User talk:Wikiflation

About Me

Hello Wikipedia!

This is a sockpuppet account of User:Chrett.

This is a semi-bot account.

Signature: --Wikiflation (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, Wikiflation, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Below are some pages you might find helpful. For a user-friendly interactive help forum see the Wikipedia Teahouse.

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A question about your editing

You seem to be making edits faster than could be possible manually. Are you using some kind of automated or semi-automated tool for editing? JBW (talk) 18:42, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @JBW, as a newcomer to Wikipedia, I'm glad to be in dialog with an experienced editor like yourself to help build consensus for my useful project.

Yes, I'm using a semi-automated tool. An automated process identifies and suggests edits, which I manually review. Once I've reviewed a batch of edits, an automated process makes those edits on Wikipedia. (If you prefer, I could make each edit when it's approved, so it would be clearer that this is not a fully automated bot).

The purpose of the semi-bot is to increase usage of the Inflation Template. This improves Wikipedia by providing up-to-date context on historical prices, and it makes Wikipedia more maintainable because values created with the inflation template are updated automatically.

I've reviewed the assisted editing policy and I think that my use case is allowed because there is consensus that inflation-adjustment is useful. When I'm unblocked, I'll update my user page to explain that this is a semi-automated account, and I'll mention in my edit messages that this is a semi-automated account.

Let me know what else I can do to be a good Wikipedian! Wikiflation (talk) 20:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with that, but please omit the minor tag from your edits as well. You should be able to update your user page now (even while blocked). (also: got your email, you can just discuss things and request unblock here instead) tedder (talk) 20:20, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I'll omit the minor tag from my edits as well.

(It tells me that I don't have permission to create my talk page.) Wikiflation (talk) 20:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I figured you'd be able to. Unblocking, I'd suggest taking your time before doing en-masse edits. tedder (talk) 20:27, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Alternate account?

Did you also edit as User:Chrett? Please read the guidelines for using an alternative account at WP:SOCKLEGIT and follow the instructions at WP:ALTACCN to identify the relationship between the accounts. Thanks. Schazjmd (talk) 19:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Schazjmd. Yes, I created this account as a semi-bot, which is a legitimate reason to create a new account. When I'm unblocked, I'll update my user page as instructed at WP:ALTACCN. Wikiflation (talk) 20:16, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi! As your account is no longer blocked, please update your userpage for this and your other account per the instructions. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:59, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Done Wikiflation (talk) 13:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Blocked

You have been temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia for high-speed/disruptive editing. Please address comments before continuing. tedder (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2023 (UTC).  Your block will expire in 3 hours. If you wish to make useful contributions, you are welcome to come back after the block expires. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may request an unblock by first reading the guide to appealing blocks, then adding the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. tedder (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

unblocked. Not sure how to modify the above template, if needed. Wikiflation, feel free to remove it, and other admins are welcome to fix or override anything I've done. tedder (talk) 20:29, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

September 2023

Hello, I'm StartOkayStop. I noticed that you recently removed content from The Andersons without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. StartOkayStop (talk) 01:48, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

That was a mistake I made. Thank you for correcting it so quickly. Wikiflation (talk) 01:50, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Please be more careful

I'm not sure what tool you're using to make edits, but it has an unacceptable error rate. You just attempted to delete an entire article, and deleted a reference, removed some content, deleted another reference - and that's all just within the last few minutes. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 19:30, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm very sorry for doing that. I've reverted those mistakes, and I will be more careful. Wikiflation (talk) 19:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Formatting of semi-automated edits

Hello Chrett, this edit is erroneous. Conversions should read $327.9 billion ($419 billion in 2021), not $327.9 (~$419 billion in 2021) billion.

The tilde is an unnecessary addition not traditionally used in conversions (see {{Convert}} and MOS:CONVERSIONS); words like "million" should not be split from the number that precedes them. Please fix these errors and be more mindful in the future. Thank you! Wracking ^talk! 08:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Chrett, I ask you to review and clean up your contributions thus far before continuing your semi-automated edits. Many of them may require a small amount of cleanup, including Cleveland and False or misleading statements by Donald Trump. Wracking ^talk! 09:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Wracking, thanks for spotting this! You mention two things:

1. You say that I should not use tilde because the tilde is not used for conversion. It's true that tilde is not used for conversion, but it is used for approximation (see tilde#Common use in English). I'm using tilde to show that the inflation-adjustment is not an exact conversion but rather an approximate value. There is no approximation in converting units, but inflation adjustment is always only approximate and therefore the tilde is necessary.

2. You point out that the conversion "(~$419 billion in 2021)" was placed between "$327.9" and "billion". This is certainly a mistake. I'll review my edits to correct this mistake, and I'll make sure that it doesn't happen again. Thanks for spotting this. Wikiflation (talk) 16:08, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Wracking, I want to update you on the cause of the error #2 that you brought to my attention. The cause of the error is that there is a template:nbsp in between the "$327.9" and "billion". That threw off my software in a way that I didn't notice. Fortunately it's relatively uncommon for template:nbsp to be used that way, so only a few articles are impacted. I'm going to correct these mistakes manually over the next few hours. Thanks again. Wikiflation (talk) 16:36, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I say that the tilde is not used (by other editors) for conversions on Wikipedia. By nature, (nearly) all conversions will include rounding/approximation. I think the tilde is unnecessary as it clutters prose, especially when added en masse. See MOS:CURRENCY, and specifically this section, in which the provided examples do not include a tilde: When converting among currencies or inflating/deflating, it is rarely appropriate to give the converted amount to more than three significant figures; typically, only two significant figures are justified. Wracking ^talk! 17:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks again for your interest in my edits. It's important to me that my edits are correct and useful, so I had to take some time to think about your comment.

Almost all conversions are exact. Unit conversions between weights, measures, currencies, etc. can be accurate to many decimal places. There is no subjectivity or ambiguity in what a Celsius temperature is at Fahrenheit, or what a quantity of Dollars is worth in Euros today.

That's very different from [inflation adjustment], which is not a conversion but rather an adjustment, which involves subjectivity and ambiguity. (It's like adjusting a transportation statistic for seasonality). There is no exact formula for adjusting for inflation. Rather, an index is used to adjust historical numbers. That index is created scientifically but subjectively. People have to decide which index to use, what commodities to include in the basket, and how to measure their prices.

I believe that any economist would tell you that inflation adjustments are approximations. I feel strongly that it would be misleading to give readers the impressions that inflation adjustments are exact. I feel that the tilde is a space-efficient way to indicate to readers that the inflation adjustment is an approximation (it's shorter than the default output of template:inflation which is "equivalent to $XXX").

I'm going to continue using the tilde for now, but I'll leave up this section on my talk page so that others can weight in on this topic, and I will happily conform to consensus. It may help for you to edit your section header to indicate that you're referring to a difference in stylistic opinion rather than a clear cut error. Wikiflation (talk) 18:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful responses, I really appreciate it. I'll update the section header. Also note that other unit conversions are not usually "exact" on Wikipedia; see MOS:CONVERT: Converted quantity values should use a level of precision similar to that of the source quantity value. Thanks, Wracking ^talk! 19:07, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Howdy @Chrett/@Wikiflation and @Wracking, Thank you for this conversation as it was a great learning moment for myself on the topic of conversion, which recently became of interest due to this edit by Chrett. I agree with Wracking's assessment that the use of the tilde is an unnecessary addition and not traditionally used. Chrett’s argument that inflation adjustments are subjective is technically correct, but the figures being adjusted for inflation aren’t necessarily exact either. See MOS:UNCERTAINTY:

Where explicit uncertainty is unavailable (or is unimportant for the article's purposes), round to an appropriate number of significant digits; the precision presented should usually be conservative. Precise values (often given in sources for formal or matter-of-record reasons) should be used only where stable and appropriate to the context, or significant in themselves for some special reason.

The jury's award was $8.5 million (not $8,462,247.63). The appeals court reduced this to $3,000,001 (one dollar in actual damages, the remainder in punitive damages).

I would expect that when a reader sees $12.34 billion, they interpret as “about $12,340,000,000” and not the exact amount. For example, this edit includes $27.17 billion (~$34.7 billion in 2021) in which the original $27.17 billion is actually closer to $27.172 billion (See 2007-08 enacted state budget), but the extra $2 million isn’t material to the topic. Since the original figure is approximate figure with no tilde, it is generally understood the inflation adjustment is approximate as well, making the tilde unnecessary in my opinion.

Being that I'm a newer user, it's probably best to wait for more consensus. Thanks again! Marchofcells (talk) 03:20, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

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