email me --DannyS712 (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
We both have cloaks: that form would be more instantaneous.
•–• 22:45, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe, I'd but prefer to discuss this over email --DannyS712 (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Prepared articles

Clarification. It's my perception that acagastya deleted the article because there was no clearly defined future event that it was about. I'm not unsympathetic to that concern; it doesn't seem kosher to stash an old failed article indefinitely in prepared-article space without an identifiable expected-event capable of being observed to have passed.

I undeleted it on the understanding that you wanted to access the article temporarily for purposes of saving it off-wiki. Did I misunderstand your request? Or, do you have a specific expected-event to associate with it? --Pi zero (talk) 02:02, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I felt that the content could be used for a future article, without having a specific expected event that I know is coming. I'm not unsympathetic to that concern either, but I definitely am unsympathetic to unilateral deletion of prepared content without prior discussion if it could still be used, as in this case --DannyS712 (talk) 02:03, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

There's a hazard in that, though: this project would have suffocated under a mountain of garbage ages ago if not that we delete our failures and move on. Sending a failed article to story-preparation has to be limited to cases where the expected-event is well-defined; it's surely not allowable to keep a failed article lying around forever against the possible occurrence of "something related to public nudity"; that's not an expected event. --Pi zero (talk) 02:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

True, but we do delete most failures; I just kept one that can be used for background content. I would think expanding that would be preferable to me just pasting the content into a new draft with the attribution only available to those who can see deleted revision --DannyS712 (talk) 02:22, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

A natural alternative would be that if and when the old material is actually wanted for an article about a fresh event, that's the time to request undeletion. --Pi zero (talk) 02:29, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Only if one remembers that the old material exists, and where to find it - what is the harm that comes to the project from keeping this? Its clearly not spam, but meant to further the goals of the project, and per Wikinews:What Wikinews is not - "Wikinews is not paper. Thus, Wikinews has no size limits" --DannyS712 (talk) 02:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

It would, I think, be easy to get ourselves mired here in a false dichotomy of nobody's intentional making, by failing to distinguish two separate issues. There's how best to arrange for later restoration of material that didn't make it to publication, and there's how to maintain the story-preparation area. If I say the story-preparation area is not an appropriate solution for failed-article-disposition, that's not saying much about failed-article-disposition. Okay, I've clarified that. Now: I am saying the story-preparation area is not an appropriate solution for failed-article-disposition. Granted, you're in good repute here, and you're not going hog-wild with this sort of thing in the story-preparation section; but although that sort of thing does matter on Wikinews, we don't make it our first-cut criterion for excluding material, which would be highly vulnerable to abuse. We need to have a first tier of principles that keeps things sane. Note that the "it's just one article" argument works in the other direction, too: if it's just one article, it shouldn't be a problem to recollect what it was called in order to request undeletion later. --Pi zero (talk) 03:18, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure you clarified anything, since this left me even more confused, but go ahead and delete Wikinews:Story preparation/US judge rules Ocean City, Maryland, ban on public nudity legal - I've made a copy of the current content at User:DannyS712/Prepared in case it is useful in the future. Since my userspace is outside of the Wikinews "story-preparation area", it shouldn't be an issue for me to keep a copy there. Please let me know if you are going to delete any of my other prepared stories, and I'll copy them accordingly --DannyS712 (talk) 05:05, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Um, no, that's not okay. Wikinews isn't a web-host. The concern with the material isn't limited to which area it's stored in, and in fact userspacing failed articles is, depending on how one looks at it, either a separate problem, or a different expression of the same problem.

Perhaps there could be some illumination in considering the particular case. What do you envision reusing the Maryland-nudity-ruling material for? --Pi zero (talk) 11:54, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Keeping the content in my user space doesn't turn wikinews into a web host, since the content is related to wikinews. I envision using the material as background for a future store. --DannyS712 (talk) 15:26, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
What insight can you offer as to what story you would use it as background for? --Pi zero (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

None - there isn't a specific story that this would be used for that I have in mind. Something in a similar field - a similar ruling upholding a ban, or one striking it down, or an appeal, etc. --DannyS712 (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Please undelete the page in my userspace, unless there is a policy I'm unaware of that unpublished stories cannot be kept in userspace. On the other hand, if there is such a policy, lots of other pages would need to be deleted:

1. User:AZOperator/Singapore: US and North Korean leaders signing joint statement at denuclearization summit
2. User:AZOperator/US: Flight instructor attempts deportation of Chinese student by kidnapping
3. User:Aideenuow/British explorers complete world first row to North Pole
4. User:Aideenuow/Bushranger Ned Kelly's remains found
5. User:Aideenuow/UN will investigate possible 'crimes against humanity' in Syria
6. User:Ajh903/"Planking" Australia, becomes a global phenomenon
7. User:Ajp491/F.B.I. Agents Deemed Justified In 150 Shootings
8. User:Ajp491/Five-year-old boy shoots two-year-old sister in Kentucky
9. User:Ajp491/Julian Assange reveals contact with NSA whistleblower
10. User:Ajp491/UN says 93,000 confirmed deaths in the Syrian war
11. User:Abram samuelson/Rash of U.S. hate crimes brings strong convictions
12. User:Adam UOW86/Australian rugby league team sign Papua New Guinea player
13. User:Adam UOW86/Papua New Guinea Hunting Big Scalps in Queensland Cup

...and that is just the start of the 'A's. There is a double standard being applied here - if the concern with the material isn't limited to which area it's stored in, then it shouldn't have been deleted from either place. If the concern does change based on which area it is in, then at the very least the userspace version shouldn't have been deleted. --DannyS712 (talk) 19:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I understand "double standard", in this context, to imply that you have been treated one way and everyone else another. That's not so.

I did misunderstand your stated reason for the undeletion-request; had I realized you wished to reverse the deletion-decision of another admin, I would have treated it as a more weighty decision. Once I realized, I did not wish to be unnecessarily abrupt, both because it seemed unnecessarily hostile treatment of a presumed ally, and lest immediate re-deletion merely increase the number of times the deletion/undeletion status of the page was flipped. At that time it seemed conceivable some additional consideration might come out in subsequent discussion to change the situation yet again. So I stated a plan to re-delete it about a day after I'd undeleted it. I consider that plan still in effect. It now seems likely we'll end up, in a few hours, with both copies of the page deleted, as you say.

Btw, I don't see you're significantly inconvenienced by deletion; you can reasonably request undeletion if and when some specific story makes it appropriate to do so. If at that time you don't remember the name of the page, ask for help with that part; it shouldn't be hard for an admin to find. --Pi zero (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

You say "That's not so" - in that case, why was my work deleted, while others' wasn't? I disagree that I'm not inconvenienced by the deletion - down the road when I have 20 prepared stories that were deleted, should I keep them all in my head? Thats why the userspace page would have worked for me - I could have kept all of the info in the same place --DannyS712 (talk) 00:16, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Each case was an individual case, judged (by whomever was involved in that case) according to the specifics of its situation and the state of our slowly-evolving best-practices at the time the case was considered. The existence of a few articles that haven't been deleted also says nothing whatever about how many were deleted, and especially how many were not allowed to move into userspace and so were eventually deleted from mainspace.

A suggestion. Seems to me there would be no problem were you to keep a small note somewhere on-wiki with a list of deleted unsuccessful articles you might find useful to resurrect when their content becomes relevant background to some other story; I wouldn't think you'd need need more than the headlines (if any additional words were needed, which seems unlikely, it doesn't seem like it would take very many words), and one would think it would serve as all the reminder you'd need. --Pi zero (talk) 00:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

And it seems to me that there should be no problem with me keeping the content itself somewhere on-wiki. Unless the articles I linked are deleted, or a reason why they are different than mine is given, this would appear to be a double standard --DannyS712 (talk) 00:35, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I do not find "double standard" an accurate description of the situation. I've already described, above, major factors involved. I do think honest efforts have been been made to apply rational principles to each case, as it came up. Standards have evolved over time, which further complicates the overall situation. This is very much an area of best-practices —and their articulation— converging slowly over many years, toward some eventual articulated policy that, if I could describe precisely, we'd have already have arrived at. (I recall it being remarked around here, a time or two, that policy documents are what we do, written down.) As for revisiting some (or all) of those various cases, I reckon there will come a point, yes, where we ought to do that. The right moment will likely be, I think, when we have naturally arrived at a greatly clarified general policy on these things, as a natural (by)product of our efforts to facilitate front-line news production. At that point we'll be able to revisit old cases highly efficiently and won't have had to divert our attention from more central concerns. --Pi zero (talk) 02:50, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm now even more confused. Is User:AZOperator/Singapore: US and North Korean leaders signing joint statement at denuclearization summit fundamentally different such that it doesn't need to be deleted? Until we have "a greatly clarified general policy", or even any policy that allows deletion of content relevant to wikinews kept in user space (I haven't seen one), I request that my /Prepared page be restored. --DannyS712 (talk) 03:13, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I see no grounds for making the way one case is handled contingent on whether the other is relitigated atm. --Pi zero (talk) 03:54, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not saying that one case should be contingent on another, just that treating the two cases different for no clear reason is indeed a double standard: wikt:double standard - "he situation of two or more groups, one of which is tacitly excused from following a standard generally regarded as applying to all groups, or contrariwise, forced to follow a standard others are tacitly excused from" --DannyS712 (talk) 03:56, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Feel free to file a DR for those cases. If you recall, Ottawahitech'a articles in userspace were deleted. Just because we are going one step at a time to remove things that shouldn't be on-wiki does not mean it is double standards. We have other things to do as well.
103.254.130.254 (talk) 04:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Why is a DR needed if they qualify for speedy deletion? I don't agree that they qualify, but if they do a DR is unneeded --DannyS712 (talk) 05:01, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Why do they need a DR? Well, speedy deletion works better when there is an abundance of admins ready with the moo and the bucket. But things can be left behind because admins have to do many other things. For an admin to not miss it, it would be better if it was up on the notice board where admins frequent.
103.254.130.254 (talk) 05:09, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "admins ready with the moo" --DannyS712 (talk) 05:14, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

<pi zero is pretty sure that was keyboard misbehavior for the standard phrase "mop and bucket", which describes the unglamorous realities of admin tasks.> --Pi zero (talk) 12:49, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

"SARS-CoV-2 surpasses 100,000 confirmed deaths in the United States"

Congratulations on having the article published, it is a high profile story that needs to be covered. My changes were for improving the article, and not intended to undermine you or your work. In retrospect, I should have pinged you over my concerns as well as @Acagastya: and I would have enjoyed being pinged when the revert was put in place. In future articles lets communicate better and I know the content will improve.

With that said, could you help me out on the SpaceX article. I set up the main components only to have the launch scrubbed at the last moments. My schedule is very dynamic so I don't know if I can attend to it when it happens. -- AZOperator (talk) 18:15, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought the undo would have pinged you --DannyS712 (talk) 18:29, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

No, I was felt like the reports findings were a bit cluttered and could use a different flow. The Brazil angle was never going to fly, it just has so many holes in it because of how they are dealing with the crisis. Anyway, have more faith in people. AZOperator (talk) 02:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by have more faith --DannyS712 (talk) 11:05, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Re: programming

I've understood from your Phabricator you have been busy with improving MediaWiki. Are any of the tasks news related? (I've got a long list of ideas, to which I personally take a "let's write a JavaScript script for this", but server-side scripting would be nicer to have to make the tools more responsive as well as easier to discover.) --Gryllida (talk) 01:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Not at the moment, but if there are any tasks you'd like me to take a look at just add me as a subscriber on phab. As for javascript, my first project would be replacing wikilisp with actual programming in javascript --DannyS712 (talk) 01:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi DannyS712

They are not Phabricator tasks because at the moment they are being implemented as third party tools. If you have a moment and consider any of these ideas reasonable for inclusion on-wiki as an extension or the like, please let me know.

I'm finding lisp more useful than JavaScript, because it is easier to include in wiki pages and users can make and deploy their own modules on specific wiki pages more easily, through templates. As far as I know, with JavaScript the task of inclusion on one specific page but not another is inherently difficult, to my understanding anyway. Is this a correct?

Regards, -- Gryllida (talk) 23:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The wikinews lisp, dialogue, and assistant all use site-wiki javascript that would be replaced / supplemented with site-wide gadgets that would detect templates and be deployed. Also, for making and deploying their own modules, non-admins can't really do that, see User talk:DannyS712/dialog - "Some parts of dialog depend on pages involved — like edit forms, and any dialog pages whose requests have to be authenticated — being fully protected, the theory being that stuff that has a potential to do damage needs to be cleared by an admin." --DannyS712 (talk) 23:47, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned that Js is site-wide, with no means to include specific Js snippets for a particular page. That's something that lisp modules do offer. Gryllida (talk) 00:44, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Current dialog tools make use of a manual hack in js to include the js only at specific pages or in a particular order, but I am not aware of the Foundation endorsing this hack, or planning to introduce a similar equivalent. I think this is one, although perhaps not the only one, concern that would need to be resolved before phasing out lisp. Gryllida (talk) 00:46, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

My point exactly - replace lisp with proper js gadgets that are activated based on the page content. lisp relies on sitewide js as well --DannyS712 (talk) 00:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

<pi zero, dropping in briefly> I don't recall any dependency whatever of Wikilisp on javascript (though its interactive test page uses both wikilisp and dialog, therefore entails javascript). --Pi zero (talk) 02:07, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

What exactly is wikilisp used for outside of the dialogue etc. that need javascript though? --DannyS712 (talk) 02:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

When assembling wiki-pieces into a whole, the inadequacies of wiki markup (major rant omitted) create various irregular gaps; wikilisp is meant to fill those gaps (without becoming Turing-powerful; not only would it be a Really Bad Idea to hand ordinary wiki users a Turing-powerful device, but I'd consider any such augmenting device a design failure if it needed Turing-power). An example that uses wikilisp but not javascript? It's such a convenient gap-filler, I might be using it lots of places I'm not thinking off off-hand, but, here are a couple: {{infobox}}. And, iirc, here and there in the infrastructure of en.wb Wikibooks Stacks. (I envision eventually using dialog too for the Wikibooks Stacks, but the use of Wikilisp there would not be subservient to the use of dialog, they'd just both be used there.)

Even if wikilisp were only used with dialog, as I recall I used Lua because the functionality involved wanted to be integrated into the server-side wiki processing whereas dialog parameters are client-side (with javascript finessing the reasonably-smooth flow of data back and forth between client-side and server-side). Although, granting my disapproval of putting any code outside of ordinary wiki pages, and my disapproval of using procedural programming languages in the wiki context where they can only serve to create a fundamentally non-wiki elite class, I'd have to say when such things are unavoidable, Lua is a profoundly nicer language than javascript. --Pi zero (talk) 04:18, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Maybe, but users themselves don't write the Lua - they write in wikilisp. Ideally, we would have sitewide gadgets that replace the dialogue/assistant system, and js hooks that would allow users to extend those sitewide gadgets --DannyS712 (talk) 04:20, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I.e., the actual code in Template:Infobox is extremely hard to follow. It would be elegant if it was written in lua (does DPL support Lua?) but in its current form it requires extremely specialized knowledge of the custom syntax --DannyS712 (talk) 04:25, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Algol-style procedural languages (I include C-style within that larger taxon) are wildly unsuited to a wiki. As for the model of a general facility with hooks in it — well, it likely seemed like a good idea when first come up with; perhaps it was suggested by the object-oriented paradigm (which, come to think, also likely seemed like a good idea when first come up with); but it's inherently inflexible, crippling (rather than nuturing) the creativity of sapient end-users.

While I omit atm any claim, one way or another, on {{infobox}}'s absolute followability, I do not think a Lua version would be easier to follow. As for elegance, I strongly suspect a Lua version would be much clunkier. --Pi zero (talk) 04:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

How exactly does the current use of wikilisp allow for more creativity and flexibility? Having spent thousands of hours writing code (I recently got +2 access to mediawiki's code itself) I can say that using a proper programming language which is capable of using the browser's full range of capabilities (javascript), full backend logic (php), or is otherwise supported as an access point for front end scripting (lua) is more powerful and more flexible for end users. Trying to implement a programming language with wikilisp will never be able to access the full capabilities of either javascript gadgets or backend php software, and can only come close to mirroring lua's abilities --DannyS712 (talk) 04:57, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I guess I meant Lua modules in the above discussion. Are Lua and Lisp different things? Gryllida (talk) 06:07, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Re "replace lisp with proper js gadgets that are activated based on the page content. lisp relies on sitewide js as well". I hope they can coexist. Do you have an idea what the implementation (for the JS part) would be like? Gryllida (talk) 06:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

No, the entire structure of lisp appears to be independent from any other programming language I know, and I have no idea how one would go about making them communicate, since the interaction would only be possible lisp->js. My plan (for when I have time to code) is to start with a script that detects that "submit for review" button, submits it programmatically, and reloads, without having to leave the page --DannyS712 (talk) 06:15, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

It is good plan, but I don't see what is difference between Lua and Lisp in this discussion Gryllida (talk) 06:42, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

It sounds like a downgrade, to me.

Lua and Wikilisp are profoundly different in their purposes. Lua goes off on its own and does arbitrary stuff using a very-high-syntactic-overhead Algol-style language. Wikilisp is an extremely-low-syntactic-overhead functional language that, as noted above, exists to fill in gaps between ordinary-wiki-markup elements; it shouldn't do things by itself, in fact (as also noted above) it would be a design mistake to want it to be able to do arbitrary stuff on its own. It doesn't make sense to speak of "making [these different languages] communicate", because they aren't redundant to each other; each has a different place in the ecosystem of data flow in the functioning wiki system.

One of WMF's fundamental mistakes, perhaps their central one, is trying to centralize control of software production, imagining that since this is what commercial software vendors want to do to make their customers dependent on them and turn a profit, of course that means it's what ought to be done by WMF, failing to notice that pretty-much everything about WMF's situation is (or should be) the opposite of the commercial vendor's: a non-profit to nurture a distributed volunteer community who will be empowered rather than dependent.

Danny, you seemed to be trying, earlier to present yourself as an expert based on thousand of hours of programming. I don't think it would be useful to engage in a credentials contest; but it does appear that in assessing your own experience you may be overestimating the breadth of your own experience. --Pi zero (talk) 07:18, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Lets just agree to disagree - you continue working with wikilisp, and I'll work on javascrpt (when I have the time, which may not be anytime soon) --DannyS712 (talk) 12:41, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Webhosting

Danny, you've been manifestly pushing to bypass/undermine project workflow by running an alternative news project with a different set of rules in your userspace; that's not okay. If you want to draft an article, do it in either mainspace or story-prep. --Pi zero (talk) 22:13, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pi zero: I have not been doing so. I have repeatedly tried to engage in discussion regarding when a story that is drafted in story-prep can be moved to userspace, and have been waiting for a response. In the meanwhile, I started a new draft in my user space that I did not move. Please provide a link to the relevant "set of rules" that I should be operating under --DannyS712 (talk) 22:15, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

When the article is ready for review, you can request the page to be moved to the mainspace.
•–• 22:23, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Acagastya: I'll ask again, because it seems to be getting lost - what policy or guideline supports removing my drafts from userspace? --DannyS712 (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I have explained before: it prohibits other editors from contributing, which goes against the collaborative work we try to do here.
•–• 22:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but you didn't explain that users could not draft articles in their user space at all; in fact, at Wikinews talk:Story preparation/Biden announces FooBar as 2020 running mate you implied that it was allowed. You still have not provided a link to any policy or guideline that specifies users cannot draft in their user space --DannyS712 (talk) 22:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

It is obstruction of collaborative editing, in case you missed that.
•–• 22:38, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I have found it hard to collaborate with you (and a few others), and so wanted to create this in my user space to avoid the conflict. I did not miss that. Again, in case you missed my question, what policy or guideline supports these moves? --DannyS712 (talk) 22:41, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

If you want to create something with the intent of it getting published -- don't put it in your userspace. Putting things in your userspace violates the last point in WN:WWI. A thing in prep-space or in main space is where everyone gets to collaborate. Putting it in userspace, you are effectively restricting others from finding or editing it. Editors generally hesitate from editing prepared stories in someone's userspace and that just goes against core values.
•–• 10:38, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Can you not use {{editing}} to signal that others don't edit your draft? Gryllida (talk) 10:56, 5 June 2020 (UTC)