User talk:Bgwhite

Referencing Leogrande - a tutorial?

Hi - I'd appreciate being advised on the referencing. You can contact me through www.josephpapp.com (I'd prefer to correspond via email if possible.) Thanks.Joep01 (talk) 21:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC) UPDATE: can you also help me release a photo from my own archives into the public domain so that others can use it as they see fit in editing my article or however else they want, in the media for example? Joep01 (talk) 22:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - Thanks for the information you provided. I will review and use it at next opportunity, and will contact you w/ any questions. Cheers. Joep01 (talk) 18:13, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First Transcontinental Railroad

Your sorting of the project tags resulted in changing the Nevada rating. If you are going to do this, you need to move the entire tag and not just a part. Also, sorting is not always desirable since some projects may consider the order important. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:11, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, I goofed and forgot to move the entire tag. I do usually move it. Projects should be sorted in alphabetical order except for biography, which should always be first... It is done in alphabetical to stop projects always clamoring that they are more important than other projects. Bgwhite (talk) 21:11, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AWB edit suggestion

I noticed you made some changes with AWB such as the ones you made to Yasha Khalili and I wanted to mention that I just had my AWB access revoked and have an ANI discussion currently about changes more significant so you might want to be careful with the edits you are making so the same doesn't happen to you. Happy editing. --Kumioko (talk) 00:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the head up. I just got thru reading the ANI discussion. Boy, what a mess/disaster. I come from a computer background and I highly agree with standardization. It can become a mess if everybody has their own way of doing things. Your food and drink example was perfect. The discussion also reminded me of the days of when I removed white space, replaced white space with tabs or remove non-needed stuff in web pages. It was done so the page would transfer faster over a modem. Hope you enjoy your wikibreak. Bgwhite (talk) 02:02, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Default Sorting question

Hi! Am I right that roles added to article titles as disambiguators should be dropped when creating DEFAULTSORT terms. A example will be clearer!

Currently the DEFAULTSORT in Elaine Taylor (actress) is DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Elaine (Actress), but I think this should be just DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Elaine.

Thanks VinculumMan (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. It should be DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Elaine. Bgwhite (talk) 19:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I'll fix, if you didn't already. Could you also check Edward Blount, 2nd Baron Mountjoy, did I get that one right? VinculumMan (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are on a roll. According to WP:PEERS, you are once again correct. Bgwhite (talk) 19:58, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! In that case I think I will log off, and go eat before I get something wrong. :-) I'll carry on plugging away during the coming week. Happy editing! VinculumMan (talk) 20:02, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I put this on VinculumMan's talk page but since you were also involved I will put it here also.

Sometimes you get lucky and one of the authors of the article is familiar with the relevant naming convention but only added the sort value on the {{DEFAULTSORT}}. The Biography banner was most probably added by a bot whose owner either did not know about |listas= or did not care.

The object of the category is to insure that each article has a sort value in {{DEFAULTSORT}}. At some point one or more of us is going to have to master Arab naming conventions and take care of all those. Happy editing! JimCubb (talk) 02:08, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Bgwhite. You have new messages at Lear's Fool's talk page.
Message added 13:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

-- Lear's Fool 13:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. You have a new message at Lear's Fool's talk page. -- Lear's Fool 12:46, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Bgwhite. You have new messages at Ezhiki's talk page.
Message added 16:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

AWB

Hi, I've followed up on your suggestion from a few days back and successfully registered for AWB. I'm now approved, have downloaded it, and got it up and running. Looks like a very powerful tool, but also like a lot of rope (ie easy to tie oneself up in knots). Could you give me some pointers on getting started - for example, how to have AWB put in a value for listas in articles: 1. which have, say, "listas=" within a WPBiography statement 2. which have a very basic WPBiography statement, maybe just the living tag.

Thanks in advance VinculumMan (talk) 20:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like something to get my teeth into. I'll try it all out over the weekend. Will shout if I get stuck and can't work it out myself. VinculumMan (talk) 07:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I made some limited progress last weekend using AWB on my home computer. No problems following your instructions, and its certainly faster with AWB, but life outside Wikipedia is a bit busy. For the moment I'm keeping it simple and working on blocks of Western first names, e.g. the Nigels, and ignoring anything that I don't understand the rules on: seems to be working, no recent complaints from others. However, it would be very useful if you could give me instructions on how to run AWB sessions looking at both the article and the discussion page for the same subject: I'll then try to get at least a a bit of work done over this coming weekend. (Incidentally, if you note that I'm still doing a few edits "manually", this is because I'm making the occasional edit from work too - SHHH! - so obviously not using AWB). Thanks in advance VinculumMan (talk) 10:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Wand Bewossen

That's understandable: Ethiopian names are a special case, & I will probably be fixing well-intentioned edits until the day I leave Wikipedia. And I should have modified the listas= value, just as you said. -- llywrch (talk) 00:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Ugaz" or "Ugaas" is a title; it's the Somali word for "chief" or "sultan". In both cases, the person's name is Abdulrahman; the last two names are the names of their fathers. (The naming custom can get a little tricky, but after a while it'll make sense.) Thanks for asking. -- llywrch (talk) 00:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Uh no. If I understand Arabic naming conventions, they would be as follows: "Ugaas Abdulrahman Muhumad Qani" would be "Ugaas Abdulrahman bin Muhumad Qani", & I believe indexed as "Abdulrahman Muhumad Qani, Ugaas"; & "Ugaz Abdulrahman bin Abd Ghani" would be "Ugaz Abdulrahman bin Abd Ghani" & indexed as "Abdulrahman bin Abd Ghani, Ugaz". Now, I'm going to warn you that I'm guessing a little here, but I'm confident that I am in the ballpark. If you want to be 100% sure, ask User:Middayexpress, who is Somali & will be able to give you a much more accurate answer. Good luck. -- llywrch (talk) 00:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re:sort value

Hi Bgwhite. I was just informed [1] about what you likely meant by "sort value"; I might be able to help you after all. In a Somali context, the naming conventions of modern Somali peoples are a bit different to those found in the Arabian Peninsula. A Somali typically inherits his/her father's first name as a last name of sorts (c.f. [2]). For example, with regard to the Ugaas Abdulrahman Muhumad Qani, his own first name is "Abdulrahman"; "Muhumad" is his father's first name, and "Qani" is his grandfather's first name. So Abdulrahman's immediate family (that is, his wife and children) would be referred to as "Reer Abdulrahman" or "Abdulrahman's family". His father's family (that is, his mother, himself & his siblings) would likewise be referred to as "Reer Muhumad" or "Muhumad's family" after his father. The same would apply to his grandfather's family, his great-grandfather's family, etc. With that said, the best sort value would probably be to simply classify him under "A" for "Abdulrahman" (Ugaas is a title, so the page would probably have to be renamed first to "Abdulrahman Muhumad Qani"). This is the convention that appears to be observed throughout most other Somali categories (e.g. Category:Somalian scholars). In the case of many older Somali bios (such as that of Nur ibn Mujahid), the standard Arabic name sorting scheme that you described would be applied since many older Somalis had standard Arabic names. Hope this helps; let me know if you need anything else. Middayexpress (talk) 19:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question for administrator

{{adminhelp}}

I've been doing maintenance on articles by adding/fixing listas, DEFAULTSORT, assess, Persondata, etc. Unfortunately I have to read the articles... Sometimes things are fishy and I bring up an AfD, sockpuppetry, etc. But this time, it's weird and waaaay out of my league, planet and solar system. Oh, I'm sure the topic he writes about isn't controversial at all.... Israeli/Palestinian and his tone is for only one of the sides.

User:Richards1052 runs a blog called Tikun Olam (blog). He does edit the article about his blog.
Richards1052's only other edits are adding references to his blog site. [3], [4], and a really egregious one [5]. It goes on and on.
He has been told not to do it. (Talk:Tamir Pardo User talk:Richards1052). His response usually comes down to that he is a journalist or he has first hand knowledge.
There is circumstantial evidence that sockpuppetry is going on with User:Richards1052 (edits [6]) and User:חובבשירה (edits [7]). Their edits are just too in sync with each other.

So, my questions are:

Is this a case of WP:COI, WP:OR and also that blogs shouldn't be used on BLPs?
Do you think sockpuppetry is going on?

If question #1 is yes, could an administrator handle whatever needs to be done. I haven't a clue on what do. Plus, with it being a Israeli/Palestinian love fest, I don't really want to get involved if I don't have to.
If sockpuppetry could be going on, I can send it to WP:SPI. Unfortunately, I sent one in yesterday that was confirmed. Bgwhite (talk) 07:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do believe that Richards1052 has a COI. Editing articles that one has COI is discouraged, but not forbidden. Any uncited information added can be challenged on the talk page or by using {{citation needed}}
I do not believe that Richards1052 and חובבשירה are the same person. חובבשירה has a Single unified login account and has over 17,700 edits at the Arabian Wikipedia. Even if they were the same person the accounts are not being used for abuse, so there would be nothing to report.

I hope that answers your questions. If you need any additional assistance please feel free to ask me. Alpha Quadrant ^talk 17:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note I am not an administrator.

Questions not exactly answered

If the ONLY information one adds is references to your blog site, challenges everybody who removes the tags and has User:חובבשירה come back in later to add the references. Something is not right here. Challenging on talk pages or using citation needed is already not working. I was hoping to know what the next step to take is.
If they are the same person, the accounts are being used for abuse. Look at User:חובבשירה edits. 99% are minor edits adding Hebrew tag. Non-minor edits are adding back in references to the blog site or re-enforcing Richards1052 views.

Bgwhite (talk) 17:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking into it. Alpha Quadrant ^talk 20:50, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Not a biography"?

You appear to be using an automated tool to add biography-related templates to the talk pages of BLPa with edit summaries which declare "not a biography." This doesn't look right. . . . Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I know. I run AWB manually, so any error was done by me and not AWB. I made that goof for 7 entries out of 12,000 so far. Bgwhite (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tamás Hausel

Please be more careful when using AWB. It recently changed Tamás Hausel to Tamas Hausel. His name includes an accent. If you follow the Hungarian Mathematicians category link then you will see that the page is awash with accent. The problem with automated processes like AWB is that they have no brain. Please be careful in future; otherwise you are creating work for other people. Thank you. — Fly by Night (talk) 23:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did it correctly. AWB did not do it, my brain did. I check every sort value because of so many errors like Hausel's article. Sort values cannot contain diacritics

See: WP:MCSTJR
See: Category talk:Biography articles without listas parameter under What is a listas_parameter?
2. "Do not include ANY alphabetic characters other than the 26 letters of the English alphabet. No diacritics whatsoever."

Bgwhite (talk) 02:00, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]