User talk:Marshallsumter/Archive 2014

Color of the stars
I came across Color of the stars and thought it should probably be merged into one of the other Astronomy articles, but didn't know which one. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

User page
Hello there. Can I ask you to do a little bit of cleanup on your userpage? I know this might seem to be an unusual request, since it is common practice to leave userpages of other users alone, but in the case of potential custodians I find this request important. For the sheer size and amount of bytes on it is causing our poor old browsers like Firefox to load extremely slowly, and possibly even hang at times, making it difficult to communicate with you if urgent custodian action were needed on your behalf. In addition, the MediaWiki software which detects this is categorizing your userpage into Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, which is for pages containing too many template transclusions. Regards, TeleComNasSprVen (discuss • contribs) 06:55, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Marshall, the transclusions that you have created may be causing many other problems as well. I was just cleaning up the Trigonometry resources, and looked at what links here, and found this. See below. What is the quiz for a trigonometry resource doing on all those pages?


 * I've noticed before the Dominant group material that was on pages where the import and reason for it was quite unclear. I know that you have a research project on "dominant group," but placing all this material on pages on specific topics seem to be too much. I'm looking at how to clean that up. And in this case, I don't know where to start to even find out how the Quiz shows up as linked, there are so many transclusions (a transcluded page that includes a link will then show the link coming from the transclusion, not just from the original page. I think that may be true even if the link is hidden, not actually displayed. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:44, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Now I look and nothing links to that page. Did something change on a nested transclusion somewhere? Is there some bug in MediaWiki? Still looking around. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:48, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I see nothing in Recent Changes that could explain this. Meanwhile, I'm still concerned about the Definitions/Dominant Group/Control group material, that often seems like a lengthy distraction from page topics. Transclusion should be done with caution, as well. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Since I thought it would be clear to you from the link, the almost fifty pages that showed were all pages of yours, with many transclusions, I think. Something may have exceeded some limit and broke the software. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:55, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The links are on Special:WhatLinksHere/Basics_of_angles_quiz. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Which appear to all come from Template:Terminology resources. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:56, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It's over 130 pages....
 * I must have had the incorrect link on my clipboard and didn't notice that.... Thanks, Dave. Meanwhile, how you found that is obscure to me. I'm concerned. For example, Geography. On that page there are a series of collapse sections. It's entirely unclear why they are there, the connection with Geography is obscure. It appears that templates and transclusions are being used to make a large number of pages contain references to a broad swath of content. I'd been a bit disconcerted before by this, when I'd noticed aspects of it, now I'm more than disconcerted. This is creating confusion. When someone comes to a Geography resource, one would expect material on Geography, and possibly some link to a Topic or Portal or School, or categories that could be used to find related subjects.
 * As Wikiversity grows, such a template would grow. These are effectively indexes to Wikiversity content, and not chosen for relevance to the page on which they are placed.
 * Marshall, do you understand the problem? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I edited the template and now the links are mostly [apparently all] on Special:WhatLinksHere/Trigonometry/Angles/Quiz. There are still some on Special:WhatLinksHere/Basics_of_angles_quiz. I'll check those. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I must be losing it. I suppose the day comes for all of us.... Struck above. Nothing links there, I'd have sworn I saw six links. Maybe database lag or something. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Way upwards you asked if I'm understanding the problem. I guess I'm not. Is everything okay now? Or, is there still a problem? The Template:Terminology resources is one of my earlier ones and probably can be greatly reduced as my study is more focused now. Would this help? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:47, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The entire concept of these templates and how they are being used is a problem. See below. If I go to a page on Black ice I don't expect to read a treatise on linguistics. Having all that content (links to resources) on a template, as well, vastly complicates site maintenance, as we are cleaning up Wikiversity. (Resources are changing names, and if not for those templates, there would be only a few pages linking to each resource, usually.)
 * It's likely that the structure we are settling on places resources in a hierarchy, with more specificity down the hierarchy, and more generality up the hierarchy. From each page, one would have links to move up or down the hierarchy ... or sideways to closely related pages, particularly with Categories. We will then create a Guide to Wikiversity Navigation which will explain how to explore the resources here. We will not have an index to all resources on every page!
 * I apologize for not paying enough attention till this point. I will want to think about how to use the work you have done. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:08, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Would like to inform you that...
...I have replied to you here: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:Aquaria --Goldenburg111 00:31, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Astronomy

 * I've moved your ideas to the Discuss page for the Astronomy department. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:50, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes you have permission
I just went back to that thread on your proposal and for the first time noticed that you asked permission. The answer is YES. Your question was: "Would it be okay with you if I transferred a copy of your entry above [beginning with "I can"] to the proposal's Endorsements section.(?)" --guyvan52 (discuss • contribs) 02:34, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Probationary Custodianship
Are you still interested in probationary custodianship? If so, please see Custodian Mentorship. I am willing to mentor, but with a three-month probationary period rather than the four weeks mentioned in previous proposed policy. From my perspective, four weeks wasn't enough time to effectively learn the tools and demonstrate custodial approach. If you're still interested, please let me know. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome aboard, you are now a probationary custodian. Please add yourself to Support staff. Let me know if I can do anything. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the opportunity and the support. I will do my best! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:43, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Congratulations, Marshall. It took 11 months to set this up. One step at a time. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:37, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for all your help and guidance, which I hope will continue. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:30, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Welcoming new users
This is not specifically a sysop task. Any user may do this. There was an attempt at one time to set up a Welcome committee, to insure coverage. As it is, coverage of new users can be spotty. I started that process (see the Talk page for the Welcoming Committee linked below), but nobody else picked up on it. However, when do we welcome?

Occasionally new users start welcoming based on seeing a new account in Recent Changes. The vast majority of these accounts never edit and probably don't see the welcome. A good percentage of these are spammers, plus a few vandals.

What I've been doing for years, and I didn't start this, I learned it, was welcoming on first nondisruptive edit. You can see in Recent Changes that a user has a Bluelinked Contributions, and a Redlinked Talk page. They have not been welcomed, but they have edited. I look at Contributions and look at the edits. There is often just one, or there are a lot of edits to one page. I look at that, and if this seems *at all* like a good-faith participant, I welcome.

The process catches a lot of spammers and vandals, quickly. So it's doubly useful. If we wanted to welcome all users merely from registration, we'd use a bot for it, many wikis do. But that provides no personal touch. Do realize that all those user pages will likely be on your watchlist. You really are setting yourself up to support the user if there are any problems.

If all users are welcomed, the red-flag of no talk page is no longer available. That requires looking at a lot more pages!

See a fuller discussion on Welcoming committee and the attached Talk page. There is some really funny stuff there, an example, near the end, of what can happen with incautious welcoming. There are some links that may be of interest.

One more point. I welcome with the substituted template and most recently have put that in the edit reason as well, which then shows all other users how to create a welcome. It's just as easy as putting "welcome" in that field, and I usually have the template in my clipboard, I do a lot of welcomes at the same time. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikiversity:Support staff
I see that the Support staff page hasn't been updated (custodians active in the last three months are bold) since August 29. You should make your own name bold, and then consider reviewing the other entries (by clicking on the Contribs column is how I've done it) to verify that the correct names indicate active status. It's an interesting historical review. If you do review the entries, update the date at the top to show the current date. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:49, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Speedy Deletions
See Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Going forward, I will not delete pages on my own. I'll tag things I see for you (or someone else) to delete. Likewise, you should not delete your own tagged proposals. Just tag what you find, and I'll review and delete if appropriate. Do not assume just because I've tagged it that it should be deleted. Use your own judgement. That's what we're paying you for. :-) Let me know if you have any questions.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:13, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Basically, that's what I think is proper. You can make an exception for a blatantly inappropriate page, i.e., gross, offensive vandalism, or clear spam. Otherwise, any possible doubt, one user speedy tags and a custodian may delete, may remove the tag, may replace the tag with a proposed deletion tag, and it should go without saying that custodians may do nothing. One of the points is that regular users cannot see a deleted page so cannot tell if it was appropriate or not. Having two users agree on speedy deletion, one of which at least is a custodian, makes the whole thing much safer, more transparent. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:21, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

If you agree that something should be deleted, you can just delete it. For example, there's no advantage to creating a talk page to discuss solicitation. It just creates two pages to delete. You'll also find we get a significant number of solicitations from seemingly legitimate but random FirstnameLastname users. These are all bot-generated and follow a very regular pattern of creating a resource page and a user page advertising the same things. There is no person behind them. Once deleted, there's never a comment or a repeat edit. On the other hand, if you think something should be moved and saved, remove the Delete tag and make the move. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:08, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have argued for deletion of a stub where you created a talk page discussion, and agree with Dave's comment. On the other hand, I want to acknowledge and appreciate that you are thinking about keep reasons. Custodians serve community consensus, and are allowed to anticipate it, in some cases. If you think someone would object to the deletion, better to not delete, but, at most use Template:Proposed deletion. Deletion here usually does not mean there is something wrong with the topic. If Miracles is deleted, anyone can recreate the page; so there are questions:
 * Would someone who wants a page on the topic find the existing content useful?
 * Will the existence of the page encourage, discourage, or have no effect on new participation?
 * And, then, one more consideration I have not checked. Is there an incoming link from Wikipedia? Because there are, as yet, few sister wiki links, it's unlikely, but if there is, there should be a stub, and the stub should invite, at least, discussion. It would then serves an educational purpose. That page, though, is not the page we have. It is a relatively useless stub, that simply creates another page for people looking at the category to waste their time looking at. Multiply this by many experiences, and one can start to understand why many think Wikiversity is a useless mess. So we are cleaning up, organizing, and, very much, thanks for taking up the mop.
 * Out of this discussion, it is occurring to me to create a list of Wikiversity page targets from Wikipedia. Always check What Links Here before deleting a page, but unless we create that page, Wikipedia links won't show up. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 13:28, 18 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Already done. See  Sister Backlinks.  I can update it by bot as needed.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:20, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That's great! It should be frequently updated. There are other templates that might be used than the straight Wikiversity template. Now we need a project to place many more of these. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:16, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion
Could you take a look at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion? Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Site Notices
See mw:Manual:Interface/Sitenotice for information on how to add site notices. You should probably add all files in our MediaWiki: namespace to your watch list. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:04, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Viewing Deleted Content
Just an FYI, it is not necessary to restore a page in order to view the deleted page content. In the upper left corner of a deleted page, there is a 'View or restore n deleted edits.' link. There is also a 'view / restore' link after each of the deleted versions. Using either of these options, you can view the page history and then view individual versions of the page without restoring the content. This way you can avoid restoring and re-deleting. Typically when there's an IP edit of user space, we would tag that as test or vandalism rather than an author request. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:15, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Congrats on Probationary Custodianship
I'm too late. Been inactive. Just thought of leaving a message down here for you. --Goldenburg111 14:38, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Deletion thing...
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Goldenburg111/yoo - I would like this page to be deleted by author request, but sooner or later in time I would like it to be undeleted. Thanks, just thought I'd let you know. --Goldenburg111 23:58, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Wait, can't you delete it yourself? Or am I missing something... --Goldenburg111 00:35, 7 November 2014 (UTC)W

Could you please restore this page by author request?
https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Draubb/List_of_president_of_Maybeury_Elementary_School_and_soccer&action=edit&redlink=1 - thanks! --Goldenburg111 03:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

This was an abandoned redirect to your new page with your new web name. As far as I know restoring it would be inappropriate. Ask the deleter Dave Braunschweig to restore if there is some good reason for this. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 12:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Custodian watchlist
My opinion is that custodians should have certain major pages on their watchlists, and I have in mind, specifically: and, probably,
 * WV:Request custodian action
 * WV:Notices for custodians
 * WV:Custodian feedback

There are some others, to be sure. Thanks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * WV:Request custodian action, WV:Notices for custodians, and WV:Custodian feedback have been on my watchlist for quite a while. I also have WV:Deletions, WV:Help desk, WV:Maintenance, and WV:Requests for Deletion, among others for 41 WV resources total. More suggestions are welcome! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Revision Deletion
Could you take a look at the history on my talk page and do revision deletion (hide the edits and summaries) of any disparaging comments against another user that were recently posted? I'd do it myself, but this is both a good learning opportunity for you and also an opportunity for me to avoid any apparent conflict of interest in hiding my own content. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Revision deletion performed, I hope this helps. Let me know if there are problems or further problems. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Revision deletion is a dangerous tool, somewhat like ordinary deletion, because ordinary users cannot see what was deleted, so if a custodian revision-deletes where there might be some suspicion of conflict of interest, it can foster suspicion and mistrust. This is why we have the general practice of custodians not deleting on their own initiative, but using speedy deletion tags like everyone else, with a second opinion being necessary for actual deletion. We may want to set up formal guidelines for this. The point is *not* to make it difficult, it should be simple and easy, but rather to ensure transparency and consensus. I saw what Dave wrote about, and I confirm that those edits were properly hidden. I warned the user, but, no surprise from history, he ignored it.
 * For the future, though, I suggest that any custodian seeing libelous or other grossly offensive material delete first and then ask for review. We might even establish a page for that, with diffs. Nobody will be able to read the diffs but custodians, so a second custodian would sign off approving it -- or discuss if necessary. At leisure. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:20, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments! The portions I changed the visibility of could be a problem for each of the persons making the comments and for Wikiversity. Third party custodial review, or even community review, is always welcome. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:30, 30 December 2014 (UTC)