User talk:JMF

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Tag: Manual revert

Hello. Some odd and silly thing just happened: I edited an article (changed a letter's case), and it for some reason was labeled as "Manual revert" (while I'm not reverted anything). So I checked the article's history, and it turned out that you just recently reverted the very same edit of unrelated TA, that I'm was unaware of. As it definitely looks weirdly suspicious in a sequence, I dared to write about it. If my edit is also wrong, I could revert it, but could you explain why it is an error there (capitalized "It" in the middle of sentence)? It was added here, looks like a genuine error. ~2026-42057-37 (talk) 00:16, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-42057-37: That's odd. What I saw (or more precisely, thought I saw), was a comma - not a full stop - preceding the letter. Sorry 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

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Infobox help

I saw you were trying to build an Infobox... One of the few areas of the wiki I am VERY familiar with. Happy to help if I can? What's the topic? Give me the rundown! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:00, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

And I thought you liked to steer clear of flame wars! . I think my stone soup is almost ready to serve but see Talk:January 1 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)#Pending edit war over a very strange opening sentence and in particular Talk:January 1 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)#Suggested solution: an infobox. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:13, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Your thread has been archived

Hello JMF! The thread you created at the Teahouse, Is there a page for advice on how to construct an infobox template?, has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still read the archived discussion. If you have follow-up questions, please . See also the help page about the archival process. The archival was done by lowercase sigmabot III, and this notification was delivered by KiranBOT, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=KiranBOT}} on top of the current page (your user talk page). —KiranBOT (talk) 03:04, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

ART/MK

Thanks for your clean up of the Milton Keynes public art article, I dream of a proper list of works, but other than ART UK have struggled to find a definitive list. It would be a great project for the next few years! I've recently uploaded a few from a recent trip to MK. No Swan So Fine (talk) 19:45, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

The Parks Trust page I put in External Links has a good selection. Of course they won't have the two young women outside the library or Frink's Black Horse outside Lloyds Bank. So yes, a real labour of love for someone. The challenge will be to demonstrate notability by external references. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

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Note

Please note that the current consensus is not to change Kiev to Kyiv in historical contexts. Thanks. Mellk (talk) 19:48, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

hyphens

Sadly, they've done lots of science-fiction changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Amakuru Vicarage (talk) 16:37, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

@Vicarage: Let's let the discussion play out at Talk:Science fiction convention#hyphen first. It can be counter-productive to get into a move/revert war.

Meanwhile, the best approach is to leave an invitation at every affected SF talk page to contribute to the discussion. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2026 (UTC) edited to clarify that I mean affected articles only. -- 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:48, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I plan to do nothing, I focus on Wikidata now. Glad you've taken this up. Vicarage (talk) 17:21, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

Just a small thanks for being so easygoing at the RM - I hope you don't take offense in me cutting to the chase with the close but I've just seen countless examples at which something like this can drag out for months... Anyways have a great day, Squawk7700 (talk) 22:18, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

@Squawk7700: It wasn't difficult - two sections with the same name is just asking for trouble in the normal course of events. It must play merry hell with any automatic processing. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:27, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Old Style and New Style conversions

A few weeks ago you recommended I work on these, and today I was bored so I did:

• Template:New Style to Old Style (Russian)
• Template:Old Style to New Style (Russian)
• Template:New Style to Old Style (British)
• Template:Old Style to New Style (British)

What do you think? 🎸平沢唯は俺の嫁🐱 (talk | contribs | Yui shrine) 09:30, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

@ILoveHirasawaYui: You are a hero (and a sucker for a hard-luck story )!

This is great, but the 'British' version hits the dreaded start of year problem. You have handled it "according to the book", but most people don't. My first test was with Robert Hooke and here is the footnote I wrote there:

These dates are according to the Julian calendar, which was still in use in England at the time. His date of death raises an additional complication: formally the civil year began on 25 March although common practice then as now was to start the year on 1 January. Thus his legal date of death was 3 March 1702 but was 3 March 1703 according to common usage and as shown here. According to the dual dating practice at the time it would have been recorded in church records as 3 March 170⁠2/3⁠. Wikipedia follows the convention adopted by most modern historical writing of retaining the dates according to the Julian calendar but taking the year as starting on 1 January rather than 25 March. (According to the Gregorian calendar that was used in most of Europe, he was born on 28 July 1635 and died on 14 March 1703. The deviation between the calendars grew from ten to eleven days between his birth and his death because the Julian calendar had a 29 February 1700 but the Gregorian calendar did not. For a more detailed explanation, see Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.

• Using {{Old Style to New Style (British)}}, 3 March 1702 [N.S. 14 March 1703] was his correct legal date of death and the conversion is spot on.
• Using {{Old Style to New Style (British)}}, 3 March 1703 [N.S. 14 March 1704] was not his date of death as conventionally recorded and the conversion is spot off.
• Using {{Old Style to New Style (Russian)}}, 3 March [N.S. 14 March] 1703 was his date of death as conventionally recorded and the conversion is spot on.

So what to do? Would it make sense simply to change the name of the templates? So the current "(British)" would become "(British legal)" and current "(Russian)" would just drop the disambiguator? [That would mean that it would replace the current template - no tears shed there! but you would have to accept 3 March | 1703 as a valid alternative input (and discard the supplied manual conversion}.]

The same logic might apply to {{New Style to Old Style (British)}},

• Using {{New Style to Old Style (British)}} gives 14 March 1703 [O.S. 3 March 1702] which again is legally correct but unconventional. "(British legal)" would make it unambiguous.

If you accept my suggestion, the next stage will be to open it up for wider discussion because this topic is not really my field, I just fell into it in passong. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:21, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary, because if we're writing both the Old Style and New Style dates anyway, it doesn't make any sense for the Old Style date to use the conventional year instead of the legal one. People understand which exact date we're talking about because the Gregorian date is there, and the whole point of dual dating is to put both the Gregorian/conventional year and the legal one. Also, we'd run into the problem of when exactly the convention was for years to begin on 1 January.

But I do think it's a good idea to rename the templates to something else, which makes it clear that the only difference between them is the date of New Year's in the Old Style. Maybe "Gregorian to Julian"/"Julian to Gregorian" for Russian, and "British Old Style to New Style"/"New Style to British Old Style" for British. Funnily enough, I had my edit to Unification of Moldavia and Wallachia reverted because "there's nothing russian here". I didn't know how to explain that it's just a badly named template. 🎸平沢唯は俺の嫁🐱 (talk | contribs | Yui shrine) 21:55, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

I have to emphasise that the strict legal form (y/c 25 March) of an Old Style date is very rarely used when writing about historical events - and when it is, the author will take pains to make that clear, because it is unconventional. Thus, for most articles on Wikipedia, the type of conversion required for dates in British and American history is actually the one you have called "Russian". Equally, for some articles, the one you have called "British" is required and their editors will thank you for having created it.

It is for these reasons and following the precedent of PRIMARYTOPIC, I want to reiterate firmly my view that you should discard the disambiguator "Russian" from those pair of templates and qualify the pair you have called "British" as "Legal British".

I have an inkling of much time you must have spent on getting these templates working and I really appreciate that and thank you for having done so. But the real mark of success will be that editors start using them. Unfortunately your current choice of names is a significant obstacle to that happening. That eventuality would pain me as it would mean that I have wasted your good will on a fruitless exercise. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:07, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

You're right that the legal form of the Old Style was rarely used... on its own. But it was very commonly used in dual dating alongside the Gregorian calendar, which is exactly what the template is doing. Anyway, I've renamed the templates to these names, which will hopefully make their function unambigious:

• {{Gregorian to Julian}}
• {{Julian to Gregorian}}
• {{New Style to Annunciation Style}}
• {{Annunciation Style to New Style}}

🎸平沢唯は俺の嫁🐱 (talk | contribs | Yui shrine) 01:24, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote Equally, for some articles, the one you have called "British" is required and their editors will thank you for having created it. It is definitely needed. Your name has the benefit that "Annunciation style" was not just British (and not even strictly British as in "Great Britain" because Scotland stopped using it "after the last day of 1599").

So time for you to formally announce the release of the templates in new sections of the various existing OS2NS/NS2OS talk pages! 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:46, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

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Books & Bytes – Issue 76

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 76, July–August 2026

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 11:45, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

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Your comment on Solidus

You are wrong in your comment. When the long s was used, it was normally used at the beginning and at the middle of words, and the short s was used at the end of words. Burzuchius (talk) 20:04, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

@Burzuchius: To be more precise, never used as a capital letter. Either way, the claim was an unsourced conjecture and had to go. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:22, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

looptail and opentail g

I agree with your maintenance of the examples on G, though there are some outliers like Fira Sans that are sans-serif with a looptail glyph, and apparently a very small few that are serif with opentail glyphs (Google Fonts serif g). Perhaps using images as ⟨, ⟩ could be preferable to avoid any potential for confusion, regardless of fonts in use. ~ oklopfer (💬︎) 20:47, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Good idea, I'll try that. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 06:07, 29 September 2026 (UTC)