RexxS

Facto Post – Issue 2 – 13 July 2017

Facto Post – Issue 2 – 13 July 2017 Editorial: Core models and topics Wikimedians interest themselves in everything under the sun — and then some. Discussion on "core topics" may, oddly, be a fringe activity, and was popular here a decade ago. The situation on Wikidata today does resemble the halcyon days of 2006 of the English Wikipedia. The growth is there, and the reliability and stylistic issues are not yet pressing in on the project. Its Berlin conference at the end of October will have five years of achievement to celebrate. Think Wikimania Frankfurt 2005. Progress must be made, however, on referencing "core facts". This has two parts: replacing "imported from Wikipedia" in referencing by external authorities; and picking out statements, such as dates and family relationships, that must not only be reliable but be seen to be reliable. In addition, there are many properties on Wikidata lacking a clear data model. An emerging consensus may push to the front key sourcing and biomedical properties as requiring urgent attention. Wikidata's "manual of style" is currently distributed over thousands of discussions. To make it coalesce, work on such a core is needed. Links WikiFactMine project pages on Wikidata, including a SPARQL library (in development). Fatameh tool for adding items on scientific papers to Wikidata, by User: T Arrow. It has made a big recent impact. Offline for maintenance as we go to press, it is expected back soon. As of July 2017, Zotero has a Wikidata translator. A personal Zotero library acts as an intermediary in managing and storing citation metadata. GLAM Newsletter June 2017, Wikidata report. This is a good monthly round-up to follow, and welcomes contributions. Exciting and Impressive! The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) was launched in April: Infodocket on the first three months. Olivia Solon in San Francisco, Why the net neutrality protest matters, opinion piece in The Guardian on 11 July. Editor Charles Matthews. Please leave feedback for him. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

Reference format options

At other articles I have been advised to use a standard journal citation format that did not include first names, or commas between the last name and the initials for the other names. Hence my attempt to make consistent the citations for Factitious disorder imposed on self. David notMD (talk) 15:35, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Please don't throw away information that other editors have made the effort to supply. You do not improve a citation by reducing first names to initials, full journal names to abbreviations, or first and last names to a single field. --RexxS (talk) 15:45, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I also write in paper venues (books, magazines, newspapers), and so brought a brevity bias with me to Wikipedia, courtesy of my editors in those venues. I will try not to be perturbed by the idea of using more than a minimum number of bytes to convey information. David notMD (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@David notMD: I should have guessed. Please don't let me put you off improving bare urls and other defective citations, though. To give some perspective, by the way, there are probably about 1 million uses of {{cite journal}} on Wikipedia, so if you could save 100 bytes in each cite, you'd reduce the server space used by 0.1 Gigabyte – saving no more than around $0.005. Really not worth it. (Yes I know you have to multiply that by the number of versions kept in the history, but you see the scale of it.) Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Help for module

Hello. A user told me that you know about modules. I need help to create one. I want a module to show the most recent value (according to d:Property:P585) of d:Property:P1352 with the date in brackets. For example, Argentina men's national association football team (Q79800) --> d:Property:P1352. It must show "4 (16 October 2017)". (I don't want to use preferred option). Consider that d:Property:P459 must always be FIFA World Rankings (Q180825). Can you help with this? (I want it for Greek Wikipedia). Thanks anyway. Xaris333 (talk) 08:45, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: Yes, I can help. I'm creating a module for you at Module:Sandbox/RexxS/Ranking. However, it's really difficult to text and fix bugs if you're changing the data while I'm trying to read it from Argentina men's national association football team (Q79800). Could you suggest another Wikidata entry that you won't be changing for the next hour or so? --RexxS (talk) 14:08, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I am not going to change Argentina men's national association football team (Q79800). This is an unsuccessful try, if it can help you el:Module:FIFARanking. Xaris333 (talk) 14:12, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: I have a working version now at Module:Sandbox/RexxS/Ranking. If you paste {{#invoke:Sandbox/RexxS/Ranking|getRanking}} into a section of Argentina national football team and preview it (obviously, don't save!) you should get:

{{#invoke:Sandbox/RexxS/Ranking|getRanking}} → 1 (1 April 2023)

Perhaps you could try that in a few other pages and see if it works in each one? You won't need the qid parameter as that allows us to see the result on pages other than the article page (like here).

The code probably could be improved to deal with rankings that only have a year as point in time qualifier, but I can do that later, on request. Let me know if you find any bugs. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:19, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

P.S. It should be fairly well internationalised, but let me know if you need more to use it on Greek Wikipedia. --RexxS (talk) 15:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for you time but is not what I wanted. The module should show 4 (16 October 2017). 3 (20 November 2017) has P459 -- > UEFA. I wanted only P459 --> FIFA. If you have time, please check and correct el:Module:FIFARanking or replace it by your code (it should work on [1]. Thanks anyway. Xaris333 (talk) 15:26, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: The module did return "the most recent value (according to d:Property:P585) of d:Property:P1352 with the date in brackets" as you specified. I didn't understand that different rankings were available. I've now modified the code so that only FIFA World Rankings are used. It still needs testing in multiple articles to see how robust it is. Unfortunately my Greek is not good enough to do work on the Greek Wikipedia, so I'll have to leave that part to you. --RexxS (talk) 15:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I am so thankful for your help, really... I have also written "Consider that d:Property:P459 must always be FIFA World Rankings (Q180825)." Just visit el:Module:FIFARanking. We are using only English in modules. If you can't understand, its ok. Just give a try. Xaris333 (talk) 15:53, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

It's working on Greek wiki!!! Thanks!! May I ask you for something similar? It's ok if you don't want or you don't have time. Xaris333 (talk) 16:06, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Advice on where to find someone who can run a bot

Hi RexxS, Do you know where look/post to find a volunteer to help run the Cochrane update bot?August version. I believe it is a "python script", and the volunteer needs a bot account. Do you have any idea how labour-intensive this task is for a volunteer who has experience coding? Ideally, this bot would run every few months, to ensure that updated and withdrawn reviews are flagged for cleanup in the articles. Thanks, Jenny JenOttawa (talk) 14:49, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Jenny: I'd suggest my good friend, Mike Peel who writes and runs other bots and is an admin. He's also a really nice guy and very helpful. A job that is only run every couple of months isn't likely to be a big imposition, hopefully. (For Mike: the bot is actually User:Dexbot and its owner is Ladsgroup whose English is excellent. See the history for the page it writes to) If there's any problem with that, I have a few other ideas. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@JenOttawa: I'd be happy to help. I operate User:Pi bot, which runs a few small bot jobs using Python/pywikibot scripts, and I'd be happy to add another. The task would probably need to go through Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval before running (if it hasn't already), but this doesn't sound like a controversial thing so I expect that would be straightforward. Is the code you want running available somewhere so that I can have a look at it? (And thanks Doug for the complements!) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:30, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I have contacted Mike on his talk page and contacted James to see if he knows where to find the actual code. Thanks again for your help and for introducing me to Mike!JenOttawa (talk) 01:33, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, RexxS. You have new messages at Winged Blades of Godric's talk page.
Message added 05:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Winged Blades ^Godric 05:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

A Barnstar for You

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		I noticed your diligence regarding medical articles, which I have admired. I discovered today (reading your Talk page) that your work on such articles represents a supplementary interest to your primary work on scuba-related articles, which reflect even more diligence! Thus, this recognition of your sedulity.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 23:39, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

SPI

Hey, you put your comment down in the area that is reserved for admins and CUs. Would you please move it up to the area for "others"? "thx for weighing in there! Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 19:18, 28 November 2017 (UTC))

Thanks Jytdog, but I'm happy with where it is (immediately following the issue it refers to). If somebody thinks my contribution is worth less than that of an admin, I'm sure they'll move it . Cheers. --RexxS (talk) 19:14, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

SPI has a huge backlog. Your ego is more important to you than the time of clerks and admins who actually do work there? Whatever. Jytdog (talk) 19:19, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

No. It doesn't fucking matter where the post is, and it's really disappointing to see that you don't understand that. Look at bureaucracy, definition #4. If moving my post is more important to the clerks than doing the job they volunteered for, they can make that decision. I won't worry either way, but you need to get a sense of proportion. --RexxS (talk) 19:25, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Jim Mattis

Hi user:RexxS! Just letting you know that Jim Mattis has been moved per your nom. Thank you so much for your help.--Certified Gangsta (talk) 08:08, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Finning techniques

Hi RexxS, I have moved Frog kick to Finning techniques and expanded it somewhat to include more of the current scope, with references, so a net gain. When you have nothing better to do you might take a quick look, and see if there are any particularly egregious errors that spring out, or omissions that don't, and leave any suggestions that come to mind on the talk page. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:20, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

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The : accessibility issue

Please see the related thread at WT:MOSMATH; two editors there have kind of gone off the rails about it, and they've now started editwarring in other MoS pages to remove advice about more accessible markup, e.g. recently at MOS:LISTS. They reverted my attempts last week to simply add a "more accessible markup exists" thing in MOS:MATH and replace bad colon indentation with {{block indent}} in the examples. When I tried to RfC it (as a WP:CONLEVEL matter), they canvassed WT:MATHS and wrecked the RfC with off-topic text-walling about math markup and various rants, and are now going around claiming they have a consensus to require : markup for indentation. I'm not sure what to do at this point, but it's clear they will not listen to a word I say, and other editors who understand and can explain accessibility issues need to talk them down off the ledge.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  19:13, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi SMcCandlish, I saw those discussions. I believe that there is nowadays a sufficient number of editors who understand accessibility to keep the MOS:ACCESS pages sane. I can't really comment on other projects, and I'm afraid that life's too short to fight zealots on every page that they want to own. I'm happy to try to keep MOS:LISTS sensible though – after all, it's had that guidance for at least the last three years – but I don't see much point in trying to force minor projects to adopt best accessibility practices. My experience is that simply explaining how we can do things better for visually impaired visitors whenever the topic is raised, eventually persuades those editors who are wiling to listen. It's not a quick process, but at least you get to know who the white hats are. --RexxS (talk) 20:08, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Sure, my only concern is that two people from WP:WikiProject Mathematics are effectively asserting ownership over WP:Manual of Style/Mathematics, a sitewide guideline, and WP:POLICYFORKing it from the main MoS for "pointy", territoriality reasons, and now taking their fight to MOS:LISTS and WT:MOSACCESS. It's just ugly and ridiculous. Even a few more voices of reasons are probably enough to end it. I keep telling them no one is going to make WT:MATHS people write any code they don't want to; it's about whether they can force "their" guideline to hide the fact that better markup exists.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:13, 13 December 2017 (UTC)