User talk:Elrondil

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A barnstar for you!

The Copyeditor's Barnstar
I don't know how we lucked into a virtuoso such as yourself volunteering here but it is a blessing. Can't thank you enough for your good work! jengod (talk) 07:41, 1 June 2025 (UTC)
@Jengod: Thank you, that is high praise. Elrondil (talk) 12:53, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Recent edit to Otto von Bismarck

Thanks for fixing some of the issues with the Bismarck article. Wanted to let you know that your recent edit to this article did introduce a Harv warning error. The Abrams reference has no sfn cite in the article to link to - as seen in Template:Sfn - so I have used the workaround parameter "ref=none" to get rid of the new Harv warning. If you aren't familiar with the Harv & Sfn cite warnings/errors script & usage take a look at User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors. That explains what this script does and how to install it. - Shearonink (talk) 03:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Shouldn’t sources without inline citations go into a general reference section? Elrondil (talk) 04:03, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Sure but right now I am concentrating on eventually fixing all the many many Harv warnings in the article. The Bibliography section with the subsections of Bibliographies/Surveys/Specialized studies/Historiography and memory/Primary sources does seem somewhat excessive to me but in my opinion any rearranging of the "ref=none" cites into a General references or References section should please wait until the remaining 39 cite issues are straightened out. - Shearonink (talk) 04:25, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Now the article's count is down to 36 Harv warnings. Am taking a break - will get back at it in the next couple of days. - Shearonink (talk) 04:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
@Shearonink: I would also very much support moving to a single style, such as short footnotes. Elrondil (talk) 04:53, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Well...that would be a massive undertaking, the article has a readable prose size of over 11,600 words, with the refs being 166kB for their HTML code & 23kB for text. Converting all of the references to Sfn cites? I'm not taking that on, I just want to make sure whatever is in the article now works for the purposes of verifiability. - Shearonink (talk) 05:21, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
It isn't too hard to write a script to do that programmatically (for those citations ready to be harmonised), but why bother writing something I probably wouldn't get to use.
Elrondil (talk) 05:39, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
@Shearonink: I agree that all those subsections for sources are unnecessary and would support a flattening into a single list for referenced sources and another single list for general references. Elrondil (talk) 04:40, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Before tearing apart and reassembling the present referencing in the article into a new or different or unified format I would suggest possibly posting on the article's talk page about doing that. - Shearonink (talk) 05:21, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Nah, I've given up on trying to make any article consistent. But technically it would be quite possible to let any reader see an article the way they want to see it if it were tagged appropriately and we added a few nuts and bolts to Wikipedia. Elrondil (talk) 05:33, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Otto again...

2 of the Hajo Holborn references - the harvc ones, 1982b & 1982c - are now throwing Harv warnings. I realized with my latest foray into this article that it looks like none of the 1982 Holborn cites are actually used. Does the article need the cites to the 1982 edition? There are so many other references & sources already listed in it... - Shearonink (talk) 04:40, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Those two chapters of the 1982 edition seem to be general references. Perhaps delete the harvc's, add |ref=none on the 1982a, and change 1982a to 1982? Elrondil (talk) 04:52, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, sounds good to me, I'll try that. Sometimes it seems that teasing apart all the citations & the references & getting them adjusted so they work correctly in this article is like fully assembling a jigsaw puzzle that was partially assembled many many years ago... - Shearonink (talk) 15:08, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Art + Australia

Thank you for your sterling efforts on Art + Australia. I heartily agree with jengod, the rapidity and precision of your edits indicates an olympic level of brain fitness and perspicacity that leaves one in awe. Jamesmcardle (talk) 02:04, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

@Jamesmcardle: Thank you, that is incredible feedback. I am humbled. Elrondil (talk) 08:31, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

References

Hi, I've just undone several of your edits where you removed details of AC Grayling's book Among the Dead Cities and replaced them with what seems to be some kind of unusual reference. I haven't seen this done before, and to be honest I don't understand what the benefits might be given it makes it harder for the article to be edited in the future. Can you please discuss this on a relevant talk page somewhere? Thank you, Nick-D (talk) 10:30, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nick-D: No details should have been removed from the rendered Wikipedia page; indeed, the resulting rendered citation should be a superset of whatever was there before, a superset that is also consistent across articles (unless overridden in an article). If any WERE missing details then I am very sorry … and am sure I can correct that. I took great pains to make sure the edits were improvements, but I’m the first to admit I make mistakes. There was one where the title, publisher and ISBN didn’t match, so I did change it to what the majority of the data in that citation said. And some used ISBN-10s while others used ISBN-13s, but now they consistently use(d) the same.
{{cite Q}} draws data for a citation from Wikidata. The benefits are the usual benefits of data normalisation. The wikisouce will ideally be lighter. So {{cite Q |Q136472797 |last=Grayling |first=A. C. |author-link=A. C. Grayling }} draws data from Among the Dead Cities (Q136472797); add |expand=yes to a {{cite Q}} to see what it yields, for example {{cite Q |Q136472797 |last=Grayling |first=A. C. |author-link=A. C. Grayling |expand=yes }} renders as {{Cite book |author-link=A. C. Grayling |first=A. C. |id=[[WDQ (identifier)|Wikidata]] [[:d:Q136472797|Q136472797]] |isbn=978-0-7475-7671-6 |language=en |last=Grayling |oclc=1391179967 |ol=22239519M |publication-date=2006 |publication-place=London |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury Publishing]] |title=Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? |url=https://archive.org/details/amongdeadcitiesw0000gray/page/n6}}.
I’m not really sure what talk page to use for a collection of Wikipedia pages. Except maybe the talk page for {{cite Q}}? Elrondil (talk) 12:04, 11 October 2025 (UTC)
OK, thanks for this. It seems a pretty obscure way of adding references, and it's hard to see how it's better than including the details on Wikipedia. This is especially the case for FAs like the Bombing of Tokyo (March 1945) article where the references were to a specific edition of the book and having these details on Wikidata risks someone changing this in a way that's not readily apparent on Wikipedia. Nick-D (talk) 23:43, 11 October 2025 (UTC)
@Nick-D: Anything is unfamiliar until the learning curve for it has been climbed. This is also true for the other {{cite xxx}} templates, and indeed editing in Wikipedia in general which is much more clumsy than just opening a Word document and bashing away at a keyboard.
The most immediate benefit of {{cite Q}} is elimination of data duplication. Instead of having to enter and maintain the same data for a given edition/version/translation in EVERY Wikipedia article that uses that given edition/version/translation, that data is entered ONCE in ONE Wikidata item, and then only IF it doesn’t already exist in Wikidata. If it does already exist, then after finding and verifying it, you get to reuse what has already been entered by others. Across ALL Wikipedias that support {{cite Q}}, not just the English Wikipedia.
Drawing citation data from Wikidata greatly increases citation data reuse, and most importantly scrutiny of that citation data. While it doesn’t make sense to change the Wikidata item for a given edition/version/translation into a different edition/version/translation, any more than it would make sense to turn the Wikipedia article for thing A into a Wikipedia article for thing B, we're able to subscribe to every Wikidata item we're interested in, similar to Wikipedia, so IF a Wikidata item is changed we're able to scruntinise that change. The more editors reuse it and subscribed to it, the more scruntiny.
Using Wikidata for citation data finally creates the opportunity to really, actually and properly get on top of proper citing in Wikipedia. Especially for FA articles! And for then leveraging the level of maturity attained for citations used in FA articles in OTHER Wikipedia articles that haven’t yet attained FA, hopefully across ALL Wikipedias one day. AND it also has the potential to spill outside the Wikiverse because once citation data in Wikidata reaches a certain critical mass and level of maturity, tools like EndNote may interface with it, adding yet further scrutiny.
As it is, you’ve turned the following that I had in three articles consistently:
to this (shouldn't it be |first=A. C., as clearly discernible on the page at this hyperlink you also removed?) in Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945):
this (again, should it not be |first=A. C.?) in Bombing of Berlin in World War II:
and this in Strategic bombing during World War II:
Note that every one of these three is different! For the same edition.
You also reverted this:
to this in Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
And I wasn’t finished. Various editions/versions/translations of this book are used on 39 English Wikipedia articles ... at the moment. I note you’ve left my changes on these 10 articles:
Currently, {{cite Q}} is used in about 62,000 articles. After all, it is a legitimate citing template.
Finally, how do you and I work together going forward? Do you have a list of Wikipedia articles where you’re forbidding use of {{cite Q}} to present a more complete citation to the exact same edition/version/translation they do now while also being shared with every other Wikipedia article that uses that exact same edition/version/translation? Because my goal here is to improve citing in Wikipedia, and my efforts currently are basically research (including this very conversation with you) for possibly creating tools to help with that. Elrondil (talk) 11:11, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

George Seddon

Please note that you have linked to this person from a few articles, but the link points to a disambiguation page. Can you please go back and fix that? Schwede66 03:17, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@Schwede66: Oops. Apologies. Yes, will fix. Elrondil (talk) 03:20, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
@Schwede66: Done. Elrondil (talk) 04:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
Good work! Schwede66 05:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Ariovistus

Thanks for the citation clean-up work on the Ariovistus page you've thus far conducted. Ausgezeichnet! Obenritter (talk) 18:12, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

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ITN recognition for Greenland crisis

On 19 January 2026, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Greenland crisis, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:26, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Reason section

The |reason= section in {{Duplicated citations}} would be worth adding to clarify what types of sources are duplicated. I didn't know that there were still duplicated citations in Jesuits and Nazi Germany page, and I don't know how to consolidate citations that involve multiple page numbers. That stuff is too hard for me at the moment. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 17:41, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

@Qwertyxp2000: You can use {{rp}} or {{sfnp}}/{{sfn}}. Because page numbers weren't inlined before, I went the {{sfnp}} way for Lapomarda and Shirer, which are two examples for merging duplicates in this article. To untangle explanatory footnotes from citations and enable merging of duplicates, use {{efn}} and {{harvb}} with {{sfnp}}/{{sfn}}; see Demagogue § Notes for examples. Elrondil (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi Elrondil. I'm looking for experienced editors to contribute here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:21, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Perth Montessori School

Nobody has fixed the issues with this article. Do you want to send it to WP:AFD? Bearian (talk) 00:56, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@Bearian: I'm not sure. I don't like deleting. But it's also been a year. What do you think? Elrondil (talk) 01:13, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
I think it should come up for discussion. Both mergers and deletions are now being handled at AfD. Bearian (talk) 01:16, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Tonnage

I had hoped to find the source that stated that (applied to historical situations):
"If someone said that they fully understood the measurement of a ship's cargo carrying capacity in tons, then they probably knew less than someone who did not make that claim."

Instead, I'll have to make do with:
"The subject of tonnage measurement has always been productive of argument among those dealing with it, and the most casual inquiry into maritime records will show how frequently the figures given by equally authoritative sources for the same ship will differ in detail for no apparent reason." (Salisbury, William (January 1966). "EARLY TONNAGE MEASUREMENT IN ENGLAND". The Mariner's Mirror. 52 (1): 41–51. doi:10.1080/00253359.1966.10659309.)

I am just trying to make the encouraging point that ships' tonnage is, for any historical subject, a bit of an uncertain number. It might have been clear to those using it at the time (though the cited source given above tells of a ship captain who claimed a certain tonnage and the authorities insisted on checking it by loading casks of a known volume), but any absolute clarity disappears over time. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 08:27, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired: Since it isn’t then known what these 300 tons are, is there any value in it being said at all? Can the 300 ton bit be dropped … the important thing in this context is the contrast to Indiamen … does it matter here where the threshold between yacht and Indiamen is? Elrondil (talk) 09:09, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
@ThoughtIdRetired: So maybe the efn should say:
The word yacht is used in the VOC sense of a small ship, to differentiate them from the larger vessels generally thought of as Indiamen. Elrondil (talk) 09:15, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
The historians and archaeologists in the subject all use tonnages, and we have to be guided by that. I think the key point is that these are an indication of size, not an exact measure. As long as the measurements are from broadly the same system, we should be OK. In this case we have the figure for Vergulde Draeck and the larger Indiamen coming from the same maritime archaeologist who, almost certainly, sourced them from the original VOC records, though, as already stated, I don't know if that is by converting from lasten or by doing the calculations from length, beam and depth of hold. (That's the arithmetic that would have been done by the VOC when these ships were in use.) It doesn't matter because the reader can judge the proportions between the types of ships for themselves (probably without consciously doing the arithmetic). The relative sizes are what is key, and the tonnage is the best way of showing this. (Hull length, even if always expressed as the same version of that measure, would not assist, particularly with VOC ships, as the length-to-breadth ratio changed somewhat over time.)
Without a tonnage measurement, the reader has no comparison with other sources on VOC ships, so we would be doing them a disservice. A knowledgeable reader will be aware of the risks of comparisons, and a more general reader will get a reasonably useful approximation. Particularly within Wikipedia, the reader might want to compare this yacht with Duyfken (oh no, that's another article where an editor has added a conversion to a weight!!). The paper by Nick Burningham, who designed the Duyfken replica, is useful for giving a feel as to how one person who works with this sort of data deals with it:. That's where you can find the arithmetic I referred to above, including the magic adjustment factor for when your measurements are in Amsterdam feet. I, and perhaps Nick, are possibly over-pessimistic about the accuracy of this tonnage system, as it had to be robust enough for the Sound Tolls (another deficient article: this time references). (The Dutch were major traders into the Baltic.)
There are lots of other problems with tonnage, but without relevance to this article, as most issues are later on, as systems of measurement changed.
My original comment was following changing tons (weight) to tons (notional volume). ThoughtIdRetired TIR 10:51, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
Incidentally, I've had a bit of a go at sorting out Duyfken, mostly focused on using the estimated figures for the original ship rather than the replica (the article's main content is about the original vessel). Sound Tolls would require a substantial reading effort in sources that I do not have to hand. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 20:18, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
@ThoughtIdRetired: Thank you 😃. I don't have an issue with uncertainty, the handling of which (along multiple dimensions) I think this fundamentally boils down to, and I want to let what you've said sink in … AND let the changes you've made settle. I also accept and respect that SMEs in this space have long-established conventions and methods.
At the same time, these SMEs are not writing an encyclopaedia for the broadest of audiences: we are and our readers aren't SMEs. When we state quantities of "ton" and "lasten" in Wikipedia there has to be a meaningful purpose. If there isn't, why state these quantities at all? Implicitly conveying our sense of uncertainty by removing explanation of what these quantities actually mean or even just could mean, thereby letting our readers wonder and thereby implicitly also instilling a sense of uncertainty in them: can we be sure the uncertainty we've instilled thusly is about the quantities rather than our (all too often poor and incomplete) writing or, worse, our readers' perception of their ability to comprehend (often attempted in time-poor and rushed settings that SMEs have usually forgotten) our writing? Can we do better, for example by stating (without being repetitive, verbose or boring) our uncertainty plainly so our readers end up with the exact same uncertainty we seem to want to convey? I don't know ThoughtIdRetired; I like clear and concise expression, and when I read "40 lasten" I want a sense of what that is, or could be, conveyed by someone that respects my time 😃. The computations now removed from Duyfken … someone trying to get a sense of "40 lasten" would make those, and if "we" know that to be incorrect "we" ought to somehow lead them to the correct path, efficiently, reliably, quickly. Elrondil (talk) 01:00, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
@ThoughtIdRetired: Please be assured that I hear you, and don't feel I have a better concrete approach than you seem to have. As I said, I need to let it sink in. Elrondil (talk) 03:52, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Just to explain my thinking on the boundary between writing for a subject matter expert and someone with no particular knowledge:
(1) We always have to accommodate the person who arrives at an article with limited background knowledge.
(2) It is reasonable to presume that some of those with limited knowledge will seek out more on a subject. So, as they go to other sources outside Wikipedia or other more detailed articles in Wikipedia, it is our job to ensure that they are reasonably equipped to make that further step. Hence, we do them no favours by avoiding specialist terminology.
(3) But an article should always try to be accessible to a reader who arrives here as their end point.
(4) I believe that the majority of readers in (3), if not all, have the capability to skip over pieces of information that are in greater depth than they understand or wish to study.
(5) We have to accept that there will always be articles within Wikipedia that are of greater complexity or detail than we personally can handle. Some of them can be rewritten to be more user-friendly without losing the key technical aspects. For instance, Normal distribution dives straight into "maths speak" without giving a simple explanation of what it is and how it is relevant.
(6) When a subject matter expert visits an article (and that does happen), the last thing Wikipedia needs is them going away thinking that it has been poorly covered. The best compliment is if they think it is a reasonable summary of the subject. The worst bit of PR for this project is if they feel it oversimplifies and dumbs down, or is even just plain wrong, because they will probably express that opinion.
(7) It is reasonable to presume that many of those visiting an article have some background knowledge that causes them to be here in the first place. For instance, would you expect someone with no interest in horses to end up at American Quarter Horse? Incidentally, American Quarter Horse ably handles general aspects alongside details of interest only to an enthusiast, assisted by a good article structure.

Sorry to ramble on so long on the subject. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 08:29, 28 May 2026 (UTC)