This is an archive of past discussions with User:Epicgenius. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Disambiguation link notification for November 2
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Hey sorry to bother, but would it be possible for me to get a rating on Port Morris? It’s been getting a lot attention lately regarding gentrification, and I want to "get it out there" so other editors can chime in and contribute. You seem super important so that’s why I come to you, TY! EricViking32 (talk) 00:35, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
@EricViking32: Done. I rated the article C-class and mid-importance, since neighborhoods are of mid-importance in WP:NYC. It is short of just a few references that are needed for B-class status.And I don't consider myself "super important." Is it because of my user name? Maybe I should change what it displays to something... um... less important. epic genius (talk) 00:38, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Grand Central Terminal, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Barbershop and Salon. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Can you possibly help me fix the stupid s line template for the SIR to have the link for South Beach Branch, North Shore Branch and Mount Loretto Spur pages go to the pages I created for them and not the section on the Staten Island Railway page. Thanks.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 00:39, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
Assessing SIR Articles
Hi, could you assess the North Shore, Travis and South Beach pages when you have a chance? Thanks.
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Coney Island may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.
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of the [[Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad]] (the present-day [[IND Culver Line]])<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9502E2D71F3DE633A25750C1A9619C946797D6CF</ref> had
In reverting carte blanche because you did not like our inline and section tags, you REVERTED CLEAR PLAGIARSIM. I and others are working on the bad sourcing of various sections. There is no tag-bombing, but a selective use of tags inline, to mark sections as we work our way through sections to check sources and remediate inaccurate souring. PLEASE TO NOT DO MASSIVE REVERTS. The material from two principle sources was used cut and paste. If you waste more of our time with mass reversions, I will mark the article as copypaste, and take it up to top Admins.
Now, out of respect I am going, one by one, to return your helpful edits. Please do the hard work and be similarly respectful in your edits. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:57, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Please see here, [1], before thinking of reverting hours of hard sourcing and text clarification work. The sections referred to are plagiarized and/or misuse sources. Do selective diffs to see what was changed before doing another revert based on appearances. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 18:03, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Please consult the two good sources listed in "Further reading" at the Brighton Beac article. These are currently underused — they can likely be used to (i) correct mistaken or made-up factual text, and/or (ii) to provide inline citations for many of the inline citation tags where the content is accurate. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I have been working on the list of deadlinks and bare URLs. Help me? Three done. By the way, the tags are intended temporary, and they let me know, paragraph by paragraph by paragraph, section by section, what text and sources have been checked. BB deserves a GA, eventually. I suppose I could have put in an "Under construction" tag. Thanks for patience. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 19:20, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
@Leprof 7272: Sure, I will help. I think that if that was your purpose, maybe a hidden comment would have helped, like this: <!-- --> and you could have put {{refimprove}} on it. I'm sorry if I was rude to you earlier, but I felt that this was a real case of tag bombing, especially since you'd stopped editing for the day. epic genius (talk) 19:25, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Got it. Couple of things. First, there is a current discrepancy between the 2007 lede-cited population numbers and the 2010 census numbers appearing in the article, and this needs to be rectified, quickly. (I won't put discrepancy tags, just leave it to you to sort.) Note, the census is the formal best data, and the large discrepancies are likely not date-associated, but rather, differences in boundaries used by the two sources. Hence, a careful look is in order, with the census winning the day if the origin of the discrepancy cannot be identified.
Extended content
Second, I would suggest that the statements that appear in the lede that are not duplicated in the main body, be duplicated in the main body, and that citations be moved from the lede to the main body. In my experience, allowing citations in the lede moves the lede away from being a good summary, and toward being a dumping ground for newly discovered citations and facts. The lede should summarize the article, not say things the article does not (WP policy). So, move anything in the lede that is not said in the body, into the body, with the citations, and leave the lede short, succinct, and clear (with citations below). My view and recommendation.
Third, I am a stickler for good sources. If you look to my User page, I quote from the WP policies and guidelines on this matter. WP calls for published sources, and says those sources with most careful editorial review are most desired. (Whether we concur or not, this is what the WP policies and guidelines say.) In this regard—by way of example, for this article—the following citation:
* Stanton, Jeffrey (1997). "Coney Island - Luxury Hotels". Coney Island History Site. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
…is a poor source. Why? Well, in its favour, it is part of a larger site, and it does name an author. However, on reading, it is clear it is little better than a self-published blog or other self-published material (WP differentiating between blogs at major news orgs like the NYT, and self-published works at any-old blog hosting site). Why do I say this? If you read two paragraphs in, you will see typographical errors (mis-spellings, etc.), as well as stylistic indications that there is a loose view of rigour regarding the veracity of their information (look for a hotel name followed by "??"). This is simply not good, acceptable encyclopedic sourcing.
Fourth, we have a different perspective on tags, you and I, and I am thankful we have managed nevertheless to work together. The fact that there are so few tags appearing in Wikipedia, despite the fact that when we have graded our articles we have given most C or worse grades, means that there is a bias here toward making things appear fine, even when they are not.
As an educator, I cannot share that bias. I believe my students deserve an honest assessment of the quality of what they were reading. How long had the opening two paragraphs of the historical sections been in place, plagiarized as they were? The first person noticing the identical nature of the text between the source and WP should have tagged it. That tag should have remained until someone came along, as I did, and converted the plagiarised material into quotations. If those quotations were overly long, then a tag should have been left in place indicating over-long quotations, until such time that you came a long to do a proper paraphrase. That is to say, the status quo should have tags to alert editors that work is needed, and when so much work is needed it cannot possibly be done in one session, or even one week, then tags should remain in place so that readers have an honest appraisal of the status of the article's content. Never, never (in my book) should poor content (unsourced content, misattributed content, etc.) be allowed to appear "OK". If you want one explanation for my adding the many inline [citation needed] tags, it was that I found plagiarism in the opening paragraphs of an early section. Much in the same way, when a child lies to a parent, it changes the conversation following, my trust in the earlier editors of this content dropped very low, once early plagiarism was found. The discrepancies in population, while not as egregious, also point to editorial sloppiness. Veracity is important! (And infinitely more important than a maintained appearance of "all good".)
Fifth and finally, besides being a stickler for WP:VERIFY, I am the same for "no WP:OR in articles." A single clear (if minor) example of this is whether the naming of Brighton Beach was given to a group of businessmen as a result of a contest. The article has said so in the past, and it may indeed be true. But that fact does not appear in the citation affixed to that sentence means to allow this "fact" to remain is to accept WP:OR. Hence, I removed the phrase, and look to have it added back only when it can be sourced.
Bottom line, I realize that I am, as a stickler for rigour, and as an academic, I am in a minority here, with regard to the site's regular editorial practices. But my convictions align well with (i) WP policies, (ii) academic standards for doing honest academic work, and (iii) enough fellow editors, seeking to create good, solid, long-lasting encyclopedic content, that I will at times fight for these principles.
Apologies if I was at all obnoxious in my pressing forward with them. In close, I would just say I have put a couple of reasonably good sources (esp. the encyclopedia, but also the Williams article, after that) into the "Further reading" section. I would look to those to draw some further citations to replace [citation needed] inline tags, but also to check remaining text. For instance, I still think dubious the statement that "In 1868, William A. Engeman built a resort in the area." which is sourced to the Stanton piece. I think the history is more likely accurate as being represented by saying that he purchased land with the intent to develop it, and with the later commitment to create the first, anchoring institution (the hotel), the reality of a resort began to materialize. But my opinion is not key. What do the best sources say?
P.S. WIll likely go back to editing from IP on this, since you now know me.
I had intended to use Luxury Hotels as a place holder until I found a better reference. I can tell it is not reliable. I will find better sources a little later, when I am not editing with a tablet. epic genius (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Note, the Demographics numbers were bungled -- they do not come from the one source appearing in the paragraph. In short, the US Census numbers are without source at this point. For population, I went with the combined numbers in the cited report, which itself references the census. But those numbers are for BB and Coney Island, combined, and so are higher (>110,000). This number now appears in the lede, infobox, and Demographics section (until another source can be found). Leprof 7272 (talk) 22:33, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Hello Epicgenius! Bhootrina (talk) has given you a bit of sunshine to brighten your day! Sunshine promotes WikiLove and hopefully it has made your day better. Spread the sunshine by adding {{subst:User:Meaghan/Sunshine}} to someone else's talk page, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. In addition, you can spread the sunshine to anyone who visits your userpage and/or talk page by adding {{User:Meaghan/Sunshine icon}}. Happy editing! Bhootrina (talk) 09:56, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
This IP is highly persistent, and is now trying to remove the AIV report. Do you know any admins currently online who could block? Thanks for your help in dealing with this. GABHello!13:34, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Hello TWL users! We hope JSTOR has been a useful resource for your work. We're organizing a cleanup drive to correct dead links to JSTOR articles – these require JSTOR access and cannot easily be corrected by bot. We'd love for you to jump in and help out!
Hello Epicgenius, thank you for your efforts to copy-edit large number of articles at high-speed. To make it easier for other editors to quickly see what might have been changed, please could I encourage copy-editing in a manner that does not involve introducing large-amounts of white-space diff-noise at the same time. For example by not adding extra spaces to {{cites}}; not converting '…' ellipsis into rows of full-stops; and when wishing to join two paragraphs, perhaps only deleting one newline, rather than both. This would make any value in the edits, instantly more obvious to other editors. —Sladen (talk) 20:55, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Hi Sladen, forgive me for butting in, but your comment confused me, so I'm butting in anyway. :) I don't understand your complaint about the ellipses. We should be using three full stops per MOS:ELLIPSIS, not the one you've indicated above. Also, if you're having difficulty figuring out what happened in the diff, I would recommend checking out User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff, which you can turn on in Preferences > Gadgets > Editing. It makes changes much more obvious. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Hello Cyphoidbomb, the spirit was perhaps more of a polite nudge to Epicgenius (and an others listening) to focus on the high-quality and consider whether other low-value/wide-disruption edits help the course of a collaborative workflow (eg. is it necessary). For MOS:ELLIPSIS, perhaps you'd be able to work with me on getting that fixed, so that we're not losing semantic information on the basis of superseded/outdated perceptions about font-rendering or input mechanisms. —Sladen (talk) 21:34, 18 November 2015 (UTC) In case its useful for others, in this instance I used to &action=raw and $ wdiff -3 a b | less -S
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Even though this is key data, there seems to be no consensus on what figure to use, weekday average, daily over 365, total annual, monthly, or other. Sometimes infobox parameters will be misused for the figure that has been entered. But my actual question is when making those super-neat annual ridership tables that look like a Census history, what is the "official" data source in general? Such as for Miami Metrorail and Metromover do you just take the average weekdailies from the monthly tech reports and add it up and divide by 12? User:Comayagua99 did the most recent figure (2014) for Metrorail. Thanks. edit: and please tell me these figures go by calendar year and not fiscal year. B137 (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
@B137: Thanks for your question. Many ridership figures use yearly figures, as this is the most stable calculation over time. Some stations may have really high riderships at certain times of year, or even on just a few days per year, with low-to-moderate ridership otherwise. If the total figure is averaged over 12 (for an average monthly figure) or over 365 (for an average daily figure), such discrepancies may not be reflected. Some sources use fiscal year, such as Miami Metrorail and Amtrak, but some, like NYC Subway, use calendar year, so you should calculate the total by whichever measurement the agencies use (i.e. fiscal or calendar).For example, the February 2014 Metrorail ridership at Government Center station (Miami) is 299,806, which, if taken as a yearly average, is 3,597,672 for that year. However, fiscal year 2014's ridership comes out to be 3.2 million, or a difference of almost 400,000 people (11%). epic genius (talk) 01:41, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, good to know, but too bad because that's confusing to the average person. In other news, if you would like to marjorly geek out, I'm working on An expansive table for the Metromover page. B137 (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Interesting. But these figures will vary from year to year, so when next fiscal year rolls around, you'd have a lot of updating to do. ;) epic genius (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Actually, I put that March 2014 figure in the infobox last year and have left it there because that's the highest number I have seen. Of course I know it changes, but it's already more data than doing and annual average. If I were to try to do an annual average of stations, one I would end up like this guy, two if anyone were to go that far they might as well make graphs plotting the ridership over time. B137 (talk) 04:09, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, that would seem like too much if you updated the data every month. The pages don't get many views per month (I think in the range of a hundred or two), but yeah, you can put a ridership table on the system's main article, where it's more likely to be seen. epic genius (talk) 13:30, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for November 20
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Governors Island, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Public school. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Sup, would it be alright if I get an updated rating on The Hub and Longwood? Go ahead and clean up any mistakes you find, as you did the others I recently edited. I noticed a lot of outdated pictures on many of The Bronx's articles, so I may or may not take up the task of uploading some updated streetscapes of neighborhoods around the borough when I get time. EricViking32 (talk) 02:41, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Why do you feel that Andrew Cuomo's directive to illuminate One WTC in France's Tricolour is "totally irrelevant," when it is actually exactly the opposite? This image and caption are placed in the "Government reactions" section, and therefore it would only make sense to include this fact. I thought that the reference is also excellent there. I am not going to revert this edit because of the 1RR restriction on this topic, but I would request you to explain (and possibly re-evaluate) your logic here. Best, Castncoot (talk) 23:03, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
@Castncoot: Although I see you mean well by including the reference in the image, this "proclamation" is probably most relevant in the quotes section. Also, if I'm not mistaken, other governors probably made similar proclamations, because similar structures in other states were lit up in the same colors. epic genius (talk) 04:25, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
@Epicgenius: True, but One WTC is perhaps the prominent of those structures and should be included based on this criterion. In any case, I'm on board with your new edit. Best, Castncoot (talk) 04:53, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
