Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017/MassMessage

Tweaks

The status quo is the 2016 message. During the 2017 RFC, a couple of suggestions for changing the message were made. I'll try to add them here in a bit, but if I miss one, or you have an additional suggestion, feel free to propose specific changes to the message here. The general idea of whether to send the message out, and it's general content, was already decided in the RFC; this page is just about tweaking it. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:31, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Copyedit

I've made some amendments to make the message friendlier, easier to read and <ahem> in good English. If I've missed the boat for this year, fair enough, but see if we can find a way to preserve the improvements so next year's message doesn't need the same fixes. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Dweller. You haven't missed the boat yet. Normally, we just copy the last year's message and make some tweaks, so your changes will probably be preserved next year. Mz7 (talk) 17:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~The message I see has a greeting to the arbitration committee: "Hello, Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017." Or is it my lack of English. Suggestions:~~

~~make it "Hello," followed by the user name, or simply "Hello!".~~
The header has "December 2017", why? There's only one election in 2017.
Say what the arbitration committee is first, only then who's eligible. Say it short with a link to where it's explained in detail.

Thank you for not saying "now" in the header! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:57, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Hello, Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017 you're seeing is generated by the magic word {{BASEPAGENAME}}, which turns itself into the name of the page it is on without the namespace and subpages. For example, if we used {{BASEPAGENAME}} on the page User talk:Gerda Arendt, it would turn into Gerda Arendt. Since we're currently using it on the page Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017/MassMessage, it turns into Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017. In other words, it will be turned into "Hello," followed by the username once it is substituted onto user talk pages. Mz7 (talk) 21:42, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Got it, thank you, I should have looked in edit mode ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]