User talk:Osiris/January 2016

Is it really you?

Your name is popping up on the "new changes" pages, so I am hoping it's you :) --Peterdownunder (talk) 06:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Peter! Yep, it's me! How have you been?! Osiris (talk) 06:54, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Like you, very busy in RL, but I still manage about one hour a day here. Busy on the Ballarat history wiki. Good to know you are still around. I often have questions which I know you can answer.--Peterdownunder (talk) 07:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, glad to see my lone fellow compatriot here is still editing. I'm going to try to put some time aside for wikiwork each week myself. Speaking of the Ballarat wiki, I lost all my emails from inactivity so if you sent me anything during my time away, I'd love to read it. I'm pretty sure I'll need to flip the wikitech questions your way for a bit: I've forgotten a lot of things, I'm seeing double with Twinkle, and all the scripts I'm running are telling me they're no longer maintained. Osiris (talk) 02:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Welcome back, person I don't know! I'd throw a welcome template on here but I'm guessing it would get stuck on your mop, so I won't bother. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  07:18, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Nice to meet you, Etamni. What about just the cookies? Osiris (talk) 02:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Welcome back from me as well. You were the one who welcomed me here and then later bestowed me with a Barnstar with benefits. ツ Awesome. Wishing you everything good. Fylbecatulous talk 20:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Yay! Fylby! Everything is good, I hope you are aswell. Thanks for brightening up my day. Osiris (talk) 02:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

As you can see we've all missed you kind user! --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 00:45, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks TDKR! Osiris (talk) 02:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

These are special "Welcome-back cookies" baked fresh just for you! <stage whisper>...will someone please get rid of the bag the cookies came in before Osiris sees it?</stage whisper> Etamni | ✉ | ✓  03:44, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

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Num num. Thank you! :) Osiris (talk) 10:34, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Hope you're back for real this time, welcome back :) --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 17:30, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm planning to be. At the moment, though, I'm out in the sticks so won't be very active until I get back home at the end of the week. Osiris (talk) 11:16, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Welcome back. You got me off to a great start here and I've missed having you as an admin. Nice to see you back. User:Rus793 (talk) 20:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Rus793! That means a lot, and it's great to see you're still editing. Osiris (talk) 02:09, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Question

• A random user gave me that barnstar. I'm going with my head saying that this is not a real barnstar. Can I remove it from my talk page? If so, I'll be more than happy to do the same to you :) --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 00:44, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

It's vandalism (look up Jimmy Savile). I've removed it from the many pages where it was left. I suggest you remove it from this section as well. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

A paedophilia barnstar?! LOL. Oh, trolls... You remove whatever you want from your talk page, TDKR. Osiris (talk) 02:55, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Taxoboxes

Thank you for your note. In general, I have edited taxoboxes by hand to keep the level of detail within sane bounds. And I haven't added any new taxoboxes to the category system, just tweaked the old ones.

On the general biology pages I have kept the older Linnaean system in most cases, because the levels are so familiar, and especially so for living animals. Even at first degree level, students get much less morphology than they used to, so the familiar classification works quite well.
Of course, out there in the real world, all hell has been breaking loose as efforts are made to combine modern methods of cladistics, phylogenetics, and DNA analysis with classical views of taxonomy. Here and there we have got some of this work on certain pages. Since we are not running graduate courses, I have been very sparing in using this kind of taxonomy on our pages. I don't used automatic taxoboxes because I can't adjust them to read more simply. I can edit the old taxoboxes easily.

If there's a science area which needs attention it is the astronomy infoboxes. They are wildly overdone for our purposes, with a lot of data which our readers will not understand. Although I am not professionally qualified in astronomy, I have edited many of the pages. If you cruise around the planets you will see that some ...editor has done a simplified version of the infobox which is even worse than the original.
I suppose, behind all the detail, is the same old idea which made science teaching so difficult. It is the belief that students should be given every last detail of knowledge which experts have collected. This is so wrong. The detail gets in the way of the understanding which is the thing one really wants people to get out of a subject. [rant over...] Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:10, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I deleted the auto-taxoboxes after we decided it was too much maintenance.

I remember those changes to the planet infobox. I did have it on my old to-do list to go through them individually and undo the more ridiculous ones. There are some changes I think are good; like "Satellite of" →‎ "What it orbits" sounds okay to me, but some of the other "translations" are quite incomprehensible. "Angle between its shortest distance from what it orbits around and where it comes up through the reference plane"... If there weren't a wikilink, then I'd have no idea. It's obvious what he was trying to do, but that's just changing jargon into nonsense. I'll try to get to it over the weekend, but if you want to take a look, please do. I don't see a problem with having the option of editors providing that data, so I won't say we should remove the fields, but editors are totally free to decide not to use them in the articles if they think it's too complicated. Osiris (talk) 12:40, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

There are various things to think about:

1. The boxes are far, far too long and detailed. They have data which might interest a professional astronomer, but not a reader with just a general interest.
2. Infoboxes are not meant for explanations, and the explanations add to the length, yet are not sufficient for a proper understanding. I invite you to consider "how long it takes to complete an orbit" versus "how long an orbit seems to take". And how about "Angle between its shortest distance from what it orbits around and where it comes up through the reference plane".
3. We can simply delete data which we judge is not suitable for this wiki, on each individual page. I mean, suppose I judge that nothing below mass is needed, I just cut those below in the change box. Of course, that might lead to debates with other editors, but that is true of all edits.
4. We could delete the simple language version entirely. It is an epic fail, because it is neither scientifically accurate (because for a professional the terms are necessary) and incomprehensible to an average reader.

I'll pause there for a while. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that most of the fields are too technical for an infobox on this wiki. I think a short infobox with just simple things like the apses, orbital period, speed, mass, surface area, temperature, density, would suffice. Looking through the infobox now, I actually wouldn't have a problem just removing the super-technical fields altogether. I'm going to start a discussion to that affect on the template's talk page. Osiris (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

@Macdonald-ross: Please take a look when you've got time: Template talk:Infobox planet#Simplifying. Osiris (talk) 06:09, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Flood?

You wouldn't want a flood flag, would you? 'Cause I could totally help you out with that! ;) --Auntof6 (talk) 03:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Nah I'm done. Just three more in userspace. I'm going through the easy maintenance cats, if that interests you, but I'm not going to do any more today. Osiris (talk) 03:25, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, just checking. I know sometimes I've given myself the flood flag but forgotten that you have to log in again after assigning it. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:27, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh yeah. Me too. Thanks. Osiris (talk) 03:29, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Oops

I think we both started working on the Semi-Protect at the same time, you beat me to it. Didn't see the time and just listed it done by Another Admin. -- Enfcer (talk) 15:28, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah no problems. :) Osiris (talk) 15:38, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

removing Buzzfeed

Hey Osiris! Welcome back. I noticed that somebody removed a ref for BuzzFeed on Susan Lucci. Could you tell me about that? Angela Maureen (talk) 17:31, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Angela! :) BuzzFeed is a difficult source to work with. It has had problems with plagiarism, and research has shown that people don't trust it [1] as a source for politics. But it's recently been trying to reinvent itself as a source of real journalism, so for more current articles I think it probably depends on the individual author. There are some pretty reputable journalists working for BuzzFeed now (Ben Smith, McKay Coppins). But there are still writers on that site that clearly don't care about fact-checking, and some of the articles are wildly sensationalist in tone.

The issues with sourcing and fact-checking seem to be particularly prevalent in its lists, like the one that I removed. The author of that Republicans list that I removed, is hugely prolific when it comes to lists, but it's been demonstrated several times that he gets the information from less-than-reputable (or blatantly unreliable) sources, like celebrity gossip websites, IMDb and Wikipedia. He often plagiarises the content as well.[2][3][4]^NOTE Since BuzzFeed has started taking itself seriously, he's had nearly half of his lists deleted.[5] I don't know where he got the information for that particular list, but the issues with it are fairly self-evident. He lists LL Cool J as a Republican because he performed at a Republican convention in 2004; but Google will bring up several sources, including tweets from LL Cool J himself, revealing that he supported Barack Obama that year. Back to the BuzzFeed list, I scroll through the comments section and see multiple people dissenting claims about so-and-so; I check Sarah Michelle Gellar against Google and she herself dismisses the claims that she's a Republican in a tweet.

Maybe I might not be so strict on our other articles, but on a BLP for a person's political affiliation, that's really going against policy. We need high-quality sources for BLPs, and especially so for such controversial claims.

Thanks for the welcome back! Good to see you still editing. Osiris (talk) 04:02, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Greetings

Osiris well your name if you are speaking about the Egyptian God his name is Asar' the greek terms is Osiris unfortunately while studying Egyptian culture you have to first refer to Kemet, Unfortunate that you don't understand that. While I will try to help the miseducation that is only wiki media I do like some of the pictures down loads they are good to use. And to give a contribution it will happen in the near future. The miss education of our Ancestors is a credit to the study of the culture and life studies of the people whom formed the earth. And thank you very kindly. Peace well if you know really Hotep' Ashe'... Djoserraasaraset 06:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I was not really sure what you meant by the "Ra dynasty"...? I think you mean to say that he was closely associated with Ra. It's also speculation to say that his name is the origin of "amen". I didn't realise that was an actual theory, but I see that it is, albeit an extreme minority one. Please provide some sources. Osiris (talk) 07:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

what a NOOOOB

LOL! Don't worry, we'll keep you anyway! --Auntof6 (talk) 06:30, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I hope you're sure about that, I will probably break something. ;) Osiris (talk) 06:32, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

An invitation to discussion at Wikimedia Commons

You were involved on an issue. Therefore, I invite you to commons:COM:Undeletion requests/Current requests#File:Aboriginal Flag 02.jpg. --George Ho (talk) 19:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. Osiris (talk) 10:29, 29 January 2016 (UTC)