User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2015/Mar

About your (non)participation in the January 2012 SOPA vote

Hi Colonies Chris. I am Piotr Konieczny (User:Piotrus), you may know me as an active content creator (see my userpage), but I am also a professional researcher of Wikipedia. Recently I published a paper (downloadable here) on reasons editors participated in Wikipedia's biggest vote to date (January 2012 WP:SOPA). I am now developing a supplementary paper, which analyzes why many editors did not take part in that vote. Which is where you come in :) You are a highly active Wikipedian (56th to be exact), and you were active back during the January 2012 discussion/voting for the SOPA, yet you did not chose to participate in said vote. I'd appreciate it if you could tell me why was that so? For your convenience, I prepared a short survey at meta, which should not take more than a minute of your time. I would dearly appreciate you taking this minute; not only as a Wikipedia researcher but as a fellow content creator and concerned member of the community (I believe your answers may help us eventually improve our policies and thus, the project's governance). PS. If you chose to reply here (on your userpage), please WP:ECHO me. Thank you! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 23:10, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Jr. and Sr.

Please note WP:JR. Dicklyon (talk) 06:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The overwhelming majority of article titles that include Jr. or Sr. do have the comma. Is there a project to rename them without the comma? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I see you asked at my talk page, too, and I answered there first, due to how notifications work. Dicklyon (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi

You made an edit at Wellshot Station. Can you take a look at Eric Ronald Inglis and see if it can be condensed, merged into Wellshot Station. Thanks.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 7

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A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for all the great work you are doing! Dutchy85 (talk) 01:49, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 8 March

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thanks

for all the work you have done on western australian articles in the last 24 hours. appreciated. satusuro 23:22, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

yeah, well watching the whole of my watchlist go past day after day... - what ever happened to bots? (like the awb corrections to the way that Trove cites newspapers - you are fixing in effect each entry by hand - I though there were bots that could do that soert of stuff?).... satusuro 23:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd be delighted if a bot could do it, but there are wide variations in the eccentric ways those citations are coded, and many other fixes that can be done at the same time, but the formats aren't consistent enough for a bot to safely do it all. So semi-automating most of it via AWB rules, while still being able to visually check for exceptions and anomalies is the only way. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:24, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

hell. oh well. satusuro 23:29, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

World War II link

Why did you remove the link to World War II with this edit? It seems like a reasonable link to me. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:16, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Likewise [1][2][3][4] (for WW1 and/or WW2). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

The point of a link is to allow the reader to get more information about a subject that may be unfamiliar to them. For events as well known as the two world wars, it's really inconceivable that any reader would want to click on these very broad links for more information, so they have no value. Possibly a much more specific link such as Axis naval activity in Australian waters might be useful - presumably what the guns were protecting Australia against. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

"The point of a link is to allow the reader to get more information about a subject that may be unfamiliar to them."

I don't believe there's anything in WP:BUILD that says we should limit links to subjects unfamiliar to the reader of an article. In any case who are we to decide whether a reader of an article is "familiar with" WW1/WW2, or whether they might want to read about it? If it's worth mentioning the war in an article, it's worth linking to it. (Nobody forces the user to follow the link, and generally the articles were not overlinked at that point.)

We mention many things in articles that we don't link to because we expect the reader to already be reasonably familiar with them - for example, 'United States' or 'dog' or 'water'. Volumes can be written about any of those subjects, but only in special circumstances would it be useful to the reader of an article to have a link to them. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"For events as well known as the two world wars, it's really inconceivable that any reader would want to click on these very broad links for more information, so they have no value."

By that logic, you'd need to delete rather a lot of links to WW2 etc ... and every other other "familiar" topic!

Yes. There are far far too many links that no-one is ever likely to use. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"... a much more specific link ... might be useful ..."

I do agree with this, but unless/until you're going to insert more specific links, I suggest that a link to WW1/WW2 is reasonable - certainly better than no link - and ought not be removed. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:34, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

What's reasonable about making a link that noone is ever likely to use? In the very unlikely event that someone really doesn't know what is meant by 'World War II' nothing's stopping them putting it into the search box. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"What's reasonable about making a link that noone is ever likely to use?"

I don't believe that that "noone is ever likely to use [the link]" is a reasonable assumption. Information about WW2 would help "readers understand the article more fully", eg why there were guns at Gage Roads. (As I mentioned before, a more specific link would be better, but I don't believe you should remove the WW2 link until/unless you're going to put the more specific one there.)

So let's suppose someone does click on that link, hoping to find some explanation of the presence of the guns there. How many reams of material will they have to wade through before finding anything that even describes the effects of the war on the South Pacific, let alone on one specific part of the Australian coast? It's not a useful link. The mention of WWII tells them that the guns were there because of the war. A link that takes them into a vast topic like WWII isn't going to help them. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"In the very unlikely event that someone really doesn't know what is meant by 'World War II' ...

Some readers follow the link to read more about a topic, not just to find out what an unknown term means.

On that basis we'd be linking absolutely everything, just in case someone might have some interest in any topic the article happens to mention. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"... nothing's stopping them putting it into the search box.

Wikipedia is based on hypertext ... enable readers to access relevant information on other pages easily.

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:22, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Which gets back to the supposed "sea of blue" objection. Should everything be linked? Or just the "high-value" terms and topics? Let the rest of us know if you find any good answers. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:17, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I've asked at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Linking to World War II for other editors to comment here. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:32, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Generally I unlink Second World War, World War II, WW2, etc.

• Here the point is "World War II era" not the war and I learn after some surfing that the period is 1941 to 1954 or so. This misfit undermines the meagre value of the link.

• The merely-general bluelink and redlink "Australian Army's Leighton Battery" at _target Buckland are not helpful, a lack that may seem to favor a WW2 link.

But the needed _target is obviously something like Indian Ocean in World War II. --merely "something like", i say, because that _target lacks a map and contains little but a chronological list of ship captures and sinkings. 'Fremantle', 'Gage', and 'Cockburn' do not appear and even 'Western Australia' barely appears! Its subsection List of sub-theatres and actions: Australia suggests three _targets ... of which the first or second may be valuable here: Axis naval activity in Australian waters (includes Fremantle activity); Western Australian emergency of March 1944 (mentions Fremantle but 'twere a passing threat).

Dare I say obviously our Gage Roads needs the photo images of Leighton Battery [5] (whose format is new to me) and Garden Island [6] that are now lost in the Buckland and Cockburn _target articles. With Gage Roads- and specifically WW2-relevant captions [where is Buckland/Leighton in that image?] those two images will greatly improve our Gage Roads. --as bluelink World War II will not.

P.S. If I understand correctly, after hasty surfing, the Axis naval activity in Australian waters Fremantle activity occurred in 1940, perhaps because the Leighton Battery was not in place until 1941 (our Buckland implies). Ideally Gage Roads#Wartime as expanded will confirm that sequence.

--P64 (talk) 22:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Ladies and gentlemen: Are you surprised to see me here? So am I. Evidently it's because Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking is on my watchlist and this grabbed my interest there --no doubt because of what i say in the first sentence. I hope my reply helps. But this page will not be on my watchlist.--P64 (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

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