This is an archive of past discussions with User:Iveagh Gardens. 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.
Dear Iveagh Gardens, thank you for your recent intervention on the article Gustavus Hamilton, 1st Viscount Boyne. Among others you changed "cousin-german" to "cousin-German". In my humble opinion this is an error. Cousin-german has nothing to do with Germany. A cousin-german is a first cousin as the article Cousin explains. Please revert your edit. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 07:13, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment and good to know that! A lesson in the perils of relying on the WP:AWB, though I do check individual changes and do recall the edit you're referring to. Do certainly make the necessary changes, reversion or edits, though I can do so myself too of course later today. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 07:49, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Some more. Why are you changing " " (non-breaking spaces) to ordinary spaces? They serve to prevent end-of-line breaks at places where such breaks make the text less readable. This is among others the case in dates between the day and the month (e.g. 7 May 1689) or between the name of a king and his number (e.g. James II). Please see MOS:NBSP and especially the examples given therein. The MOS does not prescribe such non-breaking spaces but encourages them, saying "It is sometimes desirable". So I think you should not delete them when they are used as mentioned in the MOS. Please revert these edits. They do not make Wikipedia better. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi Johannes, I do know their purpose, but made a judgment that in these particular instances, with short paragraphs, they weren't necessary in these instances. That said, I can happily reassess them here, and perhaps it would have bee better to take the call of a previous editor as a good one rather than one that was overzealous.
Incidentally, while I know you might think I should be the one to undo my mistakes or bad judgment calls, wouldn't it be as easy for you to make the change yourself? It's what I've found before when either I've bad a call or have one myself when tweaking another editor's edits? Not that I mind the interaction between editors, it can be good to know there are others of us out there, but wouldn't it be more efficient to make the change and notify me after. Especially to make sure the change is as you think it should be! Iveagh Gardens (talk) 08:17, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Daer Iveagh Gardens, I do not want to fight with you. In the contrary, I think of you as a comrade, probably not living too far from me, who like me works on Irish subjects. There is a chance for collaborations, exchanges and help. I agree with you that an ordinary breaking space should be preferred when an end-of-line-break is unlike to occur at the location. A frequent case of this circumstance is when the possible is near the beginning of a paragraph. This "near" might perhaps be defined as "within the first 10 words" (?). I do not think I should silently fix what I consider needless "corrections" from you. I feel we should all constantly ask ourselves the relevant question "does this edit make Wikipedia better?" and not "correct" other people needlessly. I also feel that it is useful to have the present discussion between us.
Some more. Three-letter abbreviations of month names are allowed and perhaps even recommended when they occur in tables. Please look at "Acceptable date formats" in MOS:DATES. Please re-establish the short forms that you "amended". This is not an improvement. With thanks and greetings, Johannes Schade (talk) 10:37, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't take it as a fight at all, I think of you and other editors similarly as comrades. I'm always happy to learn. But at the same time, I learn as much by seeing how others have adapted my edits. When I log on, I usually first check my own recent contributions to see how others have edited them since I changed them, to see what's been added to them, if my own edits have been accepted, or in the rare case of an unhelpful edit from another user, to revert it. If my edit has been wholly or partially reverted, I learn from that. While I appreciate that my edits thus far on this page appear to you as one contravention of the style guide after another, I would still prefer not to be told what to edit. The conversation is useful. In other parts of my life, I will write something and be told later that it was not in conformity with the required style for that publication. That's fine. But given that WP:CHOICE, I'd rather not be told here what to edit. Neither a fellow editor or an administrator has this role. I log in at particular times when I can spare, often with a focus on particular projects. If you see something wrong on a page, WP:FIXIT: I may take a break from a few hours, days or weeks, so that your notice is missed and the bad edit on my part stays up for that time. There is the caveat of WP:MESS, but my read of that is that it applies to whole series of errors, or errors with fallout, rather than in this case, a single page, that I've been pulled back to nuemerous times. I don't have any problem being directed to the Manual of Style. I do take issue with being told three separate times to go do something, to undo my mistakes. No offence has been taken, I understand that you would consider the approach of nudging me to be civil, but I ask you not to do so. —Iveagh Gardens (talk) 11:08, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Dear Iveagh Gardens. You almost tell me to shut up. Perhaps I should. You are far more experienced than I am, having more than double my edit count. They say Bold-revert-discuss. I do not think I have ever reverted somebody's edits. I find one should first discuss and try to agree on a solution. I should not have told you to revert but rather have asked you how you see the situation and what you propose to do. You can of course report my uncivil behaviour on an administrator's notice board. I beg you to please not to do this. I apologise and I have striked the offensive sentences as is recommended in such cases. Could we please discuss the issue with three-letter abbreviations of the names of months in a table in an article? My interpretation of the MOS might be wrong. How do you see it? What solution would you propose? The outcome is important to me because I have used such three-letter abbreviations in many tables of many articles and probably also for you as you mentioned AWB and may have run automated edits changing three-letter-abbreviations to full month names. Dear Iveagh Gardens, please accept my sincere apologies, thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 16:53, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
There's really no need to overstate things! I didn't tell you to shut up, I said I had no problem with being directed to the manual of style, but didn't appreciate being told what to do here. I wasn't going to report you, I'm really not sure where you got that idea. Thanks though for withdrawing your previous directions to me.
As to my edit count, as some portion of that comes from automatic edits, or edits to quite niche and particular edits, I'm still liable to get things wrong, so do certainly let me know if I have.
I get that a simple revert can come across as aggressive, and there is the guideline of WP:ROWN. Having said that, the same essay article reads, In the case of a good faith edit, a reversion is appropriate when the reverter believes that the edit makes the article clearly worse and there is no element of the edit that is an improvement. This is often true of small edits. Whenever you believe that the author of an edit was simply misinformed, made a mistake, or did not think an edit through, go ahead and revert. So there is a time and a place for reverting.
To take the first one, if all I'd done was to make a mistake about the meaning of german in that term, a simple revert would have been completely fair enough. Given there was more to my edit than that, on your part, changing the case would also have been fair enough edit. Wikipedia wouldn't have developed to the place it has if every time someone made an edit that someone else thought was incorrect or not an improvement, the editors went through this sort of notification process of asking someone to undo or correct their edit. Reverting or correcting is less aggressive that telling someone what to edit.
I'm happy to discuss a consensus, as style can very slightly in different areas of Wikipedia. After several comments, we are now having that. That was not what happened with your earlier comments.
So as to the short form of dates, given the size of the table, I think they read more clearly with full months given. As MOS:DATE specifies, the use of shorter dates should be limited. It does give tables as an example, but I'd consider that as appropriate only for a much bigger and busier table, rather than here, where it is just two columns. That said, for consistency, as I won't be going through the various articles for that style, I'm happy to leave then in the shorter format.
While we're here, there is the matter of the date format, MOS:DATERET does say to retain existing format "unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic". The page itself is tagged with {{Use dmy dates}}, presumably given the standard academic form in Ireland. Perhaps that date order should be used. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 17:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Dear Iveagh Gardens, Veteran Editor, thank you very much for accepting my apologies. Germans are notoriously less polite than the British and the Irish. Regarding the 3-letter month names. Thanks you very much for allowing me to leave them in the shorter format. I left-align these tables and keep them as narrow as possible so that they can overlap with right-aligned images as happens in Arthur Dillon (1750–1794). With regards to the dates in the table, I will have to change them. I had put the year first because in most cases the year determines the order of the rows. But as you pointed out MOS:DATE clearly condemns the format I am using. I will have to change them. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:51, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Lucas Dillon of Loughglynn
Sir Iveagh Gardens, Veteran Editor, thank you very much for the excellent improvements and corrections you made on 28 April 2023 on the article Lucas Dillon of Loughglynn, notably in line 151 where you rightly corrected Bellings’s -> Bellings's. This was my fault. Dear Sir, please accept my sincere apologies. Unworthy me. I have taken measures not to repeat this mistake. – May I, Sir, please, with all respect due, attract your attention to your edit in line 87 where you, perhaps inadvertently, changed the quotation "1634 / -June / Sir Lucas Dillon, knt. / Loughglyn / ditto [Roscommon County]" to "1634 / -June / Sir Lucas Dillon, knt. / Loughglyn / ditto [County Roscommon]". Your edit is marked "AWB" and you might have in the same run made many similar changes. User:Kaltenmeyer had already corrected you on 25 April 2023 in the article Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty on a very similar edit, remarking in his edit summary "The original source say Cork County, not County Cork". Fearing to anger you again, I will not say anything more. You might cite "Who sits in a glass house shouldn't throw stones". Are we not all trying to make Wikipedia better but also make mistakes? Please be assured, Sir, of my deepest respect. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 08:29, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Now I am asking you to stop. If you continue with this obsequiousness that comes across as extremely sarcastic, I will refer this to an administrator for resolution. If I make an edit that you think worth notifying me about, where more is required than simply reverting or otherwise correcting, a short message confined to the the content of the edit will do. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 09:06, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Sir Henry Lynch, 1st Baronet
@Iveagh Gardens. Please understand me. I am not sarcastic. I have neither your level of education nor your command of English. I might have fallen into obsequiousness (I had to look up the word). – Another of your AWB edits on 29 April 2023 changed the content of a quotation in the article Sir Henry Lynch, 1st Baronet, line 78:
"1634 / - June / Sir Henry Lynche, bart. / Galway; Castlecarn Mayo / ditto [Galway County]"
->
"1634 / - June / Sir Henry Lynche, bart. / Galway; Castlecarn Mayo / ditto [County Galway]".
You said "I usually first check my own recent contributions to see how others have edited them". You seem to have missed User:Kaltenmeyer's edit on 25 April 2023 mentioned above and seem to go on with mass edits without exempting quotations. As you surely know WP:AWB says "You take full responsibility for any action you perform with AutoWikiBrowser". As you requested, I stay plain at the risk of appearing impolite and lacking respect. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 10:26, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure how else I was meant to take Sir Iveagh Gardens, Veteran Editor, thank you very much for the excellent improvements but extreme sarcasm. I never asked for all this extra respect you had started adding to all your comments, but now that you've dropped that, let's carry on.
I do take responsibility for my edits, and even I can miss my own good habits. For that reason, a talk page such as this comment can be appropriate.
Actually, I can explain this one: to my reading, the [Galway County] within the quotations was not part of the original, but was added to explain was the ditto referred to. Therefore, while correcting these pages for MOS:IMOS COUNTIES, it also made sense to correct such explanatory notes. It's not significant enough to the overall correction for this style that I'm doing, so I'm happy enough to leave that as is if two other editors think differently. In similar instances this morning which had the same note within the quotation, I haven't altered them. If I do end up changing any of these, feel free to change them back. Consider me on notice for this one, without any need for further notices here. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 10:48, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Dear Iveagh Gardens, thank you very much for your kind reply. I am glad and relieved. – If you look at the [source], you will find that "ditto" refers to "GALWAY County", only a few lines above in the text. It is therfore not explanatory but direct from the text. The "GALWAY County" became "Galway County" in the article, after complying with MOS:ALLCAPS. I fail to see how this quotation could be affected by your RM, which renamed "Galway County (Parliament of Ireland constituency)" to "County Galway (Parliament of Ireland constituency)". With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 16:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
I'd say it's because the explanatory note, when not a direct quote, is to indicate information, and so in that case, should be in line with general style. But as I said, I stopped making that change this morning, even before this particular thread started. It's so small a thing that I really just couldn't care about this one. I said this morning in this thread that given that you and another editor had a different view, I was happy to let this one go. I've now come to the end of these changes consequent to the RM. It was a bigger job than I'd expected and I'd like to put the whole thing behind me now. Please just edit these pages as you will. If our edits end up conflicting, sure let me know, but can we just let this go now? Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:31, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm saying that it is now part of the traditional county of Dublin. That's true whether we're talking of GAA teams or the CSO list of population by county.
The distinction I was attempting to draw with my edit is that in 1994, the local government area became the three counties of DLR, F and SD. The local government area of County Dublin never included Dublin City (at least not in modern Irish history), so it being separate predates 1994. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 21:16, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't understand. If "..County Dublin never included Dublin City", then how can it now be a "..part of the traditional county of Dublin"? How is it possible for the city to be added to the county once the country itself has been abolished? Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:46, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
This is aside from any intuitions that we might have that the city of Dublin is part of the traditional County Dublin, just as the city of Cork is part of the traditional County Cork. The traditional county of Dublin (which persists and always included the city) is distinct from the local government area of County Dublin (1899–1994). Iveagh Gardens (talk) 10:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
"The traditional county of Dublin (which persists and always included the city)" - that's not my understanding of the situation. The city of Dublin was always separate from the surrounding county of Dublin. Not every part of Ireland was contained in a shired county; some parts were in separate (and equivalent) corporate cities that had their own jurisdiction for executives, laws, legislatures, taxation etc. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
These shires are the predecessors of our current local government areas, under such system Dublin was its own county corporate. But I don't think that when we use the term "traditional county" we mean the historic administrative areas. For statistical purposes, such as those cited above, County Dublin continues to include the city. Sometimes the CSO will class them by local authority, in which case, they'll list the four Dublin areas, but County Dublin continues to have meaning as an area.
So I set up an AWB job to fix this mispiping, but then I wondered how did this happen? I checked the article Seán T. O'Kelly, and found that the link had been amended by you in this AWB edit[1] in July 2022. So I came here to warn you of a wee error using AWB and to suggest a regex to avoid it.
The split seems to me to be completely wrong. I see no evidence that "Dublin City North" was the WP:COMMONNAME in either primary sources or the reliable secondary sources which should be used (e.g. the Oireachtas website TDs database uses "Dublin North"[3]). "Dublin City North" is not quite a wiki-neologism, but it is almost that: your only sources for this new name are a mention in a Dail debate and on a mislabelled by-election writ. This is WP:OR on stilts
I could open a merge discussion, but I am here already on your talk, and also it feels more collegial to start by simply asking you here to revert the split. If you don't feel willing to do so, that is of course fair enough; then I will open a merge discussion.
I have to say that I am disappointed that you did not mention this in any of our lengthy discussion about the one-to-one relationship between en.wp article name and legal constituency name. What other constituency merges or splits have you done? I think they should all be put on the table for review. I think that we may also need an RFC on this whole business of using WP:OR to override both the legal and commo names of the Dáil constituencies.
I will revert the split. My apologies, my recollection of this was that it was different because it was discussed (which I'll concede the mergers weren't; up for was a notice period, but that's it). As you have found, the discussion wasn't lengthy at all.
The only context I will add is that I'm busier than usual at the moment. I've alternated the top my user page in recent weeks from being on a wikibreak to being on and off. I re-engaged in the hope of resolving the matter of the mergers (I've actually throughout this time kept certain elements of friction on my computer and phone to stop myself logging on too easily!). I assisted with the Navbox discussion because I wanted to continue being collegial, rather than ignore a request for interest. I also did take the time to remove the merge notices on the pages in question, reversing the Limerick ones. Also a little stressed with the other matters which I keeping me away from the ususal ticking away at Wikipedia that I like to do. That's context, not a defence.
The other relevant discussions are on Talk:Dublin South (Dáil constituency) and Talk:Sligo–Leitrim (Dáil constituency). As you will observe, both subject to discussion, a minimal one, by the same user Spleodrach (to whom I apologise for now dragging into this) in support. I still to think these are separately good ideas, and that they are stronger cases than any of my more recent mergers. But I don't want to go over the same ground again.
Of course I'm willing to reverse the splits. I don't think you can say that I'm obstinate, even if I make my case, and will seek support. We can avoid any RfC. If you can grant me the forbearance of a few days, I will effect the reversal of the splits. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 17:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
A small thing: we had got caught up with the specific example of DSE/DBS in this discussion, down to comparing populations, etc., rather than any of the Limerick examples. I reverted the changes and removed the notices, in a piecemeal way of the last few days. In the mean time, I saw you'd created template for Dublin City North. Given your particularly expert knowledge of Irish political history, you knew what the constituency was, to the extent that I was thinking of the past split, I thought you'd decided that given the discussion, this was one you could live with. What I should have said was, "The one you're working on now is one you'd probably like to have a discussion on". I'm interrogating now my very passing thoughts, but I had assumed given your interactions with it that you'd given this a pass. Sorry, that probably doesn't sound convincing, but as I say, I'll reverse everything soon, and we can put this behind us. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 18:13, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Hey, @Iveagh Gardens, please don't beat yourself up about this.
I do think you were mistaken (too much WP:OR!), but I have no doubt that you acted conscientiously and in good faith, as clearly demonstrated by your opening of properly-formed merge discussions. And I am sorry that my initial post may have been a little more growly than needed.
Please don't let this stress you out. There is no great urgency about this, unlike say a WP:BLP issue that could blight the real life of a live human. That needs an immediate fix, but this does not.
The only real life that might be blighted here is yours, if you feel pressed by me to let Wikipedia add to your work stress, by trying to immediately remedy something which can safely wait a few days or a week or two. This needs to be right, but it does not need to be right right now. All of us do better work when we are not under pressure, and I don't want to make Wikipedia feel like a burden for a wonderful editor who brings rare skills to the job, and is great to work with.
Yes, you were v busy! And your main work on historical boundaries is really great. Undoing these changes will leave all that great work in place.
Just to clarify things, so that I dont make life harder by applying navboxes for constituencies which need work. Am I right that the constituencies to watch out for are:
I'm fairly sure that's it. Thanks for your kind words. I'll be back to you on this when I have the bit of time. There'll be a bit of work to get it right, and the Sligo–Leitrim one might be an edge case, but I'll keep you informed when I do get a chance. I have actual holidays coming up as well as certain work commitments, but in the spirit of cooperation with an editor whose work I've admired over the years, I can commit that I won't let this just lie. Iveagh Gardens (talk) 20:31, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
