User talk:Andrewa: Difference between revisions

G'day! This is Andrew Alder's user talk page, you knew that. Welcome!

If you'd like to see what I'm doing, this is how I do that

If I left you a message on your talk page, please respond there, I am watching your talk page. That's of course unless the message at your talk page was a mere heads-up as to progress on a discussion here or on another talk page, in which case probably best to continue the discussion where it is. I prefer to discuss issues regarding any particular article, policy etc. at its talk page, so if I'm already involved in a discussion there's no need to fork the discussion to here, and if not then a simple heads-up here with a link to the relevant talk page and section is best. Be aware of the canvassing guidelines, but if you're just asking me for advice rather than a whole list of people there should be no problem there. Please don't censor my talk page. Just because you don't support what someone else is saying is no reason to remove it. Is it now? (You wouldn't think I had to say that, but I have learned otherwise.) On the other hand, if the edits you are removing are by banned users (or their socks), then please feel free to do it. That's not censorship, it's administrative drudgery, and I thank you for taking it on. But if there's doubt as to who the contributor really is, or if the proposed ban is not yet in force, or both, better to leave me to clean up my own page. (And again I would have thought that was obvious to all, but have learned otherwise.) A non-abusive heads-up on the antics of the contributor, in reply to what they have said or done here, is always appreciated. TIA!

If you're tempted to go below the top three levels, you might like to read User:Andrewa/How not to rant first

This is Andrewa's talk page, where you can send him messages and comments.

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An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of current IPL team rosters. Since you had some involvement with the List of current IPL team rosters redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so).

As I noticed you on the talk page, please check this out and let me know what you think.

2012 Yale University systematic review and Harmonization

A Yale University review published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology analyzing CO2 life cycle assessment emissions from nuclear power determined that.^[1]

"The collective LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are only a fraction of traditional fossil sources and comparable to renewable technologies."

It went on to note that for the most common category of reactors, the Light water reactor:

"Harmonization decreased the median estimate for all LWR technology categories so that the medians of BWRs, PWRs, and all LWRs are similar, at approximately 12 g CO2-eq/kWh"

The study noted that differences between emissions scenarios were:

"The electric system was dominated by nuclear (or renewables) and a system dominated by coal can result in a fairly large ranging (from 4 to 22 g CO2-eq/kWh) compared to (30 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively."

The study predicted that depending on a number of variables, including how carbon intensive the electricity supply was in the future, and the quality of Uranium ore:

"median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050."

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Agreed. I think that someone looking for encyclopaedic information on this topic would not differentiate between a flight or road case and would want all the information available in one article. Indeed, it would make Wikipedia more concise to merge. A visitor may not know there's any difference anyway, and not look for the other article at all.

What is the procedure for getting a merge to happen once it's been flagged on a talk page?Black Stripe (talk) 14 July 2013.

There is currently another vote taking place on the talk page of Cuban missile crisis whether to recapitalize the name or keep it in lowercase. You participated in the 2012 vote, and may want to voice an opinion or comment on this one. I'm writing this to the voters from 2012 who may not know about this vote. Randy Kryn 19:04 13 January, 2015 (UTC)

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I often see editors "star" a comment in a way that seems counterproductive to me, and contrary to the spirit of wp:mixed indents. It's in some ways similar to scare quotes and shouting IMO. It's misuse of styling to make a point, in this case to gain prominence for the point being made.

wp:mixed indents is part of Help:Talk pages which refers to Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines and is referred to by that guideline. So I guess it's Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines that is the authoritative page, but it seems to also lend some authority to the help page. wp:shouting is part of the guideline and discourages what seem to me to be similar practices.

MOS:INDENTMIX is part of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility and discourages switching from bullet to colon, but not the other way around.

Examples of what I'm calling scare stars are here, here and the second of the two edits here.

It's quite common. So maybe I'm concerned about nothing, in that many other editors (some of whom have my greatest respect) do it regularly. Or maybe it's just never been discussed.

There is certainly a time to use bullet points on talk pages. But ISTM that this time is when you're giving a list and make it a bullet list. That's helpful. But a list of only one point shouldn't be a bullet list. It's not a list at all. Andrewa (talk) 16:33, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a fourth example and possibly the best to date. I have raised it on their talk page. [1]

A possible new phrase or even section heading for some guideline: Do not use pointy bullets.

Technically, the colon : is also supposed to be used for list elements rater than indenting. But its use for indenting and stringing in talk pages is explicitly (if perhaps sometimes grudgingly) supported in many places, for example wp:THREAD.

As is the use of the asterisk for some specific discussions such as RMs. But in the case of an RM the !votes do form a bullet list, and that helps the closer. The first person to !vote is just starting this list. It's a structured discussion, and the bullets are part of this structure.

I suppose another way of looking at the bullet in an RM is that it draws attention to the !votes, again making closing easier as a result. I think that actually amounts to exactly the same thing. Andrewa (talk) 22:19, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here are another two examples: [2] [3], the second however is forced by the first in terms of MOS:INDENTMIX. Andrewa (talk) 12:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reply from IIO Just makes it easier to see in a RfC type discussion. [4] Yes, that's exactly what I suspected. But is that to be encouraged? Andrewa (talk) 18:42, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that certainly should be encouraged. In a discussion canvassing opinions, Where each person has a say and some have a giant say and some a pithy say a bullet is a sensible and visually useful leveller. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realize when invited to reply here that this was a User Talk page. Andrew, one can see here how indenting below a mass of text is often less clear. And here there are so far only 2 discussants. When there are a dozen the bullet is beneficial. IMHO. Of course we don't have to legislate everything on Talk Pages. Again IMHO. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:19, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting... and as documented above, you're not the only one to be doing this. And as also documented above, in replying to a bullet point, the recommendation is to go one bullet deeper, to avoid accessibility issues.

So, it's a one-way trip. Once we start bulleting, we must continue to do so.

So, why use : at all? Why not just have all bullets from the start? That seems to be the inevitable result if this catches on... nobody wants their own contributions to be less prominent, after all.

Food for thought? In ictu oculi, I'd appreciate any other comments. Andrewa (talk) 21:50, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another example, this time by SmokeyJoe, another highly skilled and experienced contributor. In view of no further response from IIO, I think I'll raise this at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines.

But before I do that, I'll give SmokeyJoe a chance to reply here.

The intention seems to be just to make the post stand out. But is it really a good way of doing that? Andrewa (talk) 01:43, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• I am a big fan of a single asterisk per post, and really dislike multiple asterisks for multiple paragraphs for the one post.

The second paragraph doesn't deserve the asterisk visual cue.
I know I can use <br/> coding for the same effect, but it is not so nice in the edit window.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:51, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually, the <br/> coding produces a different line spacing. The <br/> coding appear to serve as a line feed, whereas an edit window new line and colon produces a new paragraph with an additional half line spacing before.

  The <p> coding can also be used, but occasionally people boiisterously object to a have to close the code with the </p> code. For me, I nave never seen the effect of a missing </p>, so I am not sure.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:54, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• The <p></p> coding looks redundant to <br/>. One asterisk per post, indentation level observed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:56, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• At Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#Articles_that_exist_and_could_exist, if I didn't use the asterisk, it would look, to my eyes for sure, as if my post were a run-on of Station1's. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To my eyes, the above just looks a mess. Andrewa (talk) 02:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article General of the Armed Forces has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Already existing as General of the Army (United States)

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

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, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. GELongstreet (talk) 18:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another one for your Chamber of Horrors: Word. I've just been through the 1500-odd links-in; removed only the most egregious overlinks (e.g. English word); fixed links intended for Microsoft Word (several), Word (computer architecture) (several), Lyrics, Logos (Christianity), three songs, a publisher and a record label; and {{dn}} tagged a couple I hadn't a clue about. Sigh. Narky Blert (talk) 13:14, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(I came across the problem because User:DPL bot had picked up a single bad link to the DAB page excel, which was intended for Microsoft Excel.) Narky Blert (talk) 13:19, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed! Raised at User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios#Word. [5]

Feel free to raise any new ones you wish to propose, or comment on any existing ones, at that talk page or User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases. This might even get promoted to that later page by me in due course. Thinking about that.

There's been lots of relevant discussion at wt:DAB recently as well. Andrewa (talk) 18:09, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]