User talk:Modest Genius

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Hello, Modest Genius

I am working on a draft biography of geophysicist Alexander A. Kaufman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Alexander_Arkadyevich_Kaufman_(geophysicist)

The draft has gone through several AfC reviews, but the reviewers so far have not had a geophysics background, and some of the technical aspects and sources may not have been fully appreciated.

I think some of the geophysics-specific aspects may benefit from review by someone familiar with the field.

I found that you have contributed a lot into the "Geophysical Journal International: Revision history".

Because of your experience with geophysics topics on Wikipedia, I would be grateful if you could review the article.

Many thanks in advance,

Greg GITSK (talk) 03:59, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GITSK: Sorry, I'm not an expert on geophysics or Wikipedia biographies of academics. On a quick glance, that looks like a carefully written article. I cannot comment on whether Kaufman meets WP:NACADEMIC. Modest Genius ^talk 18:35, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, sir. Today the article was accepted for publication. Thanks for your time and regards. Greg. GITSK (talk) 04:41, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:32, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Someone removed it from the University of Nottingham article, for no obvious reason. I've restored it. Modest Genius ^talk 18:40, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Simple majority was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:55, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The reference is unclear on which of those meanings applies. Best to leave it ambiguous. Modest Genius ^talk 12:21, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

re special:diff/1347571083. I wasn't "trying" anything. I was doing. What I did speaks for itself. I added the standard noticeboard template to a noticeboard. This is both self-explanatory and supported by the guideline WP:BIDI the applicability of which is also self-explanatory. So I do not appreciate the feigned "I'm not sure what you were trying to do" pitch in your edit summary. But the implication the edit had for the T:MP was unintended. I had forgotten to check for potential other tranclusions of this header. This is primarily my message for you about how your edit summary is pretty crap. —Alalch E. 16:20, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I still don't understand what you intended to accomplish with that edit; it certainly wasn't self-explanatory. Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors/header is not an article in mainspace. Re-reading my edit summary, it seems factual and unobjectionable, and explains why I was reverting. I was not feigning anything, and calling it 'pretty crap' seems uncalled for. Please WP:AGF. Modest Genius ^talk 17:53, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors is one of Wikipedia's noticeboards. Its static top content has been separated out into Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors/header, to be transcluded back, as is common with many noticeboards. The header page is the noticeboard header for said noticeboard. Noticeboard headers use a well-known template named "Noticeboard header", which provides some non-essential (but generally non-problematic and familiar) formatting in addition to its primary purpose: navigation. This is because it includes Template:Noticeboard links, which is a navigation template.

Because the Main Page errors noticeboard is a noticeboard and is justifiably linked from the noticeboard navigation template, that same navigation template should be included on the page itself to prevent the navigation path from arbitrarily breaking. From the user's perspective, the "box with links" is a navigational interface element that suddenly "disappears" when it shouldn't. Perhaps the user is clicking from one noticeboard to another to see what they are about, or perhaps they want to go back to a page they visited two or three steps prior in their navigation history.

This is what the principle of bidirectional navigation means in practice, and it is not at all specific to articles. The logic is the same for all types of Wikipedia pages. The fact that the guideline mentions "articles" instead of "pages" is a quirk of many Wikipedia policies and guidelines; pages outside of article space are also subject to editorial logic and can be improved in many of the same ways as articles.

The edit was a completed action that speaks for itself, and an intelligible edit summary was provided. I recognize that you did not understand the change, which I do not mind at all, but it is factually incorrect and objectionable to me that you labelled it as any kind of "trying to do". Nothing was being tried. The noticeboard header template was added to a noticeboard header.

The negative implication that this had elsewhere, due to the fact that the header is transcluded to yet another page (which is unusual) is unfortunate, and was addressable once noticed. A factual edit summary would have been: "it has inserted an unintended navbox into T:MP and broken the navigation there."

That said, I can tell from your statement that "Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors/header is not an article in mainspace" that you genuinely did not understand the change. It was wrong of me to say that you were feigning something, and I apologize for that. —Alalch E. 19:32, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]