User talk:Ian (Wiki Ed)

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Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Adding welcome templates to talk pages that already have them

Hello, might I ask why you add welcome templates to user talk pages which already have them? Electricmemory (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Electricmemory. For students who are participating in one of the classes I'm supporting, I use the welcome template to introduce myself and share some links that are specific to student editors we're supporting. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:06, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ian (Wiki Ed) Gotcha. What template are you using for that? Electricmemory (talk) 21:11, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{Dashboard.wikiedu.org welcome}} Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:26, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Archive glitch?

Hi, Ian. Looks like you recently archived a bunch of stuff to Archive 23, and then immediately deleted it. Was that a glitch of some sort? Mathglot (talk) 07:04, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for looking out for me @Mathglot! I moved it to Archive 23 and then remembered that I have decided to keep my archives as full academic years and moved it to Archive 22 instead. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:27, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! There is method to your, er, umm, glitch...

Mathglot (talk) 20:31, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You do know that you can name your archives by year name, like Archive 2023 and so on, right, and the {{Archives}} template will recognize and display them? (lots of examples; even year ranges, like here). You could either keep the old, integer names for your legacy archives, and switch to the new calendar-year names starting this year and going forward, or you could re-jigger all your existing archives, moving stuff around into Archives 2014, 2015, ... 2025 if you want. Lmk if you want a hand with that.

Some points to keep in mind: the {{Talk header}} template (which you have on your Talk page now) knows about archives named 1, 2, 3, ... N and can display them automatically in the Archives section of the Talk header banner, but doesn't know about ones named by year; on the other hand, the {{Archives}} template can handle both styles. If you prefer the Talk header banner style, there is a workaround which might work for you: if you rejigger all your archives to name them by year, and then redirect Archive_1 to 2014, Archive_2 to 2015, ... and Archive_12 to 2025; then it will work, although you won't see the years named in the Talk page header. (That said, the TP header should probably be upgraded to handle years as well, but that is unlikely to happen soon.) HTH, Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disastrous student

Hi Ian, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. A student in early 2024 increased Dendroctonus micans from some 6k in length to some 20k, in 14 new chapters (yes, each one was about 1k including refs) ... without adding anything at all useful. Every single section consisted entirely of vague waffle such as a really poor student who'd not revised for exams might write (along the lines that ecological factors can be significant, and competing for mates might help the survival of the species, all that sort of guff). I've gone through it, and basically deleted all of it. This clearly was a student who needed some sort of help and for whatever reason didn't get it; and the encyclopedia has been displaying an article that was 70% rubbish for over a year. I'd hope we could do better than this really. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:11, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unsurprisingly it scores as very likely AI. Ugh. Thanks for cleaning it up @Chiswick Chap. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:24, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:33, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Need help request from RolliePollie8 (talk)

Hello.

I am wondering what is the difference in citations that place dates in parentheses and citations that do not place the dates in parentheses. Is it a matter of the difference between the publication date and the date of the writing? I'm getting kind of confused looking at these two examples:

"Luke, Learie. 2007. Identity and secession in the Caribbean: Tobago versus Trinidad, 1889–1980 Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press." "Baker, William J.; Dransfield, John (2016). "Beyond Genera Palmarum: progress and prospects in palm systematics". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society."

--RolliePollie8 (talk) 17:40, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RolliePollie8 There's no difference - it's just different citation styles.

Thanks for pointing this out - I need to fix this. Although Wikipedia allows different citation styles, it's confusing. And no one has raised this in years, so who knows how many people I've confused who were just hesitant to "bother" me about this. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]