User talk:HouseOfChange

Does WQ need to become more NPOV?

Hi HouseOfChange,

I see you are very intent on making WQ more NPOV. I think this is commendable, just wondering if the way you are going about it is going to produce the desired effect.

WQ just as ENWP has far more contributors from the United States than contributors from other countries. How do I know that? I must admit I have come to this conclusion through my own personal experience (I wish there was a better way to establish this). As an example, I added a small quote today to France because their presidental elections will take place very soon. Since the quote I added referred to their presidential debate, I did a search on the term which is mentioned on quite a few pages (not sure how many?), but in my limited search I discovered that the term is always used in reference to an election in the United States.

I don’t want to turn this post into a tldr, just wondering if you see somethiing different than what I am seeing. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:47, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Ottawhitech: for asking about my goal. It is not at all as big as changing WQ. Instead, I stumbled across some articles that had been heavily edited by one person over several years, so with Antandrus I made a public list of them at WQ:AN and started trying to go through those articles, putting italics on the ones I already looked at and (I hope) improved.

Today I am laid low by COVID so not doing much. (I'm all vaccinated and boosted so it just feels like a bad cold, but I am very tired.)

Maybe the short answer is I am trying like everybody else to improve one article at a time, but a lot of the articles on my list have the same kinds of not-following-WQ-policy problems.

The work I like better to do here is adding interesting quotations by notable people that we don't have yet. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:52, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry to heat about your COVID situation. I suspect this disease is afflicting many of our wmf-troops. I think something like 25% of the American population has had it at some point, some asymptomatically.

As far as Antandrus is concerned I have been trying for a while to get them to get into the trenches to do some manual labour. Maybe I'll succeed one day. Just kidding. Get well soon, Ottawahitech (talk) 23:38, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Ha ha. :) (Doesn't bother me, don't worry.) I consider my anti-troll, anti-POV, anti-stalker, and anti-vandalism work to be "digging in the trenches", but maybe to others this kind of work is unimportant? Or maybe not; I never know what other people are thinking. Adding quotes is fun, and I'd much rather do that, if only the deranged and obsessed would go away. But they won't because it is not in the nature of human derangement and obsession to go away.

HoC, hope you feel better soon. Covid has hit hard where I live (central California) and I know a lot of people who have had it. I wish it would go away. I miss going to concerts and things. Antandrus (talk) 23:45, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Pages to create

Here are some pages I created at Wikiquote:

• Mae Jemison: Black woman engineer, physician, astronaut
• Anna Reid: Journalist and author with focus on Eastern Europe
• Maria Ressa: Journalist co-winner of 2021 Nobel Peace Prize
• Robert D. Bullard: Black professor and activist known as "father of environmental justice"

Here are some pages I created or would like to create for notable people whose words I've admired:

• Naomi Novik: Author and fan-fiction activist
• Linda Buck: Scientist co-winner of 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine
• Ig Nobel Prize

Those are some goals for the future. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:40, 25 May 2022 (UTC) (updated 15 December 2023)

I want to create more pages based on recent news articles that report interesting quotes. For example:

• Nandini Jammi quoted in WaPo, has en-wiki article.
• Adam Grant aka w:Adam Grant whose Twitter account includes lots of interesting quotes
• Helen Potter impersonator active in the late nineteenth century
• Kate Douglas Wiggin author of A Child's Journey with Dickens and of some lovely hilarious quotes
• I will extend this list eventually, updating my sig as I do so. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

• updated adding Adam Grant HouseOfChange (talk) 02:34, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• updated adding Helen Potter HouseOfChange (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
• update, I have moved the list to my User page and will stop updating it here. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Comment about one of the pages I created, deserves its own section

Hi HouseOfChange, I see that one of the 5 pages you have created on WQ is Ig Nobel Prize. Are you aware this page may be offensive to readers who speak Igbo? Just curious. Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The name is is a pun on the English word "ignoble." If the prize (started in 1991) and Wikipedia article about it (started in 2001) created no offense to speakers of Igbo, I don't see why this Wikiquote page would be controversial. Cheers. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:01, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@HouseOfChange: Just to let you know I have posted a note at Talk:Ig Nobel Prize#Discussion with page creator to see how readers of of that page view your comment above. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Just a thought

While there is indeed a lot of off-topic dross in Wikiquote, you are being quite agressive in removing quotes that could arguably be included somewhere. I would suggest that rather than merely deleting them, you should move them to the respective talk pages of the pages you are working on (unless they are clearly by speakers with no plausible claim to notability). Some of them, readers might decide to keep, perhaps trimmed to a degree. Some of them might fit well into other pages. BD2412 T 07:14, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

That is a great idea! Thanks @BD2412: for the suggestion! It will preserve the material for other editors to give an opinion while making the article itself more readable/useful to readers. I created the talk page archive for several articles where I had previously removed many quotes: Mutual assured destruction, Big lie, Honduras, War crimes, and Hysteria. I also did the same on a few sock-linked articles I first looked at today, but in none of these were the removals so extensive: Cowardice, Colonialism, and Nuclear power. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:11, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Postscript. I did not create quote-page archives for ALL of the articles I had edited before getting this message on April 26, although I did create such archives for some. Going forward, however, I did create talk-page archives whenever I did extensive editing. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Admin accountability poll

Admin accountability poll is open, vote here. – Ilovemydoodle (talk / e-mail) 10:05, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

RfC

I am looking for your opinion on this discussion. – Ilovemydoodle (Not WMF, Not a sockpuppet of Antandrus, Not a paid editor of Shueisha) (talk / e-mail) 18:03, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Ilovemydoodle: I have no opinion about it. The same is true for the administrator review discussion. I admire your energy and enthusiasm; my energy level is low enough that I save it for matters where I think I can make contributions of some value. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:08, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay. – Ilovemydoodle (Not WMF, Not a sockpuppet of Antandrus, Not a paid editor of Shueisha) (talk / e-mail) 18:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

QOTD

You had recently inquired about posting QOTD suggestions; though several previous formats are acceptable, and some pages have no recent postings, currently most are posted on the various suggestion pages in the format presented below (in the editing pane it displays more clearly than it does in this section's reading display in "nowiki" formatting):

{{quote of the day | quote = | author = }} * [ranking 0-4 with signature tildes]

I hope this comment is helpful to you. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 14:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

fyi

Hi HouseOfChange: fyi Talk:Antisemitism#removed quote Ottawahitech (talk) 03:51, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Ottowahitech: Thanks for the heads up. That talk page is on my watchlist. IMO that quotation I removed in 2022 falls outside WQ guidelines of notable/quotable, but a consensus opinion otherwise would be decisive. HouseOfChange (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Quote removal on Health

Just a question: your rationale for removing a quote on the Health page was to "see Talk page" ([1]). To what were you referring? I'm not trying to judge whether or not the removal was correct, but rather just trying to understand the logic behind it. Can you clarify? Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 17:54, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@UDScott Sorry, I started drafting my reasons for the article talk page, but I will try to go a little faster. Maybe next time I should write up the talk page entry before removing the quote. There, finally hit post: https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AHealth&diff=3437249&oldid=3432369. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Copying and pasting that link above so nobody needs to hunt for it.

Subject: Long-winded expressions of opinion that nobody is likely to quote are not, in fact, quotable quotes.

Text: I just removed this recently-added quote, doubting anyone would "quote" this pompous non-expert:

Before my birth it was understood that vitamin C fixes scurvy and vitamin D rickets. Prior to the 20th Century, we already had vaccines for smallpox, cholera, anthrax, and rabies. The 1920s saw insulin, penicillin, and vaccines for Diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and tetanus. In later years, we got vaccines for Yellow Fever, Polio, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Since my birth, we’ve seen vaccines for chicken pox, Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, Lyme disease, rotavirus, and possibly malaria and ebola this year. Obviously we have not stopped the march, and that’s encouraging. But consider that the amount of funding poured into medical research has skyrocketed in my lifetime, so that the progress per dollar spent surely is going down. The easy battles were fought first, naturally. Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, and a raft of other pernicious diseases resist cures despite large continuing investments. Thomas W. Murphy, "You Call This Progress?" (September 16, 2015)

Also, stating my own POV, it seems stupid post-COVID to assume that medicine's only future job is fixing problems known in 2015. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:09, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. I just was trying to follow the train of thought and part of it was missing (I was a bit quick with my question too!). I don't feel strongly one way or the other about this quote - just wanted to understand the logic for its removal. Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 18:18, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@UDScott It was a completely legitimate question. I am grateful for the time you give to this project, and impressed by your tactful way of raising questions. I was perhaps a little hyper-vigilant because the quote was posted by an IP similar to (tho not the same as) an IP that previously posted several not-notable-not-quotable anti-vax claims to Health and Cancer articles. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations, you are now an administrator on English Wikiquote

Remember, with great power, there must also come great responsibility. BD2412 T 19:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I will do my best to live up to your trust. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations and welcome aboard! Great to have you as part of the team. Best of luck. ~ UDScott (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind welcome. My start is slow as I struggle to cram clothes and papers and tech gear into 1 suitcase for a monthlong work trip. But I anticipate more free time once I land. Any essays or other advice you recommend for a new admin? Hoping to look intelligent, I have printed out a bunch of new-admin-relevant pages from WQ and WP to read on the plane. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Hokus-pokus VFD

Hi HouseOfChange: just to let you know I have mentioned you on User_talk:Lemonaka#Hokus-pokus VFD. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

The software notified me that you had linked my name there describing me as an en-wiki admin who started a VfD where you were one of two !votes to keep the article. I became an admin on February 7, 2024, so in December, 2023, that VfD nomination was made by me but not by a sysop. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

FYI

See Wikiquote:Administrators' noticeboard#User:HouseOfChange to which you are welcome to contribute. Philip Cross (talk) 21:01, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

A soldier's Embrace‎

Thanks for jumping in on this page (having a hard time keeping up with the inflow of similar pages that should instead be additions to author pages) - much appreciated. But just a question: I saw that you made the page a redirect to the author's page, but I didn't see that any of the quotes that were originally there had been moved to the author's page. Were you still intending to do this step as well? Thanks. ~ UDScott (talk) 20:04, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I am trying to reduce the pile-up at Category:Articles_to_be_merged, postponing tricky cases to work on obvious ones. I usually do move quotes with a merge. In this article, however, the summary by the page creator was wildly inaccurate. This made me feel that any quotes s/he had provided might also not be authentic. Any advice? Or of course, make any changes you want. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:22, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, understood. Fair enough. Although I think in these recent cases it's more a case of users not really understanding how to construct pages here than it is that the quotes are not genuine. ~ UDScott (talk) 00:11, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

About Mizanur Rahman Azhari

Hello, I have contacted a bnwiki-based steward about this matter (Special:Diff/3558892). I guess they know better about this. Please wait for their reply. Thank you for your responses. MathXplore (talk) 13:44, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. From my brief research, Azhari is a controversial but charismatic figure, so it seems possible both that he may eventually get enough RS coverage to become notable (even if 2001 2021 was TOOSOON) and that someone other than an LTA might try to create an article about him. But I gladly wait for better opinions! HouseOfChange (talk) 03:42, 7 August 2024 (UTC) (updated fixing date typo above) HouseOfChange (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

IP Hopper problem

The IP hopper who was vandalizing News Of The World and The Father (2020 film) you blocked just recently came back. Sure wish there was page protection request tool just like Wikipedia. - FilmandTVFan28 (talk) 01:15, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia mailing lists

I wasn't sure if you were still looking at my talk page after a week of no activity, so I thought it better to bring this here to you as I had a question about the mailing lists and which websites they actually pertain to. These mailing lists are specifically for Wikipedia correct, or do they apply to all of the sister/satellite projects as well? The only things I have read concerning a gender gap seem to be specific to Wikipedia, I have never seen any other Wikimedia Foundation project get mentioned in articles addressing this issue, even though it would be only a brief additional question to ask people. I suspect part of the reason is that most of the people who answer these user demographic polls don't actually use most of the sister/satellite Wikis, and that pointing that out with official statistics does not help to combat their reputations of being largely unpopulated and of little interest to the Wikipedia user community, rather such polling further reinforces it.
If there is a gender gap here as well, then given the much smaller user base of Wikiquote, I'm sure you could effectively solve that problem with an influx of less than a hundred new editors, equivalent to three classrooms worth of students being assigned editing here as homework. As someone who has edited Wikipedia as a class assignment before at university and has seen Wikipedia advertised in the halls, I don't think it's a lack of exposure or of collaboration with learning institutions that's the problem, so sinking more money into those avenues is going to continue to be ineffective. The problem is in retention not recruitment. As I have said before, I don't even know if there is a gender gap on Wikiquote because there's no research on it, but if there is than you would think whatever methods we use to solve it here could be replicated on Wikipedia on a much larger scale. If it can't be solved here on the small scale than why does it make any sense economically to invest in untested methods to solve it there on a much larger scale? That's not normally how scientific studies work, you start with a smaller population than scale up, but because advertising to a larger audience takes precedence it's being done the other way around. It feels more like a PR stunt than an actual attempt to solve the problem by testing a variety of different approaches and seeing what changes are effective. CensoredScribe (talk) 20:07, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

If you have a question about gender imbalance on any MediaWiki project, then I suggest posting it to the people who follow MediaWiki's Gendergap mailing list. That's a much bigger and more expert group than you can find here in WQ. My only connection to equity issues like gender, here or elsewhere, is to be alert for notable members of underrepresented groups who could get articles made or improved. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:08, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Does this group's purpose apply to Wikiquote? Yes or no? I'm not interested in helping Wikipedia build a better encyclopedia, or the Wikimedia Foundation in whatever it is they do, just Wikiquote, because the community here has yet to indefinitely ban me and I know what it is they do. Wikipedia clearly doesn't want my help or else they'd reconsider the ban after almost a decade of helping Wikiquote. CensoredScribe (talk) 23:32, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Per the summary here, they focus on "gender equity and exploring ways to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects," which would include WQ. The mailing lists in general are not "top-down" announcements by Wikimedia staff, but instead are expressions of interest or questions or project announcements, etc. by folks who are interested enough in the topic to subscribe to said list. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:26, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I might check it out it is decentralized and not just a newsletter to espouse "concepts of plans" from the higherups, but I don't really have any ideas on how to fix the issue and I doubt anyone else does either. Celebrity endorsements maybe? CensoredScribe (talk) 01:53, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Finding a clever way to fix "diversity" or any other big problem is unlikely. I'm content to work on trying to make wikiprojects better, one small change at a time. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:28, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Celebrity endorsements are just a way of using up an advertising budget and making us feel like we made an attempt, it's more sympathetic magic than an actual solution. Although I stand by what I have been saying to Ottawahitech, a high budget music video with millions of views on Youtube would certainly start some conversations among people who might not otherwise be interested in Wikis. My first choice is still Megan Thee Stallion, I don't really care whether or not she dresses up as Wikiquote-tan or what imagery the video uses as long as it's not age restricted or boring. My concern is that making a music video about a website that is mostly text is going to be difficult and anyone who is actually willing to take the financial risk and help us out by doing such a thing could use some help from us as well.
A much more effective way of increasing the number of Wikiquote users would be for Google to list us on the front page like they do with Wikipedia. As far as the gender gap, I believe that mostly has to do with doxxing and Section 230. CensoredScribe (talk) 20:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Google promotes Wikipedia results because they are overwhelmingly what people are looking for when they search for a topic. If you add the term "quotes" to your search ("Stephen Vincent Benet quotes" for example), Wikiquote does quite well in Google rankings. HouseOfChange (talk) 21:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)