User talk:Pat Palmer

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Mount Evans to Mount blue sky

Pat, thanks for redirecting that page about the mountain in Colorado. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 09:17, 20 September 2023 (CDT)

Glad to do it. It's great to see you drop by and edit a bit in here. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:42, 20 September 2023 (CDT)

Test Comment

Hi Pat! Just testing out leaving comments on discussion pages. E. J. Diamond (talk) 15:47, 13 October 2023 (CDT)

Commenting on your test comment. Pat Palmer (talk) 15:48, 13 October 2023 (CDT)

App

While looking for something else, I serendipitously came across tipitaka.app. I think we should mention this, but I don't know much about this modern technology, in particular how to reference this. Peter Jackson (talk) 05:29, 17 November 2023 (CST)

This looks interesting. I have loaded it on my Android smartphone and on Windows and will try it out. The smartphone version seems to be in the process of downloading a large dictionary of terms in the background, so it may be a while before it works. The Windows version is tricky to install and also doesn't work yet, possibly for the same reason. I will try again later! Pat Palmer (talk) 09:11, 17 November 2023 (CST)
Sadly, I never was able to get it to work. It's a great idea though. I'd love to be able to line up my favorite English translations of the canon and do a text search over the whole thing. Too bad. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:18, 8 February 2024 (CST)

Articles with subpages that require metadata...

I got your recent email, thanks. George Swan (talk) 20:26, 21 December 2023 (CST)

Hi George (and anyone). I am moving the list of pages needing Metadata to CZ:Pages without metadata. Please add your newly created articles to that list. I am trying to hire a programmer to get metadata creation automated when creating new articles. We had that for many years in the past, but it was never rewritten after an old wiki upgrade broke it. Pat Palmer (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2024 (CST)

Doggie test pages

Hi Pat. I found Doggie/Definition, Doggie/External Links, Doggie/Related Articles, and Doggie1/Definition which are test pages you were using. You have already deleted the main Doggie article. Do you want to keep these four or delete them too? Btw, how much is the one in the window? John (talk) 03:53, 12 January 2024 (CST)

Lol. Please delete them. I might need some test articles again in the future, and will let you know if I am using them. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:52, 12 January 2024 (CST)

Lemma clusters

Hi, Pat. I think I've made some progress with these by focusing on Category:Lemma Subpage. I decided to action all articles with subpages other than Related Articles so we now have 599 in that category and the same 599 in Category:Lemma Related Articles Subpage. As this has identified several oddballs and duplicates, I think we now have a level playing field. However, there are still 15,000 articles in Category:Lemma Cluster overall and the overwhelming majority are about the sort of obscure subjects we've already discussed.

I think I will take a break from housekeeping now and go back to normal writing as I might burn out if I try to keep going. Perhaps the best approach now will be to pick out anything that obviously needs a metadata, such as Bayeux Tapestry or Central America, and deal with those. As for Howard's stuff, there are numerous groups of articles with serial numbers which are easily seen, such as ADM or AH or AMD, so they could be batched together for deletion. I'll do an occasional purge but I do think, despite 15,000 being no small number, that we've got things under control now. John (talk) 04:29, 14 January 2024 (CST)

Redirects

Hi, Pat. I just thought I'd let you know that I'm going to start hitting redirects as I've been coming across lots of them which are unnecessary or are leftovers from page movement. Some still have metadatas and/or subpages which are just so much extra clutter. I've done a search and there are over 15,700 redirect pages including hundreds of double redirects. I'm not going to waste time adding reasons for deletion because of the timeout bug so I'll build a list for the day and go through them as quickly as I can. When I see any I think are at least useful, if not essential, I'll leave them be. They can easily be restored or recreated if I hit any that are needed.

I've also finished working through letter A of Category:Lemma Subpage and many now have metadatas. The 22 which remain are in PropDel as I don't think they will be expanded. We currently have 46 under B and I'll start looking at those soon. These of course are the lemmas which have a related articles page so there's "only" 560-odd of them. John (talk) 04:10, 8 February 2024 (CST)

I agree that, while we definitely need some Redirects, the wiki has too many now, and too many double redirects, and that they are clutter which we would do well to reduce. I look forwards to your efforts (I'm slowly working on them also). Pat Palmer (talk) 10:12, 8 February 2024 (CST)
P S - But, please be sure to check What Links Here, and if things link to the Redirect, use the Replace Text tool (or possibly manual edits) to fix the redlinks that would be left by deleting a Redirect. It can be a bit of tedious work, which is why this work is slow and tedious. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:13, 8 February 2024 (CST)
I've been going through the Broken Redirects first, Pat. They were easily dealt with because there's a delete trigger for each one. We can't delete CZ pages for some reason. They produce an internal error.
I also want to work through Double Redirects which is a mess. There are 445 of those and I'll have to hold my hand up there because I can see several that are mine. I think that might be it for today, though, but I should be back tomorrow. It's snowing and settling here. First snow we've had this winter. John (talk) 11:12, 8 February 2024 (CST)

email

You asked me to send some kinds of messages to you via email.

Did you see I sent you an email on Saturday? George Swan (talk) 12:02, 12 February 2024 (CST)

George, I did not receive it at either the CZ email or my personal email. Can you try again? Pat Palmer (talk) 11:01, 13 February 2024 (CST)

End of tether

Hi, Pat. Please see recent talk page entries and recent corrections I have had to spend time doing. I think I've had enough for now and will take a break but, frankly, I'm calling Houston. John (talk) 16:55, 14 February 2024 (CST)

Seen your message elsewhere, Pat. As it happens, I'll be very busy in home life for the next several days so I'll be stepping aside from the internet. All the best. John (talk) 03:49, 15 February 2024 (CST)

Living persons

Hi, Pat. I've not a lot of time for the next three days because family are visiting but we've just been chatting about CZ and one of my daughters has made a useful suggestion.

She is puzzled by the Topic Informant classification and thinks we should simplify how we categorise living person biographies (BLP) by having a Biographies category with a Living Persons sub-category. On the face of it, this seems a good idea to me. I think we'd have to augment it by insisting that all BLPs must have a metadata completed and that no BLP can be a lemma. Also, of course, anyone creating a BLP must be able to demonstrate the subject's significance. For example, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are significant, but is Jeff Zients (whose name I plucked out of a list)? I would add that everything we write in a BLP article must be verified by citation of a reliable source, especially if the person is controversial in some way.

Just one for us to think about as it might be a way towards better control of BLP creation and content. John (talk) 04:22, 16 February 2024 (CST)

I had never heard of Jeff Zients, either. 15 seconds with google taught me he is Joe Biden's Chief of Staff. That is a very important position.
His wikipedia article has 48 references. and has been edited over 750 times.
His wikipedia article has been read something like 316,000 times. George Swan (talk) 11:42, 16 February 2024 (CST)
Wikipedia:Jeff_Zients is important for the moment, yes, but Wikipedia already has an extensive article about him, and it's actually not bad, so I'm reluctant to leave the one we have unless someone is going to invest the time to make it better than WP's. Thus, his name and function might well appear in our Joe Biden article, but instead of linking to a CZ stub article on Zients, we can just add a Footnote/Reference pointing to WP, or one is actually able to link directly to Wikipedia like this: [[Wikipedia:Jeff_Zients]]. That would be my preference in cases of minor figures like this. Oddly, WP's Notability policy gets anyone mentioned in the press a lot an article, but makes it damned difficult to add articles about people who, in life, are probably important to many people but are being ignored by the press, such as (just for example) Paul Prestopino, a man who played on tracks from dozens of leading rock musicians in the 60's through 80's and was well-known across the music industry. After he passed away, it took me six months to get the article about him approved in Wikipedia (because Paul never sought the limelight), even though 70 articles in Wikipedia were already pointing off to a non-existent article about him. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:07, 16 February 2024 (CST)
BTW I agree that Topic Informants is not a helpful Workgroup at this point, but we need some method of grouping together all the articles about living people, and reengineering Topic Informants is beyond my capacity at the moment. The code implementing Workgroups is tough to deal with. I like the idea of a Living Persons Biography category, but if we're going to create that, we need to decide what the criterion is for it. I think it's important not to keep adding mid-level professionals to the wiki, confining ourselves to people with tangible accomplishments: books, recordings, films, other works of art, writing plays that have had a long successful run (not necessarily beginners who have won a single award but whose work has not withstood the test of time), holding high office (senator, congressperson, member of parliament, head of state, cabinet member, etc.). This is an incomplete list; being the top general in a war, state or federal judge, etc. should also count. Being White House chief of staff is a very powerful position in that this person can to some extent gate who has personal access to the president, but the position is temporary, and that person is, at least in theory, not really the one "driving the bus", so to speak. After his/her president leaves office, that person becomes (once again) just another party loyalist available for hire by others, unless they decide to run for office on their own (as did, for example, Rahm Emanuel who became mayor of Chicago, which probably does warrant having a bio in here. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:07, 16 February 2024 (CST)
I think I'm going to copy this thread into the Content forum, where we can continue discussing the matter, resulting in some eventual revision of CZ:Content_Policy as well as, possibly, other documentation etc. Let's move the discussion there. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:13, 16 February 2024 (CST)

Vietnam

Hi, Pat. I see you're working on this and it looks to me like a very good article in the making. One thing I'd ask is how much anti-war protest should be included? Or perhaps we could have a separate article to cover protest. Country Joe and all that. I once took part in a demo in London, marching on the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square and chanting "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!" Looking back, I cannot believe I ever did such things. I especially remember "The Greatest", Muhammad Ali, denouncing that war by defying the draft and saying he had "nothing against them VietCong" because they never called him N-word.

In Britain, people of my age are virtually unanimous in our gratitude to Harold Wilson, who refused to involve us despite LJB begging him to send British forces. If only Blair had done the same on Iraq, although he was right about Afghanistan.

It's very late here. I should be able to help out more after tomorrow afternoon. Great to see the family, though. Good night. John (talk) 16:27, 17 February 2024 (CST)

Anti-war protest around the Vietnam War would probably make a good second article (though I don't have the interest in writing it), and I was tempted to bring up the Kent state killings (4 students shot by the Ohio Nat'l Guard) and the vilification of Jane Fonda, but I didn't want to make that section too long. I included the section of American culture because younger people these days have no idea how formative the Vietnam War was on our outlook on life. The only march I ever attended was a Women's March on Washington once in the 1980's about the time the Equal Rights Amendment for women failed to pass. It did no good. I'm just not a marcher or someone to throw myself before a bulldozer. Good on you for having marched at least once! Pat Palmer (talk) 08:48, 18 February 2024 (CST)

Articles needing action

Hi, Pat. At various times in the last few days, you requested action on these articles but nothing has been done:

Would you like me to deal with them? I think you wanted Klymkiw to be a speedy, but please confirm. The others are all renames.

I'm going to start removing the 38 January PropDels. I think they are all lemmas so it shouldn't take too long but I'll probably do them in batches. John (talk) 14:42, 18 February 2024 (CST)

Let's just put Slawko Klymkiw on the PropDel list; it isn't actually harmful material, and it will give the author a chance to move the information to another more appropriate place if he would like to. Feel free to work on any of the others that you have time for. I added a couple things to speedydelete today. Thank you for working on the January deletions! Pat Palmer (talk) 15:30, 18 February 2024 (CST)

People

Hi, Pat. Would you be okay with a People Workgroup and, affiliated to it and perhaps other WGs, a Living Persons Subgroup and a Historical Persons Subgroup (I'm not sure about the name for the latter)? We currently have one WG, Robotics, which is empty so I could move that to People. I'll leave you to think about it. All the best. John (talk) 09:46, 19 February 2024 (CST)

Templates

Hi, Pat. Do we have any kind of "article reviewed" or "article passes muster" template that we could use at the top of pages that have been reviewed or revised and can be classified as satisfactory or better? The reason I'm asking is that I took the bull by the horns earlier today and reviewed Islam. I had seen there were several HB edits in its history and I expected he would have turned it into the usual soapbox. However, I was pleasantly surprised because it is within scope and is quite good. His input amounted to minor edits only, like adding links.

I've started my own list of satisfactory articles now and I think it would be useful if there is something in the article itself to say it is okay after being reviewed. If we don't have a suitable template, could you suggest a wording? Thanks. John (talk) 11:04, 21 February 2024 (CST)

@John, What would you think about using a Category, as shown in the following list? If it doesn't fit one of those, it would be either {{PropDel}} or {{speedydelete}}. Maybe also, you should make me actually do any the speedy-deletes so you can always claim that I knew about it.Pat Palmer (talk) 13:15, 21 February 2024 (CST)
Here are the new Categories I am starting to use. Could you use them too, for now? Pat Palmer (talk) 14:27, 21 February 2024 (CST)

Stray articles

Hi, Pat. How much of a problem are articles like Stanley Cup which have no subpages, no useful categories, and are outside lemma catchment? I found this by chance because it happens to contain a link to Kandahar. If there are loads of these strays floating around, I think it will be difficult tracing them and rounding them up.

Stanley Cup is definitely a copy of the WP version in 2008, btw. John (talk) 02:25, 28 February 2024 (CST)

One possibility is add the article to the list at CZ:Pages_without_metadata (which I did in the case of Stanley Cup just now. A better option might be to bring over the current WP article and, if needed, write a better intro for it and add the Provenance section to the bottom of the article with the {{WPAttribution}} template. These are for when there are links to the article. If unlinked, we might just delete it instead. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:15, 29 February 2024 (CST)

Double redirects

Hi, Pat. There are two of these relating to your own pages:

  • User:Pat Palmer/sandbox/Proposed Impartiality Policy (edit) →‎ User:Pat Palmer/sandbox/Impartiality Guidance →‎ User:Pat Palmer/sandbox/Objectivity Guidance
  • User:Pat Palmer/sandbox/Impartiality Guidance (edit) →‎ User:Pat Palmer/sandbox/Objectivity Guidance →‎ CZ:Objectivity Guidance

Do you need them for anything or can they be deleted? John (talk) 17:29, 28 February 2024 (CST)

These are old and can just be deleted, since CZ:Objectivity Guidance is linked on the main page. Thanks for noticing them. Actually, I'll take care of it. Pat Palmer (talk) 13:17, 29 February 2024 (CST)
I thought I deleted them both, but if one is still there, it can be deleted. Thanks! Pat Palmer (talk) 13:49, 3 March 2024 (CST)

All DDs have been cleared now, Pat. Not an easy job with quadruple/quintuple redirects and even 360 degree loops! Anyway, we just need to keep an eye on them now, and the same for broken redirects. John (talk) 16:41, 8 March 2024 (CST)

BC/AD or BCE/CE

Hi, Pat. Where do you stand on this? I'm asking because I've got 1 CE in my review list. Are you happy with that or would you prefer 1 AD? I'm happy with either, although I tend to say BC/AD because that's what I grew up with. John (talk) 16:54, 8 March 2024 (CST)

It's a strange article title, but let's leave it for now and deal with the more egregious stuff. It probably needs renaming but I'm not sure to what. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:19, 11 March 2024 (CDT)