User talk:John Stephenson/Archive 8

Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3, Archive 4, Archive 5, Archive 6, Archive 7, Archive 8

Referendum

John, I've proposed a referendum I'd like you to look over. Thanks. Russell D. Jones (talk) 19:00, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Query

I've looked and looked, and I'm probably being silly, but I can't find the list of Articles Wanted you produced. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 11:42, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Strange notification

Dear John Stephenson:

I just got the strange notification, that may refer to events of past years. It mentions you; so, I think, you should be informed.

[delete email - formatting messing up]

Did you sent that message to me?

I cannot find the activity specified as "2 February 2016 by John Stephenson" in the message I got. Perhaps, some software error took place.

My point of view did not changed. I still qualify as error the removal of the material mentioned at my talk page. My argumentation is simple and I see no need to repeat it.

Sincerely, Dmitrii Kouznetsov (talk) 11:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the message must refer to [1]. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The software is set to automatically send a message to an account-holder each time one of their user pages is changed, unless you specify otherwise. So, it's not an error. I was just changing a template which should have been updated to reflect the decision to move the page to your user space. Otherwise, the page would still appear as an active case in the 'Removal Calls' list. John Stephenson (talk) 21:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Nomination

Not this time, thanks. Last time I was on Council I found it frustrating. The Managing Editor asked us to do things; I did them, spending quite a lot of time on it; no-one else did; nothing happened. Thanks for all you do. Best wishes, --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:14, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I can see how that would have been frustrating. By the way, it was Anthony who nominated you. John Stephenson (talk) 19:20, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Email

I can't find your private email address either on the email you sent me or on your user page. It would be on the forum, but that's still off line. For the record, I have, or used to have, two other email accounts, with cantab.net and gmx. I haven't used either for a long time, but I could try to reactivate one if that would help. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:22, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for help with my new account. All the best! --Jeff Mcneill (talk) 05:31, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Self-promotion

You resolved my dilemma there, thanks! Could you link to the policies, please? I couldn't find them. Ro Thorpe (talk) 14:02, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

My interpretation is that self-promotion violates 5 and 6 of the CZ Policies document (advertising and non-neutrality). It's also a breach of the existing policy on self-promotion, which remains as non-binding guidance. Hope this helps. John Stephenson (talk) 14:14, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, yes. Many thanks. Ro Thorpe (talk) 14:41, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello

What are you up to nowadays, John? Was thinking about you and thought I'd look in. stephen.ewen@gmail.com Stephen Ewen (talk)

Shutting down CZ? Please look at the following discussion and give us your input

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Forum_Talk:Technical_Issues#Any_further_thoughts.3F thanks! Hayford, Treasurer Hayford Peirce (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi John, RE: tech work and the above issue, could I get an email to go offline and discuss a couple tech issues with you? I am at pgpalmer (AT) gmail.Pat Palmer (talk) 00:52, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

...for tidying up the page move for history of England. Richard Nevell (talk) 17:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

request to delete Christian Science article

Hi John, I don't know if "speedydelete" requests still get locked at, but I think we ought to delete Christian Science and its subpages and metadata. What do you think?Pat Palmer (talk) 16:50, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Agreed - it can always be restarted. John Stephenson (talk) 17:32, 9 August 2020 (UTC).

Thanks much.Pat Palmer (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

an issue with Pope searches

John, I've come across an issue that I think might need some tinkering, but I don't know enough. When I search on "Pope", I get sent to Papacy. And thus, I cannot find any of the popes who have articles in here (there are several) by searching on the word "Pope". It might be as simple as renaming Papacy to Pope, which I recommend. I did managed to find some popes by searching on "Pope redirect", but who would do that? I think there is a need, also, for a list of popes (Catalog?), although most would not yet have articles. Possibly some redirected pope names are also contributing to the failed search issue. Would you be up for looking into this, in your 'spare time', he he? If not, let me know and I'll eventually brave it, but it's been a while since I tinkered with redirects and renamings and such.Pat Palmer (talk) 21:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I think Papacy ought to redirect, i.e. rename it. There are other popes in other churches, so I wonder if it should be Pope (Rome) or Pope (Roman Catholicism). We can create a Catalog fairly easily. John Stephenson (talk) 14:52, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Redirects are easy. For instance, Create a new page called Big Bill Tilden. Then when you go to that blank page, just type in #redirect Bill Tilden and save it. So that if someone later Searches for Big Bill Tilden, she'll go to Bill Tilden. Moves/Renames are trickier and, as I recall, I always asked someone else to do them for me. In the case of Papacy/Pope/etc, I think there should be new Names and lots of Redirects. Hayford Peirce (talk) 15:23, 13: August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, because moving a page doesn't move the Metadata, which also needs to be rewritten to reflect the new title. It would be easier to just have categories at the bottom of each article à la WP but unfortunately someone would have to write and deploy a bot to read, transfer and delete categories from about 16,000 Metadata pages... John Stephenson (talk) 15:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

John, would you consider ditching the metadata in the next generation of the wiki? I'm not sure what all the effects would be, but maybe we could get Joshua's help in making some bots for the transition.Pat Palmer (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Here because I was mentioned. It would be a lot of work to remove metadata, but I support it. I think we should wait until after everything else, though. If I have time, you absolutely could get my help. Joshua Sadule (talk) 23:22, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but as Joshua says, it will involve significant work. If you just get rid of the Metadata extension, about 16,000 articles will lose their categories. John Stephenson (talk) 12:58, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

There is a list of Popes somewhere. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:04, 14 August 2020 (UTC) Is it a timeline? Peter Jackson (talk) 10:04, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Found it. Thanks, Peter. Papacy/Timelines Pat Palmer (talk) 12:26, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Language (naming and search issue)

Hi John! I found that the redirect of Language to Language (general) was making it impossible to search on the word language in a useful manner. Hence, I have removed the redirect for now. And I can see in the ensuing search results now that people have not been consistent in naming articles about specific human languages. I assume, when possible, we want an article to be named, for example, Gaelic, and if there is ambiguity (as there might be with, say, Scots (is it the People, or is it the language of the people?), then it would need to be Scots (language). Correct me if this isn't right. You will likely see, from me, a lot of renaming activity as I try to create more consistency among the MANY articles whose title contains the word language right now. I will also have to remove some redirects, and possibly create some disambiguation pages.

My goal is to make a search on the Language result in a disambiguation page sending one to a few major articles that would point to all the others; or else a search on a specific language name would actually lead one to the article about that language. This is not always happening right now.

This all came up because I have started a new article What is Language? and I intended it to run sort of in parallel with the article Language (general) which you have worked on most in recent times. I wanted to explore the more esoteric definitions of language, as well as perhaps be more whimsical that the hard-working Language (general) is right now. I may work on both, back and forth, unless you'd like to be lead on Language (general).

For now, I'm holding back from redirecting Language to anything so that I can work on the above naming inconsistencies--unless you object. Eventually, we'll want to redirect Language, I think, to Language (disambiguation), which I have already begun work on.

It's all a great snarl! This should keep me off the streets all winter. Lemme know if any of this disturbs your sleep.Pat Palmer (talk) 23:13, 29 August 2020 (UTC)