User talk:SchroCat: Difference between revisions

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I’ll just have to settle for writing good articles, or as I prefer to call them, decent articles. There’s still plenty of articles that can be improved to that level. [[User:Ritchie333|Ritchie333]] [[User talk:Ritchie333|(talk)]] [[Special:Contributions/Ritchie333|(cont)]] 14:49, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

:Hi [[User:Ritchie333|Ritchie]], There’s nothing wrong with avoiding FA to write decent articles, whether taken to GA or just as a decent article. It’s a more efficient way to deliver content across multiple articles too, given you avoid the long slow review processes involved.{{pb}}If you ”still” want to go through FAC, however, and if having hard copies of the books is the bar to cracking it, you can always [https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Project_grants get the UK Wikimedia chapter to cough up]. I’ve got them to pay for an expensive book before, and I think I’m right in saying [[User:HJ Mitchell|Harry Mitchell]] got them to provide a number of the books he has used for the war memorial FAs. You definitely need the source books to hand to get through FAC, particularly the first one because of the spot checks. Once you’ve got the first one through, it does get easier. – [[User:SchroCat|SchroCat]] ([[User talk:SchroCat#top|talk]]) 18:29, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

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“doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue” Charles Darwin
“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience” Jean Cocteau

This user is aware of the designation of the following topics as contentious topics:

discussions about infoboxes, and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes
the Troubles

They should not be given alerts for those areas.

To any friendly talk page watchers, I have:

If there is anyone who fancies commenting, I would be grateful. Cheers – SchroCat (talk)

You reverted my edit to the Emily Davison article, saying “It was perfectly appropriate before. Rather than edit warring, use the talk page.” I didn’t participate in an edit war; but your reversion of my legitimate edit could be viewed in that light. You did not use the talk page as a means of resolving what you saw as an issue, but I am doing just that.

Before making the edit in question, I carefully reviewed the Wikipedia Manual of Style content that I referenced in my edit summary when applying my edit, in good faith. If there was some sort of edit war going on prior to that, I was unaware of it.

In reverting my valid and legitimate edit, you said, “It was perfectly appropriate before.” That’s not actually the case according to MOS:RANGE which (for this use case) states, “when either or both elements of the range include at least one space, hyphen, or en dash; in such cases, {{snd}} between them will provide the proper formatting.” WP specifically states that the proper formatting is attained by to using {{snd}}. It does not offer as an appropriate alternative. While it may be true that appears equivalent to the naked eye, that does not rise to the level of “perfectly appropriate” in terms of wikitext syntax recommended by WP in MOS:RANGE.

Further, WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM encourages editors to make proactive changes where they appear warranted, which specifically includes wikitext and formatting. WP:EPTALK further elaborates, “Be bold in updating articles, especially for minor changes, fixing problems, and changes that you believe are unlikely to be controversial. Previous authors do not need to be consulted before making changes.” As such, my minor and unlikely to be controversial edit to bring the wikitext syntax into compliance with the proscribed WP styling was legitimate, in accordance with WP policies, and guidelines and resulted in the article being at least as good as it was prior to my edit, and arguably an improvement as it more accurately adhered to the standards set forth in MOS:RANGE. Please revert your reversion, or provide additional insight that may justify continued deviation from the WP standards and policies upon which my edit was founded. My thanks ahead of time in either case. ShoneBrooks (talk) 13:38, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“I didn’t participate in an edit war; but your reversion of my legitimate edit could be viewed in that light“: nonsense. See WP:BRD and take on board that you made a Bold edit; I Reverted it; you then needed to Discuss it, not edit war: your revert was edit warring, however you cut it.As to the rest of your overlong nonsense, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the format “11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913”: it is used (correctly) in thousands of articles and doesn’t need to be changed based on your personal whim. It was good enough to pass like that when it went through PR and FAC and doesn’t need a ridiculous change that makes no difference whatsoever. Time to move on and do something useful, rather than dick around with pointless nonsense. The MOS is a flexible set of guidelines, not the ten commandments or something to be fetishised and worshipped. – SchroCat (talk) 13:54, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I don’t understand why your Mountbatten FAC still hasn’t been promoted. MisawaSakura (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No idea, but hey ho… I’m in no rush. – SchroCat (talk) 19:54, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s good to hear but have been wondering the same thing for weeks. No article is perfectly perfect. Ceoil (talk) 00:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s been at the ‘if I were writing it, this is how I would have phrased it’ stage of comments for a while now, so I don’t know why it hasn’t been promoted. It’s an easy one to promote and slim down the overlong FAC list. – SchroCat (talk) 04:09, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think I’m going to have to sadly resign myself to the fact I’m never going to have time to try and write an FA again. The last one, Marshlink line was a good effort, but failed because when I went to the local library where I’d got the original books out to source from, I discovered half of them had disappeared because the library facilities had been downsized. And while I’d like to see the gold star on, for example, St Pancras railway station, I can’t bring myself to go through the 18 book references in the article (most of which are, again, from the library and not owned by me), fact check everything they cite, add in any further missing information from books (I’ve seen at least one, possibly two books entirely dedicated to St Pancras that absolutely have to be used to meet FA criteria 1c) and ensure I’ve got them all to hand when spot checks come up at FAC (which they should do, absolutely). So I’m a bit up the creek without a paddle.

I’ll just have to settle for writing good articles, or as I prefer to call them, decent articles. There’s still plenty of articles that can be improved to that level. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 14:49, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ritchie, There’s nothing wrong with avoiding FA to write decent articles, whether taken to GA or just as a decent article. It’s a more efficient way to deliver content across multiple articles too, given you avoid the long slow review processes involved.If you still want to go through FAC, however, and if having hard copies of the books is the bar to cracking it, you can always get the UK Wikimedia chapter to cough up. I’ve got them to pay for an expensive book before, and I think I’m right in saying Harry Mitchell got them to provide a number of the books he has used for the war memorial FAs. You definitely need the source books to hand to get through FAC, particularly the first one because of the spot checks. Once you’ve got the first one through, it does get easier. – SchroCat (talk) 18:29, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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