User talk:Alai/Archive 14

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Thanks :-)

Hi, Thanks for correcting my userpage. --Deepak D'Souza 06:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

An orphaned article

What do i do once i have merged it with another article i.e. Lichfield City Station --> Lichfield City railway station...? Simply south 11:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Stub template image sizes

Hi, in this edit, you changed the size of the shield from 35px to 30px. Is there a new standard for stub template image sizes that I'm not aware of? I'm not as active as I'd like to be at WP:WSS, so I may have been left out of the loop on this. Thanks. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Botoşani-geo-stub}}

Hi Alai - Hope you don't mind, but I've moved this new template to {{Botosani-geo-stub}}, as per the normal avoidance of diacriticals. Feel free to reverse the redirect if you like, but please keep the Botosani form too! Cheers, Grutness...wha? 01:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, we've always avoided diacriticals in the past (have a look at all the Polish geo-stub names, for instance, and things like the SaoTomePrincipe-geo-stub, too). As for the logic of it, not all browsers can type them properly. I have to change from safari to IE if I want to use them, for instance, otherwise II end up with glitches (little black diamonds with question maks in them)> As far as I know, other mac users have the same problem. Grutness...wha? 01:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

If I may jump in while passing by: I use Safari and don't have this problem (that I know of - maybe you are doing something I'm not). I'm not sure what you mean by "type them". If I want to use a diacritical, I can do it in the edit window with the palette of characters below it, but if I need to put one into the address bar of the browser I have to use the funky keyboard tricks, or use the menu bar utility I have called PickChar. Anyway, if you are regularly seeing diamonds for diacritic characters, I think you are missing some fonts or have some other system issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I've never once been able to make that character palette work. To me, it's just a box of blue characters that gets in the way if I accidentally hit "page down" - I certainly can't get any of them to go into the edit box. as to the diamonds, no, it's not a font issue =- I've talked about it with people at the Village Pump in the past and it's a browser issue, unfortunately. What OS and browser version are you using, SMcC? As to the original point, Alai, you wrote: I don't know about "always", though I recall you making similar comments (and perhaps similar moves?) in the past. I haven't made any similar moves in the past that I know of - I haven't needed to, since AFAIK we have never had any official template names with diacriticals in the past - I certainly can't think of any, not can I see any after a quick glance at the Stub types list. I didn't know that you'd already created that redirect (for some reason, it didn't show up in Special:New Pages), but yes, to the best of my knowledge, it is "always". I thought it was in the Naming conventions, too, though it doesn't seem to be (SMcC?) Grutness...wha? 06:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Replying at Grutness's page; Alai's had enough drive-bys here.  :-). — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 15:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, after a more exhaustive check, I discovered one stub template with a diacritical - Neuchâtel-geo-stub. Every other geo-stub for a place with a diacritical in its name eschews it in the template name (check Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types#European_geography). Grutness...wha? 06:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Just passing by, I hope it is alright to join in? Actually, the Norwegian templates use the Dano-Norwegian "ø" which is a good solution since nobody has ever been able to gain consensus on how to transliterate this letter. I can think of at least four (bad) ways of doing this. The character box works on my computer (Windows XP SP2, running IE 7.0 and/or Firefox 2). If you run IE: start by checking which code page is used by your browser. In IE 7.0; click the "page" button in the top right corner, select "codepage" and select "Unicode (UTF-8)". If you run IE 6, you can find the same function clicking "View" and scrolling down. This should solve the problem, and it doesn't affect the appearance of webpages coded in the standard US format. If this doesn't work, you need to add support for the Unicode and / or "Extended Latin" codepages, but I believe this is already enabled by default in Win XP. On Macs, I you just have to select that you wish to see pages using the Unicode (UTF-8) standard. Valentinian ^{T / C} 09:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Major" vs. "Subdivisional"

Resolved

 – Was just the database being weird.

That section seems to've disappeared entirely in your last edit. Was that intended? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 03:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

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Coronary ligaments

thanks for the light edits on my 2 "coronary ligament" edits. could you possibly also help me to integrate the disambiguation page into them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_ligament_%28disambiguation%29 ? if somebody types in "coronary ligament", they should probably be given the disambiguation page rather than the coronary ligament of liver page, just for speed and accuracy in getting them to the right article.

Egypt-mil-bio-stub template help

Hi there Alai,

Could you take a look at {{Egypt-mil-bio-stub}} and fix it however you deem fit? I'm not precisely sure what went wrong in creation. Thanks!--Thomas.macmillan 21:02, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Question

Alai,

I've an interesting question for you. Upon logging in today, I was surprised to discover that Data8504 nominated me for admin. I am flattered - it's clear that the nomination is intended as a compliment. I have good ideas about how I could contribute as an admin, and I don't think that the tools would be wasted on me. In your opinion and experience - should I accept the nom, stand for the vote, and see what comes - or decline graciously, even if I have to self-nominate at a later date?

Every time I've needed wiki-help, you've delivered. I appreciate any thoughts you can offer. Many thanks. Ezratrumpet 03:26, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Wise counsel

Many thanks. I'll graciously decline for now, and see what comes when I hit 1000 edits. Ezratrumpet 03:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Juggling stub

Regarding the juggling stub I proposed. May I go ahead and create that stub template? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 04:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Or reinstate that template for "juggling, acrobatics, and other similar performing arts", as Grutness suggested? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 04:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I see. Alright, I'll be bold and create {{Juggling-stub}}. After that, can I directly go ahead and tag stubs with it, meaning before it has been put into any category? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 04:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll just follow your suggestion and put it into Category:culture stubs. Browsing wikimedia commons, I found this image. Is it suitable? I suppose I'll have to copy it over to WP and to adjust its size? How big should the icon be? And, this is somewhat embarassing, how do I copy over/upload an image, as I have never dealt with that before? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 05:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Alright. Mind taking a look? {{Juggling-stub}} —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 05:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your kind help! —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 05:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

A user has suggested upmerging the juggling template to a subcategory juggling in culture stubs. Would that be possible, or does this also require a population of 60+ stubs? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just realised from the proposal discussion that it does. Weird though, that Cat:French architect stubs only has 26 pages. I suppose the 60-rule-of-thumb was introduced at a later time, to help with overcategorisation? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 10:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Canada vs. Canadian

See my plea. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 15:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's you and Grutness going back and forth, basically canceling each other out, with Caerwine adding a weak support. I didn't feel confident in deciding one way or the other, just based on that. Also, my personal preference is for "Canada" so that almost cancels out Caer's weak support. However, if you want to go with consistency just regarding Canada, Canadian is the way to go.

Semi-relatedly, you missed Category:Canada track and field athletics biography stubs. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 16:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't mentioned my preference because I try to avoid casting the deciding vote, then closing the discussion. That seems... not good. Although, after looking at the other stub cats, "Canadian" would be acceptable to keep all of Canada under one naming scheme. I may have to concede that a rename would be fine. Also, I agree with your sentiment about a "following the permcat" discussion. I doubt it will ever reach consensus. It might be worth a shot though, so we don't continue to muck up SFD discussions. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 16:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean to spam you again, but please check out yet another plea to get things sorted out. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 16:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

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Curiosity

A person using the name Alai in Thailand or Laos would cut a wide swath of hilarity. I'm curious if that's the etymology. A rough translation of an standard introduction would go like this: "Your name is what?" "Yes." "What?" "Yes." "What is your name." "Yes." "So your name is yes?" "What?" If it was on purpose, it's brilliant. Haus42 04:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Basketball positions

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 29#Basketball players by position. This is not a deletion request, in fact I think the categories were long overdue, and even helped you populate them. I think two of them should be renamed to match their corresponding articles. Since you created the categories, and since they are only a few days old, it would probably be within your discretion to speedy rename them if you agree with me on this. — CharlotteWebb 10:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Reviving a categorization project?

Could you? Would you? User_talk:Bluemoose/Uncategorised_good_articles#Revival Scarykitty 08:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• thanks for the quick reply. I do not have a threshhold in mind and I don't know what Martin was using. I've been doing a ton of categorization in the past month so I would say that articles over two paragraphs are more likely to be real than B.S. We're now down to just 200 articles in the uncat since Jan and the quality is improving, so time really does make a difference and it would be great for our team to be able to work on longer, more likely "real" articles first and let the wikimunity do it's work to weed out the undesirables before we spend what can end up to be a good amount of time on each article. Let me know if I can help (no technical knowledge whatsoever, but I'm happy to track people down and try to get answers. In fact, I'll post a message for Martin now. Thanks! Scarykitty 18:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• OK no, he's really gone. couldn't find anything in a quick browse of his archives. Scarykitty 18:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks again for the quick reply. Yes, I agree that the small ones have to be dealt with eventually. But I've found that at the three month mark, lots of uncategorized articles have been dealt with elsewhere (or at least tagged). I've also found that the categorization project gets more interest when it's in manageable chunks. For example, lots of people make quick work churning through the categories with letters Q, Z, X, but when behemoth cats like "S" and "M' are encountered, things slow down as people get discouraged (myself included). It seems the more we break it into managable chunks where people can feel that there work is making a difference, and will not get deleted within a few days, then the faster we will get through the backlog. Major appreciation going your way. Scarykitty 19:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• • In categorizing, I've found that in the beginning, when there are like 10,000 articles from January 2007, there is a lot of crap, short articles, non-notable people, advertisements, school pranks etc. As time goes on, other people take care of them, like propose them for deletion and they are deleted or merge them. That is the best case scenario, because then a category editor such as myself doesn't waste time categorizing something tht is going to be deleted anyway. The next best case scenario is when other editors have tagged articles to indicate where they fall in the "likely to survive" category. Tagging also helps to improve articles, like when someone tags them as non-notable and notability is then established and the tag removed etc. So, that's what I mean by "others take care of them" or "at least tag them." Not trying to put categorization above other wikipedia tasks, by any means, but it does take some time to do a proper category (often you have to wikify first just to find related articles and get ideas for cats). So, any help you can give with segmenting articles into "likely to survive" and not likely to survive will be greatly appreciated! Scarykitty 22:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• • • I think my last two long winded answers were in response to "the small ones have to get dealt with anyway." in a nutshell: the small ones shrink as time passes, so better to have we cateogry editors working on the big ones first. Scarykitty 23:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• • • • Um, I'm really not sure what this is about. You said "I could certainly generate a list of uncategorised articles over a certain length" and I agree with that for a number of reasons. So then we would have two groups large articles tagged as uncategorized and small articles tagged as nothing or tagged as stubs. Then the category people could get to work on "large articles from February 2007 that are uncategorized." This group would be far less than the 5,700 articles that are in that category now. In my opinion, this would lead to more people working on it in a faster time because the task would not be so daunting and we would not run across so many articles that seemed destined for the trashbin. That would all be a good thing. Now, what happens to the "small articles" - I assume there are other ways that people find new, underdeveloped articles than through the uncategorized project. (I guess recent changes, articles with certain subjects etc). I don't know - is that so? And so, it seems to me that "small articles with no tag" would shrink as a matter of course, and after a certain amount of time, say 3 months, would it possible to then tag them as uncategorized? Alternatively, just tag "large uncatted articles" and "small uncatted articles" and steer the project members toward large until they are done and then towards small. In my experience the small articles are being dealt with. Toward the end of January 2007, there were very few B.S. articles, nearly none. So that's the premise I am working off. Now, if those articles would never have been seen were it not for the categorization people, I find that weird but I still think my request for "large articles" separated from short ones will lead to more productivity and higher morale on this project. At any rate, I see you suggested way back at the beginning that I take this suggestion to the project, which I will do when I'm back in a week. Scarykitty 03:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Alaibot tagging malformed disambigs

I like where you're coming from. Keep up the good work and keep on reaching for those rainbows. Black-Velvet 04:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Johannesburg-stub

Hi there Alai. I am about to begin sorting the SouthAfrica-geo-stub but I can forsee a problem. The Johannesburg stub encompasses dozens of Gauteng province suburbs of the city. Do you think we should double stub them or just remove them from the J-burg stub altogether? Also, what do you think of an image for the province stubs and a template which I can copy to create them? Thanks--Thomas.macmillan 17:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

"Added note about changing links." edits on "(disambig)" redirects

These don't seem very helpful. If you want to nominate these as redirects for deletion, go ahead, but leaving "editorial notes" in the article space isn't good practice ("self-references", etc), you're breaking any links that do actually exist, and they're now all showing up on Special:Uncategorizedpages. I suggest these would be better returned to being redirects, until such time as they're orphaned and deleted. Alai 01:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Alai, thanks for your note. I wasn't aware that what I did would cause headaches for anyone else. Sorry about that.

It is my aim to have as many (disambig) pages as possible deleted, as they are an old no-longer-used standard. In many cases they exist as REDIRECTs simply because a "Move" to a new article automatically sets the old page to REDIRECT.

I originally tried to get them deleted as "speedy deletes", but this was stopped with the reason that REDIRECTs have to go through a RFD2 process. So I tried that, with differing objections, the notable ones being:

1. there could be external links to these pages,
2. some users may find them useful (which is a valid reason to keep).

My aim in putting in the notes was to satisfy these objections by finding out which pages were useful, and inviting users to revert them if they wanted to keep them. The top notice was to external links, advising them to change to a new link.

Also by changing the page from REDIRECT, I hoped to avoid the whole RFD2 process which seems rather cumbersome for pages which over time would be seen as being unuseful to anyone.

If you have any suggestions as to how I can get the unnecessary pages easily deleted I would appreciate it.

Regards,

JohnI 19:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

About the prevcat page

Hi. I was wondering if you'd mind removing the link to the old prevcat page and keeping only the new one. I don't think anyone works on the Jan07 one and, like I already told you, I don't think it makes much sense anymore. The extra bonus is that we can try and explain that it's important to look at the new page quickly before working on it loses its purpose. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 04:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll do that. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 04:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

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French singer stub

Hi Alai

A French singer stub you created is showing Japanese singer stub on articles. I don't know how to edit stubs so I wanted to pass this on to you.

{{France-singer-stub}}

Thxs

Uncategorised templates data

Yes I am still interested in a list if you do not mind making one. --Balloonguy 19:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

{{uncategorizedstub}} parameterisation

Why this change from a numeric to a named parameter on {{uncategorizedstub}}? It's now inconsistent with the most similar such template, {{uncategorized}}, and the various examples of its use. If there's a move on to have all maintenance templates use the same parameterisation, it would at least be a good idea to maintain "backwards compatibility" until such time as they really all are consistent. Alai 18:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes,this was a mistake, working on too many templates. I have restored "backward compatibility". Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 21:46 6 April 2007 (GMT).

You might like to have a look at these anon edits. [1] Rich Farmbrough, 22:05 6 April 2007 (GMT).

Trevor Loflin

Please note that the section of SAT to which the page on Trevor Loflin was merged has been deleted, and for good reason; the information on Trevor Loflin was entirely inappropriate in that article. I have nominated the article on Mr. Loflin for deletion a second time. Based on your participation either in the article on Trevor Loflin or in the previous afd, you may wish to participate in the article's present deletion discussion. Thanks. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 19:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion to note

Hi, you may wish to check out User_talk:Huaiwei#User:Secrecy, for a discussion over User:Privacy's actions in wikipedia. I voiced concern over his POV-pushing with Mainland China-related categories, and the connections this can have with the "stubwars" which was brewing over Template:China-geo-stub‎ and so forth. I am personally worried that this may be a precursor for something more destructive, so I hope you may assist us to keep watch should anything sinister brews up again? Many thanks in advance!--Huaiwei 17:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Un-categorised Tag on Dominion of Canada article

Alai, please explain why you put an "Un-categorised Tag" on the Dominion of Canada article. Its purpose is quite clear.

ArmchairVexillologistDon 20:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

MoS issues with titles

Hi there. I notice you've been formatting a number of titles using both quotes and italics. The general rule, and the one suggested by the MoS, is to use italics (only) for "full-length works" (names of TV programmes, books, newspapers), and quotes (only) for "short works" (episode titles, short stories, individual articles). Hope that helps. Alai 18:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. You say "a number of titles...", but I have looked back through your edit logs for the past two weeks and can't see any articles which I have ever edited. Perhaps some older edits/articles, or please advice - Thank You! Rgds, - Trident13 20:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)