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As of 2025-08-01 , SMcCandlish is on wikibreak.
I might check Wikipedia, but I won't be actively participating or editing until further notice.

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Old stuff to resolve eventually

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Cueless billiards

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โ€Šโ€“ Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.
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Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.
PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.โ€” ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). โ€” ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4ยฝ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... โ€” ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). โ€” ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[]
PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. โ€” SMcCandlish ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[]
Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[]

Sad...

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How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[]

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! โ€” ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[]
Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[]
Nice find! โ€” SMcCandlish ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[]

Some more notes on Crystalate

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Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[]

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. โ€” SMcCandlish ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[]
I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[]
Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. โ€” SMcCandlish ส•(ร•ู„ล)ห€ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[]
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No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–โˆ˜ยฟยครพ   Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[]

I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. SilkTork โœ”Tea time 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[]

You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright

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โ€Šโ€“ Need to fix William A. Spinks, etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.
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That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[]

Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday. This page was HUGE. It'll get there again. I'd forgotten MCQ existed. Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top of and "See also" at bottom of WP:COPYRIGHT? Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright! Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[]

Hee Haw

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โ€Šโ€“ Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation. In the intervening years, we've settled on natural not parenthetic disambiguation, and that standardized breeds get capitalized, but that's about it.
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Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[]

Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys โ€“ and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: [6] or breed or [7]. I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw(talk) 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Aye, it's on my to-do list. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).
The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[]
The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[]
I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[]
Yep. โ€” SMcCandlish   ษ–ื›โŠ™รพ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[]

Redundant sentence?

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โ€Šโ€“ Work to integrate WP:NCFLORA and WP:NCFAUNA stuff into MOS:ORGANISMS not completed yet? Seems to be mostly done, other than fixing up the breeds section, after that capitalization RfC a while back.
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The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed?

There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[]

  1. I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes. I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely different groups of people are apt to capitalize. Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff". There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound". Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces. Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds". I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything. Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former. If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings.
  2. I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to MOS:ORGANISMS, which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point? I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit. The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at Lynx or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With Lynx, I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[8], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[]
  1. Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above.
  2. I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "Canna" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[]
  1. Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
  2. Beats me. Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[]
Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[]
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โ€Šโ€“ I think I did MOST of this already ...
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Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[]

Excellent mini-tutorial

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Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[]

@Carcharoth: Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page. As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at Help:CS1 (which is dense and overlong as it is). The e-book matters bear some researching. I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers. For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use |at= to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible โ€“ some are just continuous texts. One could probably use something like |at=in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[]
Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[]
@Carcharoth: Ah, I see. I guess I would treat it as a |via=, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg. I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as republishers, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like |at=in paragraph 23, and for a much longer one use the |at=in the paragraph beginning "..." trick. A straight up |pages=82โ€“83 would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7). โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish โ˜บ ยขโ€ƒโ‰ฝสŒโฑทา…แดฅโฑทสŒโ‰ผโ€ƒ 08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[]
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โ€Šโ€“ Go fix the WP:FOO shortcuts to MOS:FOO ones, to match practice at other MoS pages. This only applies to the MoS section there; like WP:SAL, part of that page is also a content guideline that should not have MOS: shortcuts.
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You had previously asked that protection be lowered on WP:MEDMOS which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[]

Thanks. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it'll come back to me. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 12:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[]
Now I remember. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 06:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[]

Ooh...potential WikiGnoming activity...

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โ€Šโ€“ Do some of this when I'm bored?
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@SMcCandlish:

I stumbled upon Category:Editnotices whose targets are redirects and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, WikiGnoming activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-)

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus TยทC 22:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[]

Argh. I would've hoped some bot fixed that kind of stuff. I'll consider it, but it's a lot of work for low benefit (the page names may be wrong, but the redirs still get there), and it's been my experience that a lot of editnotices (especially in mainspace) are PoV-pushing crap that needs to be deleted anyway. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 07:20, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[]
I'm going to pass for the nonce, Dmehus. Working on some other project (more fun than WP is sometimes). I'll let it sit here with {{Unresolved}} on it, in case I get inspired to work on it some, but it might be a long time. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 07:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[]

Note to self

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โ€Šโ€“ Cquote stuff ...
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Don't forget to deal with: Template talk:Cquote#Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 14:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[]

Now this

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โ€Šโ€“ Breed disambiguation again ...
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Not sure the ping went through, so noting here. Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation. As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment. Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again. Montanabw(talk) 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[]

@Montanabw: Argh. Well, this is easy to fix with a request to mass-revert undiscussed moves, at the subsection for that at WP:RMTR. Some admin will just fix it all in one swoop. While I have the PageMover bit, and could do it myself as a technical possibility, I would run afoul of WP:INVOLVED in doing so. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 02:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[]
@Montanabw: Did this get fixed yet? If not, I can look into it. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 08:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[]

PGP

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โ€Šโ€“ Gotta put my geek hat on and fix this.

FYI, it looks like your key has expired. 1234qwer1234qwer4 21:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[]

Aiee! Thanks, I'll have to generate a new one when I have time to mess around with it. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 22:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[]

German article on houndstooth, Border tartan, and related patterns

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โ€Šโ€“ Considering ...

de:Rapport (Textil) is an interesting approach, and we don't seem to have a corresponding sort of article. Something I might approach at some point. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 22:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[]

Post-holidays note to self

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โ€Šโ€“ I need to come up with a better to-do list kind of thing on here, and actually use it instead of letting it turn moribund.
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Something to deal with quickly:

Need to stop putting this off; will probably only take 10 minutes.

Ongoing:

Several things appear to have stalled out over the holidays:

Some of these may need to be restarted as RfCs.

See also:

Forgot about this one for a long time (need to merge the NC material out of MOS:COMICS into WP:NCCOMICS):

An article still using deprecated WP:PARENTHETICAL referencing of the {{harv}} style to use as a cleanup testbed:

โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 16:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC); updated: 02:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[]

Your user scripts

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โ€Šโ€“ At least one of the scripts needs more work.
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might benefit more users if they were also listed at Wikipedia:User scripts/List. That's the go-to place where I get all my scripts from... Huggums537voted! (sign๐Ÿ–‹๏ธ|๐Ÿ“žtalk) 05:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[]

Yes, though I think they still need a bit more tweaking (even aside from one lacking the vertical formatting feature entirely). It's stuff I worked on obsessively for about a month straight, but have been doing other stuff since then. Takes a while to get back into such things. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 21:05, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[]







Current threads

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Happy New Year, SMcCandlish!

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   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Volten001 โ˜Ž 03:37, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[]

Unit conversions - MoS

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Hi, do you have a quick answer to this MoS question: As a non-scientist I am constantly frustrated by general articles written by scientists only for scientists to understand. Case in question, temperatures given only in Kelvin on articles of general interest. Are idiots like me expected to do their own conversion to units they can relate to such as ยฐF and ยฐC? Cheers, Kudpung เธเธธเธ”เธœเธถเน‰เธ‡ (talk) 01:49, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[]

Units should generally be converted, when they are on a scale that is sensible for the target unit. Small Kelvin measurments are not going to be useful in F or C, as light-years will not be in mi or km. But the "more scientific" unit should be linked to at first occurrence in the article, so someone not very familiar with the unit can get a better sense of it easily. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 03:07, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[]
Thanks :) Kudpung เธเธธเธ”เธœเธถเน‰เธ‡ (talk) 14:08, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[]
PS: To clarify what I meant: To the typical reader, -0.00000031 ยฐF and -0.0000031 ยฐF are nearly indistinguishable and about equally unrelatable, despite being different from each other by a factor of 10; and same with 38,442,839,277,250 Km versus 3,844,283,927,725 Km. So "extreme conversions" of this sort from simple Kelvin or light-year measurements are not actually helpful to readers. โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 10:03, 12 January 2026 (UTC)[]
I understood. I was simply referring to the annoying instances in such (hypothetical) cases where a school kid or someone stupid like me is looking up the temperature on Venus (which is converted) to be told in Kelvin when they could far more easily relate to something like 464 ยฐC; 867 ยฐF on the other planets. Not using our excellent conversion templates is either laziness or scientific snobbery ;) Kudpung เธเธธเธ”เธœเธถเน‰เธ‡ (talk) 10:48, 12 January 2026 (UTC)[]
That, and K isn't a particularly appropriate unit for something that equates to +464 ยฐC, anyway. K is most appropriate for very, very, very cold, near absolute zero. (Or maybe K has very, very hot uses, too, but I don't run into that, as far as I recall. If so, maybe convert to K, for the few who would want it.) โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 19:40, 12 January 2026 (UTC)[]

Hi there,

I am inviting you to discuss the merger at TfD because you are the author of {{Use X English}}. Your comments are welcome. Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2026_January_13#Template:Use_American_English Szmenderowiecki (talk ยท contribs) 09:43, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[]

๐Ÿ‘ Notice

The article Subrace has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

"subrace" does not occur in either Race (biology) or Fantasy trope, and deletion would allow the Search function to reveal uninhibited results (45 other mentions in Enwiki).

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion based on established criteria.

If the proposed deletion has already been carried out, you may request undeletion of the article at any time. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 19:27, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[]

January music

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story ยท music ยท places

Thank you for improving article quality in January! - 20 January is the 100th birthday of David Tudor (see my story) and the 300th birthday of Bach's cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Trรคnen, BWV 13, if we go by date instead of occasion as he would have thought, so see my story for last Sunday, and celebrate ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:27, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[]

Books & Bytes โ€“ Issue 72

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The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 72, Novemberโ€“December 2025
  • Renewed partnerships
  • Spotlight: Strengthening Wikimedia Collaborations with and for Open Science
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team โ€“ 12:43, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[]

(This message was sent to User:SMcCandlish and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

February music

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story ยท music ยท places

Thank you for improving article quality in February! - My story today is again about Percy Grainger (FA by Brian Boulton), this time with a video that surprised me. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:12, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[]

Today's main page features four biographies I helped to bring there, two women and two men, three opera singers (one pictured) and an actor, - a record for me, I believe ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:55, 24 February 2026 (UTC)[]

๐Ÿ‘ Image

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Continental toy spaniel (disambiguation) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G14 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is:

  • a disambiguation page with a title ending in "(disambiguation)" which lists only one extant Wikipedia page (i.e., there is a primary topic);
  • a disambiguation page that lists zero extant Wikipedia pages, regardless of its title; or
  • a redirect with a title ending in "(disambiguation)" whose target is neither a disambiguation page nor page that has a disambiguation-like function.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time. Please see the disambiguation page guidelines for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:43, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[]

Good to take out the trash. :-) โ€‰โ€”โ€ฏSMcCandlish ยขโ€ƒ๐Ÿ˜ผโ€ƒ 06:22, 8 March 2026 (UTC)[]

Books & Bytes โ€“ Issue 73

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The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 73, Januaryโ€“February 2026
  • Four new partnerships
  • User survey thanks
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team โ€“ 12:05, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[]

(This message was sent to User:SMcCandlish and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

March thanks

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story ยท music ยท places

Thank you for improving article quality in March! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:20, 20 March 2026 (UTC)[]

on Bach's birthday, a story about my joy --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:56, 21 March 2026 (UTC)[]

Listing for discussion of Template:BCA 2006

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Template:BCA 2006 has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[]