RexxS

Infobox person oops.

Any article that has |religion= with a value is giving off:

Warning: Page using Template:Infobox person with unknown parameter "religion" (this message is shown only in preview).

The religion parameter is showing up in the article. I first noticed it on Joseph Franklin Rutherford, but it's on every article's preview with religion set. Bgwhite (talk) 07:55, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi Bgwhite, that's a consequence of the decision to remove the parameter, which I expect will happen soon. I wanted to give some warning to editors, so I removed the parameter from the whitelist. The RfC is at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 126 #RfC: Religion in biographical infoboxes and the discussion about how to remove the parameter is at Template talk:Infobox person #Ethnicity? Religion?. I've created a tracking category at Category:Infobox person using religion - 6750 articles in the category at present. --RexxS (talk) 13:49, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you and darn. I thought I caught you making your first mistake. Is it possible to change the warning message for a few months, so morons like me don't get all worried? Bgwhite (talk) 06:23, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: I've made a function in my personal module space, Module:RexxS, that should give a customisable warning in preview mode, e.g. "the religion parameter will be removed soon." If it works, I'll whitelist religion again and add a call to the warning message. Feel free to customise the message to taste. It's on the 12th line from the bottom of Template:Infobox person --RexxS (talk) 23:06, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

P.S. There are now 0 articles in Category:Infobox person using ethnicity and 0 articles in Category:Infobox person using religion --RexxS (talk) 23:35, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I've posted at WP:RFPP to have that module protected as "high-risk". -- John of Reading (talk) 07:40, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks John. That's good thinking, although I don't expect the call will need to stay in {{infobox person}} for very long. Better safe ... --RexxS (talk) 12:36, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Bgwhite (talk) 07:55, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Nobody

In re "nobody but a handful of cranks believes that homeopathy is effective, but nobody believes it is unsafe, either": You may be interested in the latest headlines, which have homeopathic medicines being recalled for being poisonous.[1] WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, knock me over with a feather. Who would have thought it? Is there any research comparing the incidence of seizures among those taking homeopathic tablets and gels with a control group? I mean, my initial reaction would be to ask what they are using for the gels? gelatinised sarin? --RexxS (talk) 17:00, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I've got no idea. The recent news stories seem to use phrases like "inconsistent amounts of belladonna", which suggests that a flawed manufacturing process may be at fault. (OTOH, with an (adult) LD50 of 500 mg/kg, a single pill of even pure belladonna might not be deadly.) But The New York Times is reporting that ten babies are dead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Access question

Hi RexxS, long time no talk. Lots has happened in a short space of time, but I'm back to lists and FLCs, so I had a favour regarding an accessibility question on List of poker hand categories. Is {{Cards}} fully accessible? Is its implementation in that list suitable for screen readers etc? All the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 21:53, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi The Rambling Man, it's really good to hear from you again, and I'm very glad you're getting stuck into FLs again. I seem to remember this question coming up a few years ago, and if I recall correctly, Graham87 explained that the unicode characters ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ (for Graham: the characters for hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades) were not read out by his screen reader. I can't get NVDA to read them, so I'm guessing that they are not accessible, but I'd be grateful if Graham could confirm that with his gear. If that's so, I can see a possible solution using the title attribute, although that's frowned on now by accessibility experts because most of the time it doesn't work. The other option is to use the WebAIM recommendations for hiding text from sighted readers. @Graham: could you let us know how each of the three options below are read on your default setup:

• 3♦
• 3♦
• 3♦ of diamonds

Each of them displays visually as three of diamonds, but NVDA seems to read them differently. Thanks, Graham, for any help you can give on this.

So, TRM, if some amendments are needed, I can implement them at Template:Cards/core, but I'd like to hear from Graham before I do anything. --RexxS (talk) 00:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rexx and The Rambling Man, the previous discussion on this topic is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Archive 11#Non standard ASCII. What's changed since then is that JAWS has added support for many more Unicode characters (I don't know exactly when they did this because I had to skip several JAWS versions, but it was in the last few years). However, it reads some in a rather strange way ... the card characters are read as "black heart suit", "black diamond suit", etc. So on JAWS, the three options are read for me as "three black diamond suit", "three black diamond suit", and "three black diamond suit of diamonds", respectively. It's true that NVDA doesn't read those characters properly at all. I don't know about Apple's VoiceOver, however, but I'll ask about that. Graham87 01:39, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

VOiceOver on the Mac reads the three options as 3 black diamond suit, three black diamond suit, and 3 red diamond suit of diamonds. Interestingly enough, when reading the first two options character-by-character, VoiceOver reads the "black diamond suit" character as "red diamond suit." Have not tested with the iPhone as of yet, but it should have similar behavior. Codeofdusk (talk) 01:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Graham and Codeofdusk. I can see why the results are strange: the actual unicode character ♦ is a "black diamond" because it's the same colour (black) as the rest of the text by default. The template is naturally using css to set a style on a span that makes the text red for sighted viewers - it's interesting that VoiceOver manages to recognise that with some settings.

Anyway, TRM, I don't think we've got a solution for you. The latest versions of the most popular screen readers on Windows and Mac give enough information for the user to make some sense of what is presented; the most common free reader doesn't. If I make changes to fix the problem for NVDA, it makes matters worse for JAWS and VO. The best bet, IMHO, is to leave things alone and encourage the maintainers of Template:Cards to implement the promised option to allow images to be used in place of the unicode characters. They will look less good when zoomed for sighted viewers, but we could reliably use the image alt text to carry the suit information for a screen reader - and that's a banker for every screen reader. We probably ought to archive this conversation somewhere we can find it again in future :P --RexxS (talk) 02:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

There (was) an add-on to bring emoji support to NVDA but I don't think it's being maintained anymore. It really should be a mainstream feature these days. We're the minority, if using standard emoji degrades the experience for sighted users and if it's accessible on at least macOS and iOS than using emoji is the best option. NVDA's lack of support for emoji is a separate problem and affects more than just Wikipedia... Codeofdusk (talk) 03:57, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Codeofdusk: I agree with the general gist of your message. However they aren't really emoji (see Playing cards in Unicode). Playing card characters have been a thing since the original IBM PC (see Code page 437). Just on a lark, I tested the original card characters in the DOS screen readers I have available to me using Talking Dosbox. Flipper and ASAP read them fine; ironically the only one that didn't was JAWS for DOS. Go figure. Graham87 11:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks all. I guess that means we'll just have to "make do" with what we have right now. Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:54, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Warwick course

Do you have any information on when the Warwick assignment will end? I think several of the articles need cleanup, but it seems best to wait until after the students are finished and have been assessed. Joe Roe (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Joe. I agree cleanup is needed, although I'm trying to encourage the students to do their own by pointing them to MOS and other pages that give guidance. I emailed that very question to the lecturer last week and he's just replied that the deadline is this Thursday 8 Dec, 23:59. He also gave me a link to the course page: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/University_of_Warwick/Human_Sexuality_(Autumn_2016)

I'll ask my contact at Wikimedia UK, Richard Nevell (WMUK) if he could perhaps drop a note to WT:WikiProject Medicine giving those sort of details the next time a course runs. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:33, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I think that would be for the best. I'm surprised to learn a course page exists after all. I see it lists the articles edited, but there's no form of link back to the course page from those articles? Joe Roe (talk) 22:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

No there isn't. Please feel free to express all of your concerns to any of the editors listed on the course page (i.e. not me). --RexxS (talk) 22:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello both. In future it would definitely be helpful for me to alert WP:MED. An interesting quirk of the dashboard is that the Education Dashboard automatically creates a page on Wikipedia about it but the Outreach Dashboard doesn't have that functionality (yet) meaning it isn't easy to find when you're starting on Wikipedia itself. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 18:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Richard, thanks for that. I did try to alert WikiProject Medicine on 18 November, but I didn't have all of that information. We'll know better next time. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:49, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): thank you for responding. I think notifying relevant WikiProjects is certainly a good idea. But the people who are likely to become involved with this kind of thing first are editors doing WP:NPP, WP:AFC and/or those watching the particular articles being edited. For us it would be really helpful to have a template placed on articles' talk pages indicating that they're part of an educational assignment and linking to a page with contact information. That way when they're being patrolled etc. the community can try to reach out to address potential problems early and avoid messy cleanup after the fact that is problematic for everyone involved. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all this is already recommended by Wikipedia:Student assignments. Joe Roe (talk) 22:26, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

On the plus side, the student who moved the draft into mainspace originally has just submitted the "final" draft for AfC review and (properly) moved it from his sandbox to Draft: space himself! I'm not hopeful about the notability of the draft, but I'm pleased he's learned how to do the move in line with what the AfC reviewers have been telling him. --RexxS (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Section

I don't think you're supposed to comment in that section. You should reply in your own section. Also, just to point out, that table also shows that none of the pro-HRC editors have receive any sanctions at AE.--v/r - TP 23:40, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

@TParis: I thought of that, but I don't have a section. He did ask me directly, so he must have been expecting a reply. --RexxS (talk) 23:43, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Assuming that our AE admins are unbiased and infallible, the interpretation would have to be that the pro-HRC editors behave less badly when they do misbehave. YMMV :D --RexxS (talk) 23:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps. We don't have enough data, I suppose, to determine either way. Interesting how even the data is seen in different ways by different eyes. Interesting cube, by the way.--v/r - TP 23:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

@TParis: nah, I'm just kidding. I'm in the UK and don't have a dog in the race concerning anything to do with Trump or Clinton. I only butted in because I was appalled with HT's behaviour at Bishonen's talk page. --RexxS (talk) 00:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Please strike unsubstantiated claim

Hi, RexxS. I note that on the AE page, you made this statement under my appeal (with no diffs): "As an aside, he seems to indicate in that table that Hidden tempo is acknowledged as a Trump supporter, not a neutral editor as he's been claiming." I am the only one who is able to say who he supported during the election, not @James J. Lambden. If you choose to believe that the facts make Trump look good, then so be it. If you choose to believe that the facts make Clinton look good, then so be it. I am a neutral editor, but you are able to hold whatever opinion you wish...in private. I would like to give you an opportunity to strike that comment, and remind you to please be more careful not to cast aspersions in the future. Thank you. Hidden Tempo (talk) 03:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Hidden Tempo. I don't need diffs when I've already linked the source page via a permalink for anybody to see. You are marked there as a Trump supporter, not as a neutral editor. You need to take that up with James J. Lambden as he did the markup, not I. I am merely reporting how you are viewed by your fellow-travellers. In my opinion though, you're not a neutral editor in the field of US politics as your edit history makes clear. You may choose to make whatever claims you want about your biases, but facts speak for themselves. You don't get to tell me where I can express my opinions, so with all due respect, you can take your suggestion of striking and stick it elsewhere. I'll also remind you that discussing Trump and Clinton here, outside of your AE appeal is a breach of your topic ban. Check what "broadly construed" means. Cordially, --RexxS (talk) 18:21, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

You're right, I should have left that bit out. Stricken. However, I still ask that you strike your misleading claim that I am "acknowledged as a Trump supporter," in addition to your vile request that I "stick" my suggestion "elsewhere." One user's opinion does not an acknowledgement make. Thank you again. Hidden Tempo (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. But you are "acknowledged as a Trump supporter", aren't you? I'm afraid that an instance of an acknowledgement still is an acknowledgement, despite what you might wish otherwise. James Lambden acknowledges you as a Trump supporter, doesn't he? I'm only reporting what I observed and I can't see where you've asked him to correct any mistake that he has made. In fact, you seem keen to make use of the table that clearly marks you as that. As for vileness, unless you've led an unbelievably sheltered existence, you'll know that the sticking suggestion could have been a lot worse. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:37, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Merry Cristmas everybody!!!

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,

I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

Luke 2:10-11 (King James Version)

Ozzie10aaaa (talk)is wishing you a Merry Christmas.

This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove.

Spread the cheer by adding {{Subst:Xmas4}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

RexxS, Happy Holiday/New Year!--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:31, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Commercial diving supervisors in UK

Hi RexxS, Do you know what the requirements are for registration of commercial diving supervisors in the UK for inshore/inland work (Not IMCA), and if available, for scientific, police and other professional diving. I tried contacting HSE but the fobbed me off with a non-answer, suggesting I apply to IMCA for training, and have not replied to my later queries. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:45, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Peter: As far as I'm aware, commercial divers in the UK are expected to hold at least an 'HSE part 4' qualification. I only have an 'HSE part 4 (restricted)' that allows paid training of recreational divers (not that I've ever used it). The list at http://www.hse.gov.uk/diving/qualifications/approved-list.pdf is where I'd look first to find out information - at least as a starting point. As far as I'm aware, the same qualifications are required for supervisors as are required for divers and stand-bys. To be precise, I don't know of any "registration", just the possession of an appropriate qualification defined by Diving at Work Regulations 1997 is what I understood to be needed. Is that any help?--RexxS (talk) 17:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

DWR 1997 states

Appointment of supervisor
9.—(1) Only one supervisor shall be appointed to supervise a diving operation at any one time.
(2) No person shall be appointed, or shall act, as a supervisor unless he is competent and, where appropriate, suitably qualified to perform the functions of supervisor in respect of the diving operation which he is appointed to supervise.

Does this mean there is no specific qualification for commercial diving supervisors in the UK? The diving contractor can appoint any diver that they consider suitably competent to supervise a diving operation? This may seem normal to you, but I am used to the supervisor having to be specifically trained, assessed, certificated, registered and appointed in writing. It comes as a bit of a culture shock. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:50, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Peter: I could certainly be wrong, but I always understood that experienced divers would take on the job of supervising other divers as a sort of natural progression – after all, there's no substitute for experience in the job itself for those sort of roles. In other words, the responsibility for appointing a competent person would rest with the contractors, so maybe there is training available, but I'm not aware of any registration. One of the oldest training centres that I know, Fort William, offers a range of courses, but searching their courses for "supervisor" brings up nothing specifically for the sort of supervisor I think you mean. You can look at IMCA courses like IMCA Trainee Air Diving Supervisor, but I didn't think that's what you were thinking of. --RexxS (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I am familiar with the IMCA requirements and registration, our scuba and inshore supervisor training and registration is similar in concept, and as far as I know so are the systems in Australia, Canada, Norway, The Netherlands and possibly others. Since our diver training and registration system was originally modeled on the UK system I thought that would also be the case for supervisors, but it would seem not. Live and learn. There is quite a big step between diving and supervising a dive in terms of personnel management, risk management, logistics and legal responsibility, and not all commercial divers are suitable for the supervisory responsibilities, just like not all supervisors are able to deal with the educational and administrative aspects of running a dive school, and generally need additional training. I have mailed Fort William to ask if they can give me a more definite answer. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:42, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Peter: Yes, I'd be surprised if Fort William weren't able to give you a definitive answer. I understand completely what you're saying about suitability of people for different tasks. Perhaps the potential liability and requirements for risk analysis that contractors will be aware of makes them more careful in selecting personnel for jobs. Whether that is an adequate substitute for additional specific training is debatable. I suppose it may be a consequence of the UK's long tradition of "on-the-job"/informal training for vocational education. --RexxS (talk) 19:56, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Only 2 days left...

Hi RexxS,

Community wishlist poll

Getting the tools we need

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT TO VOTE

• Improve the tools for reviewing new pages: Vote here.
• Improve the new user experience: Vote here

For NPP: Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

	Merry Christmas
	Hoping you stay warm and have lots of good times and good food this holiday season! White Arabian Filly Neigh

Wordsighn here

I want to have a helpful user page Wordsighn (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I kind of like the white background Wordsighn (talk) 20:55, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wordsighn: I've started you off with a simple template that helps you organise your user page. If you like it, keep it and fill in something about yourself - your interests, but not personal information! If you don't like it just revert it and I'll think again tomorrow. --RexxS (talk) 21:55, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks!!!!!!! Wordsighn (talk) 02:19, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Infobox racehorse Modules

I have not yet learned how to ping so here is a link to comments I posted at Template talk:Infobox racehorse. Mateusz K (talk) 00:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)