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A tag has been placed on Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to have no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. If the page you created was a test, please use the sandbox for any other experiments you would like to do.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 22:50, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You, a page which you created or substantially contributed to (or which is in your userspace), has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass Told You during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 00:04, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
Did you just make a major revert error? It seems you reverted to some long ago edit of the article. Akld guy (talk) 00:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armands Strazds (3rd nomination) you seem to have started a comment and not finished. See diff. Sentance starts "That someone ... " and then stops. Nfitz (talk) 00:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the reversion on Houghton Library. As a WikiGnome, it's been a habit of me to correct the bolded stuff in the lead. I didn't realize the lack of the "the" in this case. Should've read through it more though (and probably shouldn't have edited so late into the night). Thanks. GabeIglesia (talk) 23:15, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
There are FACTS, and then there are opinions. Here are some FACTS:
Fact: the tallest persons in medical history all died at an age below the median life expectancy for their cohort age group.
Now, if you choose to be uninformed, that's one thing. But to make fun of others who are right, and then to convince others that they are right when they are in fact wrong, is to spread misinformation. I do realize the goal of Wikipedia is not "truth" but "verifiability." However, it should be clear that living to 8 feet tall is not something that has generally been desirable.
Unless, of course, you think the attention is worth the drawbacks. It should also be clear that there is a distinction between being "tall" and being the "tallest." No one says being 6 foot 2 inches is bad. So, enough with the jokes and take some time to respect other people's viewpoints. You may learn something. Ryoung122 22:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Privacy is important on Wikipedia. If you wish to publish you university address and telephone number on your user page your are free to do so. But be aware that not everyone who uses this site is sane, and it is not appropriate for others to make any comment or allusion about another users's personal information that has not been disclosed by that user. I don't care (and I doubt any others do care about which university if any you attend), but to start to see why this can be a problem spend some time reading WP:ANI and you will soon read vitriol on that page of a similar type that you see with university dons (too Oxbridge for you?) competing for the same funding. The trouble is that if an editor starts to edit controversial pages then information about them could be a matter of life and death (they may after be Liverpool FC supporters). But in all seriousness ponder on this example. -- PBS (talk) 12:18, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I won't do you the disrespect of templating you, so, let me say simply this: I don't really care how bad of a guy Qworty was, or how much he deserves to be banned. (My own opposition is simply because I think a ban to be slightly overkill... however, a lot of users I highly respect disagree with me, and I don't plan on lobbying this.) He could be the epitome with everything that's wrong with Wikipedia and I still wouldn't feel any differently about what you said. You should know better than this, and in my opinion the first admin who saw what you wrote should have indeffed you on the spot until you were willing to agree to never say anything like that again. Not, mind you, because I think you're some contemptible troll, but because blocks exist to prevent disruption to the project, and what you said was clearly and unabashedly disruptive, calculated with the maximum intent to insult. I really don't like making enemies here, so I'd be very happy if this were the last time I felt compelled to call you out for something. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 06:46, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
Furthermore, the amount of "serious evidence" (which I agree existed) is immaterial, seeing as your comments were entirely about his personal real-world life.The prohibition against personal attacks applies equally to all Wikipedians. It is as unacceptable to attack a user with a history of foolish or boorish behavior, one who is blocked, or one who has been subject to action by the Arbitration Committee, as it is to attack any other user.
I've failed the article. User:Eric Corbett has stated on his talkpage that if the article is passed he will take it to GAR which basically means that he has now made it his personal mission to make life hell for anyone who doesn't agree that he is the sole authority to be followed regarding article writing and formatting. I don't wish that for anyone and therefore see no other choice than to fail. This is an immense shame because the article is great and you have done a great job and Wikipedia should be be ashamed of the way you have been thanked for your volunteer work here. I am very sorry it went like this. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:59, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
This is a personal attack. Please don't make any more edit summaries like that. The issue you are edit-warring over is extremely trivial, and you are wrong on the MoS issue, but it's ok that you're wrong on MoS. It's definitely not ok to make personal remarks in your edit summaries. Really, please don't do that again. --John (talk) 21:56, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--John (talk) 07:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I can't get an answer from physicists as to whether spacetime is curved in relation to the interaction between protons and electrons on the atomic level. I was just wondering ... Tony (talk) 06:00, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello, this is not important but "turkey factory" is what the source calls it https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/usa-v-love-judgment-1.pdf page 12 at the bottom 208.44.84.138 (talk) 22:07, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Just when you thought that Wikipedia's standards couldn't get any lower, along comes this: it turns out that we no longer require competence in our editors. While this is good news for all of the other Klinks who plan on creating accounts, it's a rather disturbing idea for pretty much everyone else. Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Complaints|Mistakes) 22:58, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Speaking of competence! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Motion picture rating system. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Please don't edit a DYK prep set while the "inuse" tag is in place. I put it there because I like to build the whole set before saving it, and having intermediate edits done by others in the interim really makes things most difficult. Thanks. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:25, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
The hooks below have been approved by a human (EEng) and will be automatically added to the DYK template at the appropriate time. |
But if you insist on making Wikipedia mirror your own personal reality, you've got your work cut out for you. 32.218.47.105 (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
However, on reflection I see that the problem is solved by "During a post-recording session talk, Crosby suggested...", and thus I've made that change.
Your talk page is over 927,000 bytes large. You should really consider archiving a bunch of it. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 03:42, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
The first part of this says specifically:
Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia, or statements attacking or vilifying groups of editors, persons, or other entities (these are generally considered divisive and removed, and reintroducing them is often considered disruptive).
You have now reverted two editors (who don't generally agree with each other) who have found these statements to be in violation of WP:POLEMIC, specifically to the above-quoted statement. Please do not continue to revert against this consensus. If you continue to believe that the statements are not in violation, you can bring it up on the user talk page, on the talk page for POLEMIC (WT:User pages), or on a notice board, perhaps as an appendix to the thread in which Cedric was indef blocked. Thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Wrongful accusations from a popular guy: "NBD." Fighting such wrongful accusations: "WP:BATTLEGROUND! WP:NOTHERE! Indef block!"is such a terrible block of WP:POLEMIC that it needs to be removed immediately, then most of User:Beyond My Ken/thoughts is so far in breach that it probably warrants a permanent site ban. Unless something is actually libellous, grossly offensive, a specific attack on a named individual, the use of userspace by a user with little or no history of Wikipedia activity to host out-of-scope content, or something which is actually causing technical problems,* we've always allowed extremely broad leeway in what people can keep in their own userspace. This is really not a hill on which you want to fight. ‑ Iridescent 15:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
I saw your comment on Cedric's talk page. I don't have a problem with commenting on blocked users' talk pages (obviously), but if you are going to do so I'd advise against mentioning "diacritics". His block had nothing to do with diacritics, despite what he would likely want you to believe. It did have to do with posting indecipherable edit summaries that were not indecipherable because they included diacritics; they were indecipherable because the spellings used therein were gibberish. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:26, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Test. Drmies (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
Success! Drmies (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
Drmies told me I had to click on this. Now what do I do? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:25, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
I know you've done a few special occasion DYK's in the past, so if you could respond to the query about having this on Easter, it would probably be more useful than me, since I'm relatively new to that area of Wikipedia! TonyBallioni (talk) 16:51, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
On 1 April 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Mark Barr, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that erection engineer Mark Barr had a business making rubbers, said bicycles stimulated ball development, and was elected to the screw committee? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mark Barr. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Mark Barr), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
On 1 April 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Vaginal steaming, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that "sorcery for your vagina" can result in second-degree burns? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Vaginal steaming. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Vaginal steaming), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Mifter (talk) 00:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
I appreciate your arguments regarding the information that you removed, in the context of a conclusion drawn from original research. However, I still think the information you removed is relevant in terms of providing context for the reader. The paragraph in question is located in the history section of the document; providing the earliest-known investigation into building an irrigation system, and context of the irrigation systems in the park bordering the garden, are valuable in that they build context for the reader. I'd like to bring back that information. Nemilar (talk) 04:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Kudos for your work on the Herb Cain article. Dlabtot (talk) 01:03, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your help with the caption in the Jim Leavelle article. Have a good day! - Thanks, Hoshie 22:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! I needed a laugh after a determined attack last night by trolling, vandalizing sockpuppets on my user and talk pages. That's the way to convert a Jew to Christianity, huh? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Re : same thing, right? The real question is: 48 solar hours or 48 sidereal hours? NE Ent 14:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
I think you mistakenly clicked thank instead of undo. 8^> —sroc 💬 09:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I hope this is fine. Tony (talk) 06:01, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
If you really think that people are using WP MOS as a style guide outside of WP, I think we need a little disclaimer on it somewhere saying that, while anyone's free to use it of course, it has many details peculiar to the needs of WP and issues that arise there, and which may not be appropriate for general application elsewhere i.e. a camel is a horse designed by a committee. EEng (talk) 07:05, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
OK, it's not everyday that edit summaries on the DYK talk page make me laugh as much as I did. Thanks a bunch. :) I, JethroBT drop me a line 19:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for suggesting to use {{paragraph break}} on ANI. It seems that's....done it. 213.7.147.34 (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi, the MOSNUM examples for ≥ and ≤ appear in the table (spaced), but when it's a number by itself, is the symbol spaced thus? "If the value is > 15, the procedure is likely to succeed". Or >15? Thx. Tony (talk) 11:10, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
About this edit summary: , please tell me that the spelling was intentional, and not a typo or a Freudian slip! --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Did I make the right guess here: ? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
It looks like the subject is at it again. You helped deal with this back in 2013. Please take a look at my recent revert and, if so moved, keep an eye on the page. David in DC (talk) 16:35, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Alyson Hannigan. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Hi,
Your talk page is currently 715,338 bytes long. This makes it difficult for some to edit, or even read. Please archive most of it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:48, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Test edit – DO NOT READ | ||||
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He's just Trypin', like he sometimes does. Any time a page is edited a new version has to be rendered. The page being X times the size of a typical page, it's not surprising it takes X times as long to render, though as SBHB found it's highly variable (server load, naked chance, etc.). It's part of the cost of membership in my glittering array of talk page stalkers. Anyway, the result is cached, so if the page gets any significant traffic at all, only the edit-or sees this delay, not plain read-ers.
Perhaps I'll be inspired to archived a few things. EEng 01:05, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Under one month later, the page is now 730,269 bytes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:54, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
On 28 August 2016, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Humphrey Stafford (died 1413), which you recently nominated. The fact was ... that in his will, Humphrey Stafford left his household servants £1 each, his grooms 6s.8d each, his pages 3s.4d each, and £8 for masses for his soul? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Humphrey Stafford (died 1413). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:02, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
^^^^Enter at your own risk, Bart Simpson^^^^ Atsme📞📧 14:09, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
The Cure Award | |
In 2015 you were one of the top 300 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs, and we would love to collaborate further. |
Thanks again :) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 03:59, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Well done, EEng. I wonder would you take a look at my bunions sometime? They've been giving me gyp lately. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:59, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Topology meets physics. Tony (talk) 06:07, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
On 16 October 2016, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Newell Boathouse, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Newell Boathouse stands on land for which Harvard pays $1 per year under a lease running one thousand years—after which the university can renew for another thousand years? You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Newell Boathouse), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Thanks for making improvements to The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. Part of the reason I created this one was to watch the DYK process unfold (it's an area of WP I have very little experience with) so I hope you'll entertain a newbie question: there are now a couple different hook proposals at the nomination page. What happens to determine which one is the one that sticks? Just add a comment of endorsement to the nom page itself or is there another venue for that? Thanks. --— Rhododendrites talk | 15:41, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Amongst my glittering salon talk page stalkers, does there number a Commons admin? I'm caught in a Kafkaesque discussion over the licensing of an image with a bunch of people who can't keep their definitions straight. In the name of all that is holy, can someone give me a hand getting this resolved? EEng 17:46, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
nobody knows the identity of the photographer or whether it was a work-for-hire: but that's not the case here. I don't know those things; the content donor likely does; or maybe he doesn't; it doesn't matter. As long as the content donor affirms that he is the owner, and there's no significant reason to doubt that, that should be the end of it, because Wikimedia is entitled to rely on such representations made in apparent good faith. There's no requirement to supply, or even know, who the author was; the license requires that "licensees retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor with the Licensed Material: (i) identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material..." (italics added) i.e. the license explicitly contemplates that the owner/licensor does not know who the author/creator is. For christ's sake, Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? EEng 00:32, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
You say that "the client" (by which I assume you mean the person issuing the release) "needs to say who has to be credited as copyright owner". He's already told you who the copyright owner is: himself. EEng (talk) 15:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
[The file description page] says that the author is "unknown". Regards, Yann (talk) 16:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
What does that have to do with anything? Per the documentation at Template:Information, the Author is the "Original author of the file"; that person is unknown. The author is distinct from the copyright owner, and that is not unknown: it's in the release. EEng (talk) 17:07, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
That is the whole point of what I say above. If the author is unknown, it can't be released under a free license. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
What??? You just said, "At the very least, the client needs to say who has to be credited as copyright owner." Now you're saying the author needs to be known. The Author has nothing to do with it, and (as already pointed out above) the license explicitly contemplates that the author might be unknown. Can you, please, point to something in writing that sets out the rules and requirements, so we can resolve this? We're going round and round in circles. EEng (talk) 17:24, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Referring to myself, of course; you seem to have been out long enough to start re-acquiring basic logic skills. FourViolas (talk) 11:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
This may be up yours up your ally: Wikipedia talk:Reflections on RfX#Kittens are great. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:58, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
It could be, but the purpose of the hyphenation is to link the words together into a unit, and the link in "neutral point of view policy" would already do that pretty effectively. But, yeah, I have seen them hyphenated like that sometimes. Going by other usage on other, well-developed WP:POLICY pages, we tend try to work such references into natural language, like "Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view". It scans better and comes across less like "bible thumping" about our policies. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
A sudden hankering for a visit to the museum made me type in WP:EEng instead of User:EEng and that took me to the Electrical engineering wikiproject. Felt a bit silly, since in my mind the only possible explanation for the Eng. in your username was the word 'English' - E. English. - NQ (talk) 12:45, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
Question: What was the thickness of that iron rod? Answer: Phineas Gauge. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:34, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
With regards to this comment, I think this may be a fun read for you: Wikipedia:No self attacks. Cheers, ansh666 21:39, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
From a now-ongoing ANI thread (the actual subject of which is irrelevant here):
Talk page stalkers, your honest thoughts are solicited on the comments above. If you wish, log out and comment anonymously (and I promise I won't geolocate the IP). Thanks, EEng
Hi, I admire your hook wizardry, but your grammar tweaks leave something to be desired. I'm not an English teacher, so I can't say what grammar rules are being violated here, but changing "one of the few journalists in the world who has met..." to "one of the few journalists in the world to have met" is not proper English. You wouldn't say "EEng is one of the few DYK editors to write super hooks", but "EEng is one of the few DYK editors who (or "that") writes super hooks". Similarly, if you want to add the word "its" to "...that Wash's Restaurant served up soul food dishes to Atlantic City beach-goers by day and its nightclub-hoppers by night?" there should have been a possessive on "Atlantic City": "... that Wash's Restaurant served up soul food dishes to Atlantic City's beach-goers by day and its nightclub-hoppers by night?" I undid my correction of your correction to the first hook out of politeness, but maybe I shouldn't have. Yoninah (talk) 22:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Hello, EEng -- I've seen that you are active on other MOS talk pages, so I wonder if you would take a look at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Spelling. I have posed a few questions there but have not received any reply. Thanks. – Corinne (talk) 17:29, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Anyone want to point me to any of the voting guides that will usually have popped up by now? I find the formal statements and Q&A too sterile. EEng 05:32, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
shit boiled eggs... And to think I got in trouble for saying tits. EEng 23:34, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Hello! I'm not entirely clear what you were directing me to on my Talk Page. Your link took me to a Current Event portal for a date in August, but I saw nothing there about Joey Casio.
Just to clarify, he and I were not friends. We had never met. I just discovered his music over the summer, and quickly became a big fan. But I am still curious what you were trying to show me. Please clarify on my page, thanks! Juneau Mike (talk) 20:19, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
.... that's kinda like going through contribs, ain't it? Pig men! AEwesome image NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:52, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback; I share your peeve with the misuse of stats, which is why I wanted to write a bit more in depth. I think it's best to clarify what I meant by posting the statistics. I'm not a positivist, I view them as a tool to gain additional facts that we can use to make decisions, not as able to definitively answer questions on their own. Reading the discussion above part of my decision-making process was to what extent is this a problem, non-bold links getting more clicks than the bold links we are highlighting. To answer that, I needed more than the ten or so hand picked data points offered so far and so would anyone else that had that same question. So I calculated the descriptive statistics which would be of use to anyone. I wanted to give something slightly more useful than the raw data so that others can, to quote my self, "do with it what [they] will".
It was always intended to be quick and dirty, essentially the first things you look at when you are given a bunch of data, so that people like you who do know how to interpret statistics can come to your own conclusions. But I also recognize that a lot of people don't know what to do with all those stats, so I wanted to give them something to take away from the data without forcing my opinions and interpretations on the data. That's what the t-test was for. A basic question that is the foundation of the discussion "do bold links get a different number of clicks than non-bold links". The t-test showed that they do get significantly more clicks and I intentionally left it vague from there so that the reader can use that to come up with their own interpretations.
However I wouldn't have stated the conclusion did I not have confidence in them. The statistics are all consistent with your hypothesis, that the data can be explained as a difference in the base number of hits, but it relies on flaws in the data which I figured to be unlikely. Because these are central tendency measures with about 900 points in both categories, the outliers you point out would be washed out as noise or you'd have to say that there is a strong net bias for bold links being high traffic. That at 900 data points DYK noms would not approximate a random sample of pages seems unlikely to me. But even the descriptive statistics give credence to it not being a data flaw. Take for instance the standard deviations. Firstly, they're both the same order of magnitude meaning that they're probably a similar shape. Secondly, for both groups, one standard deviation includes the mean of the other group meaning that there is a substantial overlap of the distributions.
I am doing your analyses and some follow ups. I'll post those as well. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 22:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
The statistics are all consistent with your hypothesis, that the data can be explained as a difference in the base number of hits. An alternate way to state it: the difference I found is mostly due to differences in the base-hits of bold links versus non-bold rather than their status as bold or not. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
you need to more clearly define what you're looking forI feel I've answered this already, but essentially, I'm not looking for anything, I'm providing descriptive statistics that summarize a large amount of data.
there's no question at all about that, so it's a waste of timeI disagree, and regardless will waste my time on whatever pursuit piques my interest.
I vaguely perceive you to be suggesting you can neglect thatThat's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that, regardless of why the groups are different (base page hits, bolding, aliens), the descriptive statistics I gave are still completely factual summations of the data. The t-test is only valid if 5 assumptions are correct: (1) The data are continuous or ordinal (they are); (2) the samples are random (this one is a little more dodgy given the conclusion that the base page hits are different between groups; they're random samples of their respective groups, but they may not be random samples of the population); (3) the data are normally distributed (they are); (4) a large sample size, usually greater than 30, is used (it is); (5) the treatment does not significantly change the variance (it doesn't, hence the comment about the standard deviations being the same order of magnitude). These assumptions are met with or without normalization (the validity of assumption 3 is independent of the normalization as it's about the sampling). Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 01:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
@Wugapodes: An issue about your stats which concerned me was that you took hooks which usually have only one bolded link but can have many unbolded ones and treated the data as two groups. I would think a by-hook analysis would be more informative. A few things which I would find interesting would include:
EEng is right that the real answer would come from an experiment. Theoretically, if every access to the main page on a half-day (as we are using 12 h slots at present) served the same DYK but including or excluding non-bold links, and the clicks resulting from each group can be analysed separately, we would get good data to address the question we seek. Such an experiment could only be run with the permission of the WMF (which wouldn't happen) and would need repetition, and may be technically problematic - and that's without even considering ethics. What we can do to answer our questions is limited and indirect measures are necessarily problematic. If I may share a personal story, I had a lecturer in quantitative methods of analysis who was roped in to teach at Masters level at the last minute as the assigned lecturer became unavailable. It was obvious to me that he knew how to do statistical tests and certainly how to use statistical packages, but he did not understand how they worked and consequently made some mistakes I found astounding. As an example, given a data set of responses from people, he considered whether the male and female respondents were (on average) the same age. Instead of performing a simple t-test, he plotted the data, age on the y-axis, gender on the x-axis, assigning male as x = 1 and female as x = 2. He then had as determined the correlation coefficient and test whether it statistically significantly differed from 0. The conclusion from the obvious analysis and his was the same, our data set had females who were statistically significantly older than males, on average, but only one approach was reasonable. The view that "small p-value = important finding" is dangerous and misleading because the p-value is meaningful only if the test is valid and appropriate to the data and the question. Misuse of stats arises from ignorance, from mining data for / seeking evidence to support a conclusion (instead of allowing conclusions to arise from evidence), deliberate misrepresentation (such as unjustified selective exclusion of data), and honest mistakes, amongst others. I'm comfortable with your goodwill and good intentions, Wugapodes, but I suspect that, like me, you lack sufficient statistical experience to be really confident about analyses to enlighten us about a question where we can't do the experiment we need to get the answer. EdChem (talk) 10:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
if every access to the main page on a half-day (as we are using 12 h slots at present) served the same DYK but including or excluding non-bold links, and the clicks resulting from each group can be analysed separately– You don't need to present the same hook two different ways. Instead, you'd do this:
This will never actually happen -- even deciding to change the number of hooks per day saps the community's entire strength, and with TRM rumbling about deckchairs and so on it'll be impossible to discuss this intelligently. Nonetheless it's a fun discussion (and who knows?).
EEng 07:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
leaving aside that only one hook is an appallingly bad design from a statistical perspective– Yeah, but that's the point. We wouldn't be doing two hooks, we'd do 1000, and Wugapodes has it right:
a high quality hook is just as likely to be in the bold only group as a low quality hook. And this randomization doesn't just "mitigate" the problem (as Wugapodes said), it eliminates it, if the sample size is large enough given the treatment effect (bigger treatment effect --> smaller sample needed) and SD of views (higher SD --> bigger sample needed). EC, I appreciate your concern that people may not understand this, but your A/B design is susceptible to exactly the same misguided criticism – people might worry that the readers presented with the treatment version "might just happen to be" the kind of people who like to click on DYKs (or who like that particular subject, or any number of other things that affect propensity to click). That's not true, because randomizing who sees which version takes care of that (on an overwhelming scale – in an A/B design each of millions of readers would be randomized separately) but people will still have that misconception.
Christ, you're a bore |
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The sooner you stop personalising these discussions with your snide humourless asides, the more likely we are to make some ground. Ironically this is one of the debates at DYK which is trivial to solve. Stick with WP:OVERLINK and don't create yet another arcane and subservient rule that can be endlessly debated, once again detracting from efforts to improve the mainspace. I know it's been a while since I've had time to seriously work on articles, you too by the looks of things. We need to re-focus the debate on quality of target articles, everything else is, and I know you don't like it, or object to it, or whatever, but deckchairs. Having discovered how popular OTD is with basically zero effort, versus DYK, it does suggest we could do without DYK altogether, particularly as the current debate is really underlining the fact that no-one really has a clue what the project really stands for. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2017 (UTC) |
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Michael Portillo. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
Seasons greetings. Please don't archive the DYK discussion page items "Cwmhiraeth and the role of the promotor" and "Vom Himmel hoch, o Engel, kommt" for a while because I have sent links to them to various friends and relatives and they won't find them if they have been archived. I wanted my "folk" to see how we co-operate behind the scenes at DYK, and admire the sequence of events leading up to the first time I have ever been sworn at during my sheltered life. ;-) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Your talk page is too long, like your user page. It would be more useful for you to put your museums in subpages. UpsandDowns1234 (🗨) (My Contribs) 19:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
It should be noted there is only one thing on this earth that is more congested than this page: http://www.lingscars.com
Cards84664 (talk) 00:36, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
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