User talk:Mav

User Talk for maveric149

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If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it (score = 82).
Problem now is, sleeping has switched from a full (i.e. normal) to part time occupation.... oh well - you only live once, there's plenty of time to rest later...

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Older messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4, talk archive 5, talk archive 6, talk archive 7, talk archive 8, talk archive 9, talk archive 10, talk archive 11, talk archive 12, talk archive 13, talk archive 14

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Thanks! It's good to be home. --Brion 07:23, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Graculus is refusing to believe that talk of creating a History of Germany-style series predated his involvement on the page. It would be great if you could tell him otherwise. Hours of back and forward sniping on the talk page demonstrate that he won't believe me. 172 12:59, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Now that Lir/PP has agreed to shift to a new persona on the Village Pump page, I redirected his temp page to User talk:Pizza Puzzle/New Imperialism (temp). Would you like to list New Imperialism (temp) on the VFD page? I can’t do this myself since there might be suspicions that Lir/PP is being victimized. 172 06:57, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It is a redirect of a page that existed long enough for Google to index it. Per policy it stays. --mav

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Hi Mav. You are listed as having expressed an opinion on whether or not Daniel C. Boyer should be deleted. Can you please turn that opinion into a formal vote? Go to Talk:Daniel C. Boyer. Thanks. -- Tim Starling 09:52, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)

Done. --mav

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New Imperialism

Mav, I know I had a shout at you earlier, sorry about that, but we need to get New Imperialism into some sort of order. The vote decided to have a link from the current version to Pizza Puzzel's version. I think we should uphold this vote by including the link and protecting the page (as much as I hate protecting pages). What do you think? CGS 11:15, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Angela just changed her vote - thus the "list temp" option no longer has a majority. That, combined with the fact that the major complaint against the NI article was its excessive length (which has now been addressed) nullifies a need for any temp page. Simply use the text on those pages as a resource to add more info to NI and its daughter articles. I see no need for a fork of the article at this point and I really don't see the need with protecting NI. --mav

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Textbook project

Hello Mav- just been looking at the wiki textbook project- I'm not clear of the point of this project or how it will differ from wikipedia- won't there be lots of content duplication (then divergence as people edit one but not the other) which is needless? I've got horrible visions of having to re-do all the pages I've done on various aspects of organic gardening for example, which would seem to be appropriate content for a textbook on the subject? Hopefully you can clarify this for me (guess this should go on a talk page at the textbook wiki, but I havn't created a log in there as yet....)quercus robur 11:54, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There's really a textbook Wiki project? I heard that term thrown around thinking that it was only said in a facetious manner. 172 12:03, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There's a link to it at the top of the recent changes page, under 'sister projects' I think quercus robur

Actually it's on the 'recent changes for' line as 'textbooks' quercus robur

Textbooks organize and present information in a very different way than an encyclopedia - esp a non-linear hypertext encyclopedia such as Wikipedia. A Wikipedia article is also supposed to be fairly well self contained and hardly ever part of a sequence. The scope of a Wikipedia article is also supposed to be general - history, uses and all sorts of controversial views on a subject are thrown-in along with a description of the subject. A textbook treatment of the subject will often be more specific - just the description and use with maybe a couple lines given to the history and controversy (think of how a medical textbook would treat the subject of abortion, for example).

Also, a textbook is a, well, book. The Wikipedia software doesn't allow for the creation of Wikibooks, but it can be modified to do so. However, we do not want to have books within Wikipedia - it is completely counter to the non-linear approach of encyclopedias in general and highly hypertext encyclopedias like Wikipedia in particular. Thus a separate wiki is needed since we have special software needs.

A textbook also has the goal of leading a student through particular aspects of subjects in a themed manor and through a particular sequence; there is a specific goal and order in mind. A Wikipedia article has the general goal of presenting all major aspects of a topic - no particular underlying theme or focus.Textbooks also have practice problems and answer guides. Also, in addition to textbooks we also want to create Wikified and annotated source texts (such as the Works of Shakespeare. NOTE: most non-navigational wiki links would go to Wikipedia articles - we do not want to recreate Wikipedia). Hosting complete source texts is really inappropriate for Wikipedia - that is not the role of an encyclopedia.

Wikipedia will be one, perhaps our largest, source of text; but that text will need to be boiled down, re-factored, and placed into a particular sequence. See m:Talk:Science Hypertextbook project for background, Textbook planning, and our Staff lounge (our version of the Village pump). --mav

OK I see where you are coming from, but wouldn't it be more energy economical to create the textbook project within the existing wikipedia, ie, by creating contents pages that link to already existing high quality articles and considering these as 'textbook' contents pages rather than creating a whole new project, which, to be honest, I would find it far to exhausting to recreating the articles I've already submitted to wikipedia and would find far too convoluted to retrace in history terms. I always liked the idea of 'books within books' and always had in mind the idea of creating a definitive encyclopedia of information pertinent to organic gardening and farming WITHIN wiki which is why one of my longer term projects, List of organic gardening and farming topics, is modelled around various existing organic gardening encylopedias i have at home. Rather than reproducing wikipedia content, wouldn't it make more sense to create a 'textbook' structure within the existing wikipedia that creates contents pages that link to pertinent content rathe rthan building a whole new encylopedia? (and will only confuse the average info-seeking web searcher?) quercus robur

Again, a textbook is not an encyclopedia. People do not study encyclopedias to go through subjects - that is just way to tedious and there simply is way too much info in an encyclopedia article (again, think about the medical textbook/abortion example). And the extra work you speak of is exactly what is needed to make a textbook useful - the goal and focus of a textbook is different and incompatible with the goal and focus of an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias but it is not a textbook. The average info-seeker will not be confused by the difference between an encyclopedia and a textbook. But this is all a moot point since the project exists and is gaining speed. It also has the full support of Jimbo for the very reasons I already mentioned. --mav

OK, I'm not saying we shouldn't have a textbook project or anything, just that it would be good if there were a way of integrating existing wiki articles that would be suitable rather than having to move stuff by hand into the textbook project, re-upload graphics, etc. Do you know if this would be posible (or desirable?) quercus robur 09:47, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Re-loading graphics may be an issue (as it is already between different Wikipedia language versions), but copying and pasting text should be easy - just make sure to note in the edit summary that the text adapted from Wikipedia article x and if there is a lot of material from Wikipedia then a mention on the book's author's page with link-backs to the articles would be good. --mav

Hail, mighty and powerful Oz

I submit once again a request for assistance from the puissant and knowledgable Mav. There are two articles, one thalassaemia, and one thalassemia (the former being a British spelling, the latter American. I edited thalassemia, and now it crashes my browser...I can't view it. I'm assuming this is either because I've accidently put something squirrelly in the article, or the mark-up is now too complicated to handle for my puny browser. I wonder if you would look at it and see if you have the power to make it work... then perhaps I can correct/merge the thing. -- Someone else 22:07, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Does it work now? If not then my bag of magic is empty. :( --mav

Not for me. Are you successfully able to view both those articles? If so, I'm reasonably content that I haven't done something seriously bad, and can live with a buggy browser, and I can don my ruby slippers and go home.... -- Someone else 22:22, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's strange - I don't have any problem viewing either article (Konqueror 3.1). Sounds like something to list at Wikipedia:Browser issues. I'll merge the articles for you. --mav

Yeah, it's getting on to be time to replace my aging computer. Thanks for your help, I appreciate it a lot. -- Someone else 22:34, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think I found the problem; <sup>o</sub> is probably what was causing your browser to crash. Try it now. --mav

Setting my prefs here to turn off page caching seems to help, I've now seen the page at least once. The greek letters aren't showing up properly, but it beats crashing<G>! Thanks again. -- Someone else 08:09, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No, still crashing, I think it's me running out of either memory or disc space :( -- ah, well, I'm just holding on till the new Macs are shipping, I hope this thing makes it till next month :) -- Someone else 22:43, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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(btw, 35k on this page). I'm sure other countries have weather forecast services. Even if the US has the only hurricane centre (I would have thought SE Asia had something), US is still more appropriate to indicate where we are talking about.

I realise that it is possible that Radiojon checked that there were no other national weather services or hurricane centres before chosing his title, so I may have done him a disservice by assuming US-centricity.

However, about 90% of the articles that do not identify the country they are talking about are US (UK responsible for most of rest, Canada never), so I may have jumped to conclusions. Jim.

(copy reply to Radiojon) I may have jumped the gun by assuming US-centricity, but I would still maintain that it is not obvious to a non-American that an article called National Weather Service is going to refer to just the US, rather than national weather services in general, or to the weather service of another country. Jim

I didn't realise that it should have been United States rather than US - apologies

That is why you check in the article - that info is in there. It is a proper noun - thus the capitalization. Nobody is going to confuse that with the general topic of national weather services. I'm moving the articles back - "US" is just plain wrong anyway - if anything it would be "United States" but that sounds weird. If and when another "National Weather Service" turns-up that we want an article on then we can think about disambiguation options. --mav

Nyala

Hi Mav, could you please look at the taxo-box at Nyala? I'm not sure about the species and the binomial name. I based the classification on http://www.chaffeezoo.org/animals/nyala.html , but I've never been very good at biology. -- JeLuF 19:07, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It looks good - since we have a place for the binomial name already we only list the actual species name. --mav

Template syntax

Remember the template system I told you about? I'm now working on the syntax details. What do you think of the following syntax for transcluding templates:

|Country table
|Name=>Germany
|Population => 80 million
|Flag => Germany-Flag.png
|Anthem =>
|
|Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
|für das deutsche Vaterland...
|____

Explanations:

1. The template is defined as a block whose every line starts with an "|", and whose last line ends with "|__" (or any number of underscores greater than two).
2. The first line defines the page from the Template: namespace that will be transcluded as a template, with the keys/values substituted accordingly.
3. Keys/values are separated with the "=>" sequence (single spaces before and after the sequence are trimmed).
4. Values can be multi-line.

If there is only one key to pass, it might be useful to do a call by value without any name:

|Image,left
|Stars.jpg
|__

Reasoning:

I thought about using a HTML syntax, but I wanted something that is quick, not too confusing and which lets the template stand out from the normal wikisource. The syntax proposed above should accomplish this; the only downside might be the need to type "|" before every line (but then again, templates probably shouldn't be used for very large texts anyway).—Eloquence 20:09, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)

I have to say that I really liked the thought of using :: because it is just so damn easy to type ([SHIFT], press right pinky finger; what could be easier than that?). I always have a hard time reaching the | character without looking (same for the underscore character). IMO, ::, is more wiki. Also to separate subheads from data, how about this;

::Template:Country::
::Name::Germany
::Population::80 million
::Flag::Germany-Flag.png
::Anthem::Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit für das deutsche
::/Template:Country::

--mav

I'm not sure how valid any keyboard layout based arguments are, given the vast differences in these layouts across countries. The | is usually a bit harder to reach than more common characters, though. My problem with the double-colons is that they're really hard on the eyes -- they look like bird droppings and they do not stand out from regular text. I'm afraid this will lead to readability problems when used with text that has colons in it. Some templates might make the table cell names themselves values that can be changed, so you would end up with something like

::Caption:Size of Wikipedia:
::Field:Size:

The | may be harder to type, but that's the only way to get its advantage -- a relatively unusual character that stands out, and which is also a good separator because pairs of it form a straight line. That's my rationale at least. Hmhmhm.—Eloquence

It's not that big of a deal since both the :: and the | are much better than HTML. I'm more concerned with results than process. --mav

Resource for day pages

Mav, There's a very new and I think promising site for birth/death date confirmation that you may want to give a try (you'll want the "This day in history" report.) It'll tend toward the distantly historical and European, but give it a shot and see what you think. -- Someone else 12:15, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's pretty neat - thanks. --mav

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No, I was talking about the vote on dynamic content. Who do you think would support temp 4 but not temp 5? It took me a long time to update temp5, so I'm really annoyed, but I understand why we shouldn't use it yet.LDan 19:07, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The whole "vote" was done in a very wrong way and will have to be re-done correctly. The "results" are very confusing and can be interpreted in several different ways - that isn't good at all. --mav

I've created a new opinion poll - solely for temp5 vs current main. You're all welcome to vote :) Martin 21:32, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

__TOCHERE__

What do you think, should I go ahead and implement the __TOCHERE__ feature? The advantage would be that we could put TOCs inside DIVs, and thereby alter some of their properties, esp. width and float, or put them inside other tables. One possible disadvantage is that people might start adding __TOCHERE__ on top because they don't like the post-intro placement. Hmm.—Eloquence 06:09, Aug 5, 2003 (UTC)

Well they can already put the TOC on top by creating a bloody ==Definition/Intro== heading. It would be nice to put a TOC in a div as an option though (but the default position should be as it is now). --mav

I like the idea of a div option; sure people will put it on top from time to time but that can be fixed (an addition to the style guide might be in order). (BTW mav you're up to 43k) - Hephaestos 06:14, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Dear mav, i've been organizing the List of people pages, putting links to years, connecting them to anniversaries pages, deleting duplicates etc. Somebody told me that the years in the lists are not supposed to be linked. Is there any page i can see for refference about what i should/shouldnt do, say a wiki project? With the search engine down i can't find anything. And by the way, do you think this is a waste of time? Cheers, Muriel Gottrop 07:37, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No WikiProject I'm aware of (although Historical anniversaries is an informal WikiProject). I don't know why somebody would object to your linking of years in lists - it seems to make them more useful. Maybe it is a style issue - Please give me an example of a page you worked on. --mav

Ac, and the aa, ab and half of ad (i started from the beggining). Well, it's dull work but a lot better than play freecell in the middle of PhD :) Muriel

Heh. :) There is nothing wrong with that page except for the replacement of "born" with "b." (which is less clear - esp for dyslexics like me). Unless somebody can point you to a set of agreed-upon guidelines, then I say continue. --mav

Okay, let me now if you "hear" something about it... Muriel

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Thank you for approving my sysop status. It is sincerely appreciated. Mintguy 22:24, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No problemo. :) --mav

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It's that link table problem I mentioned at Wikipedia:Village pump (now Wikipedia talk:Software updates). I should really fix that... After you undelete a page, you should edit it to trigger the link table update code. -- Tim Starling 04:08, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks - I thought I was going nuts after I looked at the deletion log and only saw one entry for Boyer. --mav

Mav, I understand your concern but considering that the said person (I won't say gentleman, as that would insult to gentlemen, of which you are one) has called me rascist, anti-semitic, bigoted and presumably through stupidity took quotes I used to get a genuine anti-semite banned and interpreted them as my views on the person I described in farmyard terms, calling him that term was pretty reserved and controlled. My main worry is not that I may have offended him (type two letters together and he reads some insult into it) but that I cruelly and unfairly libelled an entire animal species by associating them with him. In any case his behaviour does more damage to wiki than a thousand farmyard references. wikilove, FearÉIREANN 10:08, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Mav, why did you remove 1998 U.S. embassy bombings from the main page? Chadloder 18:53, Aug 7, 2003 (UTC)

It is a stub. I'm going to work on expanding Aug 7 and Aug 6 tonight and I'll also be updating all the events listed in Aug 6 and 5 tonight and will add more entries to the Anniv section tonigh as well. --mav

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Mav, RE: the "Don Mullins" entry, all of the information there was taken from his own biography which is wrote for the former "Far From Kansas" web page. Likely is is just paranoid about his sexuality being literally published for anyone to see because, as I recall, he was super-paranoid about his personal life. But everything there he openly discussed at FFK performances, so I don't think Wikipedia is any sort of legal danger. He's probably just trying to sound big and mighty to protect himself. *shrug* It's not like he's so very famous that the deletion of his entry in the Wikipedia would be some horrible loss, so I suppose the discretion is entirely up to you. -EB-