User talk:Nightscream

Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything. — C. S. Lewis ~2026-97769 (talk) 19:17, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-97769: Untrue. There is no correlation between degree of credulity and belief in God or lackthereof. You can easily find people who "will believe anything" among both the most die-hard religionists, and the most die-hard atheists and agnostics. As an adherant of scientific skepticism, I certainly do not "believe anything." I give credence to ideas for which there are robust evidence and reason-based arguments, and which can survive the scrutiny of critical analysis.

But in any event, what does your message pertain to? Does this pertain to some article you or I have worked on? Nightscream (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Red-light district, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A dates error. References show this error when one of the date-containing parameters is incorrectly formatted. Please edit the article to correct the date and ensure it is formatted to follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style's guidance on dates. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 02:08, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I do not see any date error when I look at the diff of the edit, so perhaps whoever programmed this bot should consider doing so in a way that highlights or describes the error in question. Nightscream (talk) 02:13, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Quick facts

story · music · places

Close

Thank you for expanding and fixing Jubilant Sykes. I don't know what you mean about section headers by "consistency with other biographical headers, - there is little consistency across Wikipedia, and I know many biographies with level 2 headers for life, work and others, and level 3 headers within those major sections, such as Mozart. Why change such things? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:45, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: You're welcome. And thank you for the kind message. As to your question, there is certainly not total consistency across all categories of articles, but that's not to say that there isn't some modicum of consistency within certain categories, such as biographical articles of modern entertainers. Those typically separate Early life, Career, and Personal life sections. You can see this by looking any number of the Featured articles in the Media biographies section of the FA list. Nightscream (talk) 23:13, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you and understand. I come from opera (Jessye Norman), and he did both. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:27, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: I'm sorry, I'm not following. Nightscream (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I tried to explain that I see more opera singer articles, which look like Jessye Norman (as an example for what I tried to describe in my comment). He did both, opera and "entertainment", so it takes a decision to be consistent with one format or the other. Both seem valid, and I see no reason to switch from one to the other. Can you follow? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:53, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Oh, okay, I get it now. Thanks. :-) Nightscream (talk) 01:15, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I felt that was too much. It for instance lost why Caleb stayed behind, making it seem it was simply something he wanted to do rather than begging for it and being allowed.Doug Weller talk 18:41, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: The passage does not "imply" anything about why he stayed on campus one way or another, though a reader could certainly infer that he did so because he chose to. Whether he begged for it and had his request granted is not needed for a reader's understanding of the plot, which is what these capsule-sized reviews are for. Even in an article dedicated to the episode, it would not be necessary to specify this, beyond simply mentioning that he requested it. Far more relevant are characters' thoughts, motivations, conflicts, etc., like the fact that he is worried about Tarima, and is reluctant to compose a message to her. To be fair, I did omit that bit, which would illustrate how the fact that he eventually does so serves as the payoff, so I just added that setup now. Hope that helps. Nightscream (talk) 21:16, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi Nightscream. Thank you for your work on Jim McCann. Another editor, Mariamnei, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

Thank you for your work on this article. Please establish notability as per WP:NSPORT. Thanks and have a great day!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Mariamnei}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Mariamnei (talk) 13:25, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

@Mariamnei: Thanks, but I have no interest in that article's topic, or in establishing notability for it, as my only involvement with it was to disambiguate it from Jim McCann (writer). Nightscream (talk) 17:11, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Ok, I will nominate it for deletion. Have a great day! Mariamnei (talk) 06:36, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Jim McCann is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim McCann until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Mariamnei (talk) 06:37, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The redirect Topps Appliance City has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 20 § Topps Appliance City until a consensus is reached. Michael Greiner 01:33, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. This means that you are repeatedly changing a page's content back to how you believe it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree with your changes. Please stop editing the page and use the talk page to work toward creating a version of the page that represents consensus among the editors involved. Wikipedia provides a page explaining how this is accomplished. If discussions reach an impasse, you can request help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution such as a third opinion. In some cases, you may wish to request page protection while a discussion to resolve the dispute is ongoing.

If you continue edit warring, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, or whether it involves the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also, please keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule— if things indicate that you intend to continue reverting content on the page. Polygnotus (talk) 06:02, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: Please explain how you yourself are not guilty of this. Nightscream (talk) 14:04, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Because I didn't editwar? Did you really need to have that explained to you? See also WP:TALKHEADPOV.

And you haven't answered here.

Please read WP:EDITWAR. Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 14:18, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I have. You should try it yourself, since you're the one who tried to strong-arm the split, even after another editor made it clear to you that he was against this. 20:24, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Are you OK? Polygnotus (talk) 16:33, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes. Are you? Nightscream (talk) 17:24, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Thread retitled from Potential canvassing.

Please be careful when sending a large amount of notifications to user talk pages soliciting input for the discussion at Talk:List of suicides, because it could be seen as canvassing. Thanks. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 03:46, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@SuperPianoMan9167: It cannot, because I adhered to all four criteria specified at WP:CANVASS. But tell me, which of those four standard do you think it "could be seen as' violating? Nightscream (talk) 04:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Just checking. I apologize for the inconvenience. My main concern is that it's not immediately clear what connection to the article each editor you notified has, which would violate the first point's prohibition against notifying users with no significant connection to the topic at hand. I would make sure to indicate why you chose to notify those specific editors (expertise, contributors to the article, etc.) SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 05:20, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@SuperPianoMan9167: If it was not immediately clear, then why didn't you just ask me? Nightscream (talk) 17:31, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I could have worded my initial message in a better way. I'm sorry. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 18:40, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@SuperPianoMan9167: No worries. But in case you wanted to know, I went through the page of most recent editors to have worked on the article in its page history, and just selected those. I did not contact anonymous IP editors, nor any account whose username was displayed in red. I think I then went to the next page after that, and selected one or two more editors. It then occurred to me to look at who the most frequent contributors to the article have been, using that edit count page I posted in the discussion, and contacted one or two more. The only editors I contacted that I recall interacting prior to this were (and I'm going off memory here) are User:ExRat, User:Gavia immer, and I think User:Neozoen and User:Davidgoodheart. I have no idea how they would "vote" in the discussion, and Gavia immer and I actually had a conflict when we last interacted, since I wanted each entry in the list to have citations, and remove those that did not, and as I recall, he opposed this. So there was no attempt on my part to steer the discussion through select contacts. Nightscream (talk) 20:22, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation! SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 21:11, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Talk:List of suicides/unsourced list, a page which Mahanga created, I substantially contributed to, and you contributed to a small extent, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:List of suicides/unsourced list and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Talk:List of suicides/unsourced list during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. PK2 (talk; contributions) 12:37, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

The redirect AntiSemite has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 May 10 § AntiSemite until a consensus is reached. 𝔅𝔦𝔰-𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔧𝔢𝔱𝔞? 20:32, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

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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) 18:20, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy notice that I have unprotected Dina Lohan, which you protected in 2009. Rusalkii (talk) 01:12, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

• @Rusalkii: Okay. Thanks. Sorry I didn't unprotect it myself after some reasonable period. Nightscream (talk) 02:38, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Likewise Jeph Loeb, possibly more to come. Rusalkii (talk) 23:36, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

and List of The Incredibles characters. Rusalkii (talk) 23:39, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@Rusalkii: Cool. Use your own discretion. I haven't been an admin since 2011, and I don't recall the reasons for those protections, so it's up to you. Thanks again. Nightscream (talk) 00:57, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

This is consensus and I can't fathom how you couldn't find it! Just like the comment says it's at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 39. Now - Please stop reverting the text in MOS. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:51, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): Then allow me to fathom it for you. I went through the edit history of the guideline page to see when someone added the notion regarding colons, caps, and headings, and found this. I clicked on the linked discussion that InfiniteNext referenced in their edit summary, and got to a discussion page where a box appeared saying, "This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed." I explicitly stated this in my edit summary, so I'm not sure where the difficulty is on your part in "fathoming" it.

Subsequent to this, I saw that this edit had been made, with what appears to be the discussion in question. However, when looked at the top and bottom of that discussion for the note by the admin who closed that dicussion, which typically notes what the consensus was, I could not find it. The closest I could find was this:

"With that in mind, the outcome of this discussion is rough consensus to allow for lowercase or capital letters after dashes or colons in article titles, section titles, and list items."

So instead of saying that the consensus was to allow for lowercase, or to allow for capital, it says to allow for lowercase or capitals. This is not helpful, since it says essentially "either one". Indeed, beneath that, in the collapsble "Examples on Wikipedia articles" section with the green band, the examples given for headings shows a lowercase after the colon.

So if you don't mind my asking, what is your basis for your position that consensus calls for capitals in headings after a colon? Is it explicitly stated somewhere in that dicussion that I missed? Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 04:11, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Where did I say that at all? You deleted the line that said editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows after a colon or dash. I said nothing about "must capitalize." It is longstanding consensus to allow either depending on many factors. And for someone who has been at wikipedia for over 20 years you should know the original was archived since the posting. So yeah, I can't believe you couldn't find it as quickly as I did. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:46, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I've been mostly off-wiki for a while due to real-life matters (and thus cannot guarantee timely follow-ups to this discussion, though I will try to check in later), but was alerted to Nightscream's revert since I was pinged, so I will make a brief comment. First, Nightscream, there was an RfC that prompted the change I made three years ago, and it seems you've since found it — thanks for providing the link, @DMacks. The feature on which you fully relied to reach your conclusion that a discussion "does not exist" is relatively new and known to be buggy; personally, I recommend turning on the "find-archived-section" gadget in your Special:Preferences, which predates the built-in feature and generally works better based on personal experience. With that being said, giving full weight to a tool without exercising due diligence by manually fact-checking yourself is never a wise idea; surely, you recognize that. Second, consensus was explicitly reached in that RfC to allow for lowercase or capital letters after dashes or colons in article titles, section titles, and list items (emphasis added), with the ultimate decision left to editors' discretion per MOS:VAR (the first-come, first-served rule), MOS:CONSISTENT (consistency within and between articles), and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS (if editors in a particular field reach consensus to establish an agreed-upon standard). The portion you attempted to remove from MOS:COLON is fully in line with this consensus; if you believe otherwise, please explain. (To be clear, consensus does not [call] for capitals in headings after a colon — it merely permits it.) If other parts of the WP:MOS page are found to contradict the consensus established in the 2023 RfC, you are free to clarify those other sections. WP:WIKILAWYERING — that is, exploiting the technical language of PAGs to justify your preference in defiance of community consensus — is not productive. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:19, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click):@InfiniteNexus:

"to reach your conclusion that a discussion "does not exist"..."

I did not reaach any such conclusion, nor did I ever say that I did. Please do not distort my words.

The page said, "This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed."

That is not "my conclusion", it was simply what the page said, which I related. I did not take any position on which of these scenarios occurred, and I never said nor implied otherwise. I also indicated that as I continued to investigate the matter, I went into the page's edit history, and saw the intervening edit by DMacks, who provided the discussion in question, which is precisely an act of "excersiing due diligence", and "fact-checking", falsifying your smug, condescending remark to the contrary.

I am not familiar with the gadget you refer to, and I'm not about to bother with it.

"The portion you attempted to remove from MOS:COLON is fully in line with this consensus; if you believe otherwise, please explain."

Sure. MOS:HEADINGS says not employ caps in a heading except with the first words and proper nouns, which is pretty straightforward. Having a separate guideline say, "Do it either way, it doens't matter" contradicts this, and makes it harder to maintain consistency across articles. It also leads to absurd conflicts like this one, rather than avoiding them. That's not "wikilawyering", it's simply me pointing out a contradiction that in my opinion, shoud be removed instead of being allowed to remain. The fact that you disagree with it is all fine and well, but it does not make my opinion "wikilawyering". Nightscream (talk) 11:41, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

MOS:HEADINGS says to use sentence case rather than title case. Sentence case specifies capitalization is used for "other words as required by a more specific rule. This is generally equivalent to the baseline universal standard of formal English orthography." I don't see where MOS:HEADINGS has the more-restrictive statement you are describing (only using lower-case except for the first letter and proper nouns). DMacks (talk) 15:37, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

You've pinged the wrong person; I made the comment above, not Fyunck(click). First, it is not acceptable for you to "blame" a tool for your prior assertion that a discussion "does not exist", which you cited as grounds for your revert; the onus is on the editor to verify what they believe justifies a revert before taking action, especially when modifying a PAG, not merely go off on what a machine said. You could have easily acknowledged your oversight and moved on, and yet you repeated the false assertion multiple times and even restored your revert until someone spoon-fed (for lack of a better word) you a working link.

In any case, as I stated above, if and only if there are other parts of the MoS that contradict MOS:COLON, the correct step is to modify them to align with MOS:COLON, not the other way around. There is consensus for the present guidance at MOS:COLON, so the RfC may be cited as grounds for updating any other section that does not reflect the present consensus. New consensus always overrides old consensus. InfiniteNexus (talk) 15:59, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@InfiniteNexus and Fyunck(click):

Sorry about the ping.

If what you say is the case, then shouldn't MOS:HEAD be amended to include the qualifier regarded colons? Nightscream (talk) 03:58, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Rereading that guideline, I don't see any part that contradicts the consensus documented at MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH (as DMacks noted above). Capitalizing a single word mid-sentence does not constitute title case, so these guidelines are compatible with each other unless you take them over-literally. But based on my reading of MOS:HEAD, it does not explicitly prohibit the capitalization of certain words mid-sentence, such as proper nouns or the first word after a colon or dash. If you go back to the original proposal, you'll see that we had hoped to update the MoS in multiple places to avoid future misunderstandings such as this one, but we were limited by the closer's verdict that found consensus against substantial additional verbiage (emphasis added) and therefore only adjusted the most authoritative portions, MOS:COLON and MOS:ENDASH. I should note that if any subpages of the MoS contradict these two sections, the main page takes precedence per the first paragraph of the lead. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:35, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

@InfiniteNexus and Fyunck(click): Would you be opposed to adding the qualifier to MOS:HEAD to note that colons are an exception? Or would you consider that too substantial additional verbiage? Nightscream (talk) 19:39, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Does it really need it? MOS:HEAD says use sentence case, which is: "A mixed-case style in which the first word of the sentence is capitalised, as well as proper nouns and other words as required by a more specific rule." This is the more specific rule it talks about. It's not really an exception – Colons and dashes may start a new capital letter. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:40, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

@InfiniteNexus and Fyunck(click): I think it would benefit from it. Nightscream (talk) 00:18, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Ask on the talk page, not here. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:54, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Now that beloved actor Vincent Pastore is unfortunately no longer with us, I wanted to choose an older photo of him which could be possibly more flattering. Could Irophis image as a possible infobox image contender? Nurken (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2026 (UTC)t

@Nurken: Oh wow, he died? Shit. Well, I'm not sure I entirely understood the second sentence in your message, but yeah, if you have a more flattering photo, that's fine. Nightscream (talk) 22:10, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Sorry lol. Could I crop the image of yours that I linked in the heading so that it could be an infobox image? Nurken (talk) 10:47, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

@Nurken: If you want. All I ask is that you retain the same root name, like "File:6.30.13VincentPastoreByLuigiNovi1b". Thanks for the courtesy of asking. Nightscream (talk) 19:36, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

The redirect Children\'s literature has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 August 8 § Children\'s literature until a consensus is reached. MSUGRA (talk) 11:42, 8 August 2026 (UTC)