User talk:The Duke of Waltham

The Office of The Duke of Waltham

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The Duke of Waltham

Article • User page • Contrib's (edit count) • Private office •
"Auto-formatting is evil" • Westminster Palace workshop and watchlist

His Grace The Duke of Waltham

@This user can be reached by email.

This user contributes using a typewriter, and sends all contributions via snail mail.

Greetings, dear Wikipedian. My name is Harold Cartwright, and I am the Duke of Waltham's private secretary. On behalf of the Duke, I should like to welcome you to His Grace's talk page.

Here you may leave notices, announcements, or any other messages that could interest the Duke, and you may flatter him, request his assistance or advice (if you really think he's able to do anything on his own), discuss his actions on Wikipedia, or talk about matters of mutual interest. As this is a free speech venue, your criticism will be welcome as well. To be honest, I personally enjoy seeing negative comments about my employer, as his arrogance would become even more insufferable if left unchecked.

I probably need to clarify that, even though this page exists to accommodate all kinds of "talk", ranging from professional correspondence (i.e. messages pertaining to Wikipedia and the ongoing struggle for its improvement) to light-hearted conversation, it is not meant for discussion of matters in any way private. Messages of sensitive content ought to be e-mailed to His Grace instead, so that the required level of privacy can be ensured.

Please leave your posts at the bottom of this page and sign them with four tildes (~~~~), so that we shall know who is posting what and when. You are warned that unsigned posts do not merit a reply here and shall be summarily deleted; this is wholly within the poster's responsibility, I'm afraid.

Please note that His Grace follows a policy of keeping conversations unfragmented; in other words, an exchange that begins in one talk page should continue in that same talk page, in order to keep the discussion whole and intelligible. If a conversation has begun in a venue other than this, you need not answer here; you can rest assured that I shall notify the Duke about any new messages (through use of a designated watchlist).

You are requested not to edit anything in this page except for your own posts; any other changes shall be reverted on sight. It is also suggested that, if you must edit your posts, you should do so sparingly, as it is generally considered impolite to alter the content of posts that have already been answered to, or even read.

Old discussions are archived with extreme care, even though half of them do not deserve such treatment in the least. But who am I but a secretary, to be judging my boss's gossip. Well, for those interested, the archives are open to the public from 09:00 to 17:00, Mondays to Fridays.

Please don't leave any litter while you are here. There is a dustbin in the corner.

By the way, thank you for not smoking.

Have a nice day.

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New thoughts on the use of succession boxes in venue articles

Good day, your grace. As spring gardening is in full force at the Waltham Hall estate, my mind wandered back over the topic of dealing with succession boxes as they relate to venues. Through continuing to come across the sad state of affairs this topic is currently in (and reading the discussions at wt:sbs), I wonder if it would be wise to form a subproject or taskforce within SBS to start fleshing out a recommended style for this area. Here is but a start to the list of items that I see possibly needing to be addressed in this area of work:

• no italics in before or after boxes (overformatting)
• no linking to non-topical host years
• linking to topical host years
• no bolding for host year (overformatting)
• what to do with odd situation like the use of dots in davis cup boxes in Germantown Cricket Club
• what should first stadium box say, "none", "first stadium"
• what should current stadium boxes say, "incumbent", "current"
• should the title use the name of teams at the time of their use?
• how to deal with non-sequential hosting (the topic that I first approached you with)?
• etc.

And it would make sense for the answers to these questions to be in synchrony with the SBS guidelines for people. Should you feel this is the way to go, I volunteer to try and coordinate these efforts and to try and find other folks interested in this niche of sbs. You thoughts would be most appreciated. Humbly yours, --Gwguffey (talk) 05:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I am terribly sorry for the long delay, Gwguffey. I owe you an apology (which you shall receive in the form of a generous pay raise). I have been phenomenally busy lately, and in the last few days I have actually returned to the realm of succession boxes, but I could have dropped in at least a short note all these days.

I am about to finish with the documentation of succession templates, and after that I promise that I shall bring up the subject of your succession box in WT:SBS. I am not sure how much response there will be, but I do know that several people are watching the page; if there is interest, there will be comments.

Now, about the sub-project idea... I don't want to be the spoilsport again, but if there are so few people in SBS, how could you find more to man a task force? It is rather unrealistic. In my opinion, we should simply integrate all these issues into the agenda of SBS proper (I think I have actually addressed some of them, now that I think of it). Although my plans of old for an organised agenda have resulted in a premature fiasco, I intend to bring it sideways: by posting the full to-do list in my private SBS subpage and letting people know that it's there. That could, perhaps, show what there is to do (and how much) and inspire some motivation for participation.

And there is, of course, my other, last, secret plan... But I think I'll save that for later. Waltham, The Duke of 07:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, Your Grace, you are ever so wise and you have nothing to apologize for with your schedule. I was overly enthusiastic on thinking that I could recruit other folks as it seems that I may be one of a very small few that is interested in this specialized area (forest for the trees). I just see so many problems regarding the lack of definition in the stadium and arena articles that I spend the most time on. If if there isn't much enthusiasm for jumping into this work by SBS members, maybe there would at least be interested in overseeing and providing input towards efforts that I would put into it. Humbly yours, --Gwguffey (talk) 13:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Late again... But at least I have got the documentation pages out of the way. In any case, I am, at last, ready for the introduction of the "Sports Venues Bill" in the Commons. Do you want me to say a few words first or will you present it straight away? I suppose you prefer the first option, but I need your nominal permission for that. Waltham, The Duke of 10:39, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I would appreciate your doing the honors. The timing of this perfect as I am attempting to revive WP:WikiProject Sports facilities and having guidelines for the use of succession boxes on stadia pages would be valuable (whether the template I built is used not). --Gwguffey (talk) 13:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Bored

I wouldn't say I'm bored enough to automatically do anything you suggest, and I have got a few things knocking around; but they're all waiting on someone else at the moment so it would be nice to have something not-too-urgent to fill the dull gaps. What have you got in mind? Happy‑melon 20:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I must admit that I, as well, am curious as to the nature of such an assignment. Nihiltres^{t.l} 22:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It's top-secret, go away. :-D

All right... First of all, do excuse me, but I was surprised to discover that the bulk of the job has been taken care of already. Several days ago, actually... I was about to tell you to change the documentation in the various succession templates to {{documentation}}; the pages have been unstandardised for months. Ah, well, there are still plenty of tweaks to do.

Now, the desired standard format for each page is to use green documentation pages generated by the aforementioned template, the small versions of the "indefinitely protected template" red padlocks, and no image or code before the /doc page, as the examples are in it. An example of this format is... Well, there is no good example, but let's say {{s-par}} without the extra spacing is good enough. The list:

• In {{s-ach}}, please remove the code and change the full message box to the small padlock.
• In {{s-civ}}, change the full message box to the small padlock.
• In {{s-par}} and {{s-prec}} there is too much spacing at the top.
• In {{s-reg}} and {{s-sports}} there is no "protected" template at all; in the latter, as well as in {{s-rel}}, there is also an example at the top, which should go (please take care not to leave redundant spacing).

I should very much appreciate it if you could be troubled to fix these. If we want to call ourselves the Succession Box Standardization WikiProject, then our templates' pages should be standardised as well, but as they are all protected, an administrator is needed for even the slightest fix.

Apart from these, there are several templates which have no documentation appended to them. These are {{s-aca}}, {{s-bus}}, {{s-court}}, {{s-culture}}, {{s-dip}}, {{s-edu}}, {{s-gov}}, {{s-herald}}, {{s-hon}}, {{s-legal}}, {{s-lit}}, {{s-media}}, {{s-mil}}, {{s-off}}, {{s-other}}, {{s-ppo}}, and {{s-pre}}. I am not asking you to add documentation pages to them just yet, but I do believe that, even if there are no parameters for these templates, it would be a good thing to add some little documentation and a reference to the Template:S-start page. What do the two of you think? Waltham, The Duke of 23:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done all the ones you've spelled out. Do you want me to apply the same general formatting (code in <includeonly> tags, {{pp-template}} with |small=yes, {{documentation}}, and no examples) to those other templates? Happy‑melon 09:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work, dear fellow. The template pages are now up to scratch. Thank you very much for your trouble.

About the documentation-less templates, now... I was asking for your opinion on this, but, as it turns out, I don't really need it. :-) As the self-declared benevolent dictator of SBS, I authorise you to proceed. I shall log in again in a few hours' time, and when I do I shall start providing the documentations straight away. And then it's the turn of {{succession box}}; it's not one of our templates, but we cannot forbid people to use it, so we could at least tell them how to use it properly and restrict its use to the bare minimum. I pledged to write the documentation for that one more than a week ago, actually... Too busy, too forgetful, I'm afraid. I think today's the time, finally, and your giving it an empty documentation page would be a good impetus for me not to postpone it again. Waltham, The Duke of 09:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The first three you have done are great; {{documentation}} is so clever, in fact (or, rather, the people behind it), that clicking on the create link brings up a template (not in the Wikipedia sense) with the basics for a documentation page. I have provided these three with documentations, and started tweaking with the ones which already had such pages for standardisation. During the course of this, I have removed the protection template from {{s-civ}}, which should be on the template page and not on the documentation page. I did notice that the box was in the green space when compiling the list for you but didn't think much of it. Sorry for the extra trouble. Waltham, The Duke of 03:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

{{documentation}} is indeed an excellent template... not one I can put my name to, I'm afraid to say :D. I've done (or rather, am doing) the other templates you've listed above, so you can create the documentation for those too. Note that I'm removing the link to Category:Succession templates from the main template page, so you need to add this to the documentation ([[Category:Succession templates|{{subst:PAGENAME}}]] is a good trick). Happy‑melon 16:16, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You are doing well, Happy Melon, so I shouldn't want to spoil the fun for you... You have done everything I have asked you to except from the addition of the red padlock to {{s-civ}}. I know it was a later request, but it was here. If you have time, I'd like you to take care of {{succession box}} as well, so that I can write its long-overdue documentation and steer some traffic from there to SBS and its templates. When you do that, you can receive the full praise for your work. :-)

On another note, I've just shown yet again how near-sighted I can be sometimes; when I saw your added category at Template:S-aca/doc I had the strange idea that you had re-added the categorisation to Category:Template documentation, which I had removed because it was redundant (already included in {{Documentation subpage}}). Then I realised what I had done and reverted my rollback, but my blunder has irreversibly gone down in (the page's) history. Sorry about that...

I shall start on the documentation pages immediately. And finally tick one item off the long SBS list... Waltham, The Duke of 00:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I just remembered that it's not just the headers' pages that need standardisation... Whenever you have time, could you please fix the following pages?

• {{s-bef}} requires code removal
• {{s-aft}} requires code removal and a red padlock
• {{s-new}} requires a red padlock
• {{s-vac}} requires padlock shrinking

I also believe that {{s-non}} is sufficiently used (and its usage is projected to increase) to justify a protection. I was actually surprised to find that it is unprotected.

These are the last ones, I assure you. There's nothing else, really. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 03:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

All done. I'm afraid that, with only 861 transclusions, {{S-non}} does not warrant protection. Anything else :D?? Happy‑melon 08:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There are protected headers with significantly fewer transclusions... Perhaps you'd like to revisit them. Do tell me, though, how do you find the exact number of transclusions? This capability might prove useful to me. Waltham, The Duke of 13:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Templates are protected for two reasons: when they have been targets for vandalism, or when they have a very large number of transclusions such that any future vandalism (or even good-faith edits, which can be as bad or worse :D) would cause significant disruption. Header templates are, for some reason, much more commonly targeted for vandalism than more widely-used templates. I use two methods to look up the transclusion numbers: step 1 is to fire up AWB and create a list from the template based on transclusions. That provides a quick and accurate count, but will time-out for templates with more than about 10,000 transclusions. Fortunately, all templates with five-figure counts and above are in the top 1,000, and are listed on Special:MostLinkedTemplates - those statistics are always a couple of days out of date, but are quick and easy to look up. Happy‑melon 21:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

←Good to know. I'll have that in mind from now on.

That will be all, I believe. This co-operation has been most fruitful; perhaps we might repeat it in the future. For now, I bid you good-bye. We shall probably see each other in Imbox, Cmbox, and the Village Pump, anyway.

How useful boredom can be, sometimes, eh? :-D Waltham, The Duke of 22:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

City status in the United Kingdom

Your grace.. this article is (not unreasonably) up for FAR. I note you left a message regarding what a mess the article is, and this is also the reason for the review. I think we need to get the demolition squad in. I must admit I am responsible for a lot of those footnotes that seem to have taken on a life of their own. If you have any suggestions I'm happy to roll up my sleeves... Lozleader (talk) 18:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As you are able to see, I have left my comments on the article's FAR page. The footnotes can leave along with the list for another home, where they will be accepted for what they are in the setting of a properly designated list. And the hybrid that so troubles us can now become a true article, and as such survive the ordeal of the Review. The problem of the short lead is being addressed as we speak... And that leaves us with the relative lack of in-line citations and the bad formatting of a number of footnotes. Could you do anything to help there? I fear that I am hopeless with sources. Waltham, The Duke of 00:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Lord

Perhaps Your Grace might wish to assist in the discussions currently taking place concerning the above article, which was once quite good, but has unfortunately become a confused mess because of the misguided efforts of some editors whose English writing and comprehension skills are worse than they appear to believe.GSTQ (talk) 00:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

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List of UK place names with royal patronage

Can you please write an introduction for this article? Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 15:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The tag has come back to haunt me, hasn't it? :-) The thing is, I am rather busy at the moment (I usually am), and I am in the habit of using tags for problems which I spot; there are usually people better than me at fixing the things I notice. I could try to write a short lead (you said "please", after all), but I have no information beyond what little is in the list, which means that the results will be somewhat uncertain. Waltham, The Duke of 21:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I am honestly sorry, but I cannot help. I have virtually nothing to work on, not the slightest piece of information. In addition, there is only one source, and the link gives an error message. Therefore, not only do I have no choice but to leave the tag until someone with knowledge on the subject comes around, but I must also add an "unreferenced" tag.

There are standards to uphold, Mr/Mrs crassicaudatus... I have done all I could; my work here is done, I am afraid. Waltham, The Duke of 15:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Taking your advice!

{{Talkback|Nancy|Duplicate messages}}

I have replied. Waltham, The Duke of 02:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the nbsp edit

Anyone who wants to tackle the issue, especially outside the US, of when publishers insert nbsp's, and more importantly why, would be a total hero, considering how much people have wrestled with this. Personally, I think the "why" is to keep things from looking odd at the beginning of a line, but I'm open to other interpretations. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea about the practices of publishing houses, but judging from what has been discussed so far, the examples in the section, and what makes sense, I found it prudent to strangle in its cradle the new practice of using hard spaces in constructs like 15 buildings. Granted, that will usually be found in more technical articles and lists, but nevertheless it is an unnecessary complication of the wrapping of text, as well as the edit window.

The beginnings of lines are important as far as hard spaces are concerned (this is, after all, one of the basic arguments in favour of unspaced em dashes), but in our case, keeping together compounds which would make reading significantly harder if separated is also an aim. From where I stand, there is nothing special with seven chairs, where seven is just another adjective. In measurements, however, ending a line with a number without a unit and then starting a line with a stray unit makes for two strange lines, and a broken up compound which is only meaningful united. The guideline is in place to prevent this from happening, and we should not make it look as if we encourage people to fill our articles with gratuitously wrapping-convoluting hard spaces.

That said, there are still cases apart from measurements where hard spaces are useful; this one is an interesting example I came across today. This relies on editorial judgement, however, and the Manual of Style should only make a reference to such cases, and not attempt to strictly regulate them. Waltham, The Duke of 16:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Governance reform

I haven't been following it as clearly as others either, but this is what I can see.

• 1 - Samohyl Jan seems to be completely opposed to any sort of governing bodies, saying direct democracy is the only way, and throwing up any argument he can to oppose all other arguments.
• 2 - Eric Moller in his foundation-I posting seems to be giving the go-ahead to all proposals at the same time, possibly, as I read it, maybe allowing any proposals to be created and function for at least a short time, and then maybe eventually the worse ones die out.
• 3 - Kim is deathly afraid of creeping expansion of power. So am I and a few others, but there's no real agreement on what way would be the best way to avoid that.
• 4 - The proposals by Jc37 and me have gotten a lot less attention, deservedly so in at least the latter case.
• 5 - Hiding says creation of any new body is unnecessary, as ArbCom can officially do all these things anyway. Possibly true, but they seemingly don't want to, so that could/should be resolved.
• 6 - Kim and Hiding both seem to be favoring single proxy systems, although there are difficulties with that as noticed by others.
• 7 - Thomas Larsen's Wikipedia:Guidance Committee seems to be agreed to be too vague to be useful at this point.
• Like I said, I ain't been following the discussion that closely myself, but those seem to be the major points. John Carter (talk) 17:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

There is always room for improvement, Mr Carter, but that does not negate the utility of your comments. Thank you very much for the briefing; it has been most helpful, and I shall attempt to re-enter the discussion at the nearest opportunity. You really are worth every penny, my greedy mercenary. Waltham, The Duke of 09:24, 22 May 2008 (UTC)