User talk:RexxS

Please feel free to leave messages, comments, etc. here for me. I'll do my best to reply to you.

WP:SCUBA Newsletter Issue #1

Welcome Since this is the first issue of the WP:SCUBA Newsletter, I wanted to take a moment to welcome you as a charter member. We are starting a project with the goal of organizing an enormous amount of information, but as participation in WP:SCUBA expands, so will our editing power through collaboration. Please feel free to invite other interested Wikipedians to join our project.

Categorization of WP:SCUBA Articles I believe that we need to adopt a categorization system to begin organizing these articles. Some categories exist, such as Category:Diving equipment, and can be utilized. The end goal should be to have a set of general categories (less than ten I would hope) that can be used to categorize ALL articles that fall under the scope of this project. Subcategories can then be utilized where needed. This will also help us identify where work needs to be done to further the WikiProject as a whole. Please post comments at the bottom of this page and let me know what you think.

Article rating for WP:SCUBA As you are hopefully aware, we place the {{WPSCUBA}} template on the talk page of any article that falls within the scope of WP:SCUBA. It is a standard practice to use the Project Template to rate articles as stub, start, B, GA, A, etc. I invite you to research what is involved in setting up a rating and reporting system for WP:SCUBA as we currently do not rate our articles. This will help us identify the most important articles to our cause, and easily see which articles need the most work. Please feel free to post any questions on my talk page.

YMCA SCUBA It has been my personal goal to start creating articles to cover all of the major scuba diver certification agencies, and categorize them as Category:Diver training agency. On the List of diver training organizations YMCA SCUBA links to YMCA (diving organization), which then redirects to YMCA. The problem is that the YMCA article doesn't discuss their recreational diving program anywhere. I would like to start a separate YMCA Scuba article using the information on their Official Site, and fix the redirect at YMCA (diving organization) to point to the new article. I invite you to post your thoughts and opinions on these actions on my talk page.

Clarification

The citations that Diannaa objected to were the Harvard templates. It's much easier to handcraft the 200 than to put in templates. If they want to put back the Harvard templates it's fine with me - I've opened a thread on the talkpage to that effect. I did try to open discussion with Alarbus and was rebuffed, repeatedly. And I am very very tired of taking the blame for what essentially is a lack of communication and the inability to achieve consensus through discussion. Furthermore, if templated styles are to become the desired "house style" I'd think it would need more advertisement. I'm happy to comply, but I have some strong arguments against if any one were ever interested in listening to a person whose formatted long pages using both styles. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, you've used both templates and raw cites (as have I), but I don't find much difference in ease of writing "{{Harvnb|Reynolds|2000|p=17}}" or "Reynolds (2000), 17–18". What I do find is that with templated cites, I can get error messages alerting me if I make a mistake, and anyone can use a script to check over them – those are desirable features to me. But look, I don't want to rehash that argument. I think it's settled - you ought to have the main say in deciding whether an article employs templates or not if you're the principal editor. Nevertheless, I expect you are willing to listen to other views and weigh them for what they are worth.

I'm sorry your attempt to offer an olive branch to Alarbus was rebuffed. He's just as zealous about proper structure as you are about good prose, and had just spent time talking to Kafka Liz on that subject when Ceoil came along and called him a prick. I can understand his mood at that moment.

More importantly, if I may say so, this sort of argument should never be the sort of thing that Wikipedia loses a valuable editor over - or any editor for that matter. You have the potential to make a lot more contributions, and hopefully to actually enjoy doing that. If you're not enjoying it, take a short break, and come back refreshed. The articles will all still be here. If you still have problems with scripts then, I'd be happy to go through User:Truthkeeper88/monobook.js with you to see where the solution lies.

As for templates, I'm very aware of the problems of editing pages with multiple citation templates, and I sympathise. I only have one FA to my name, Oxygen toxicity, but it has 125 citation templates. You can see my conflicted views in this discussion with SlimVirgin last year at User talk:RexxS/Archive 6#Citation templates. I'm generally a fan of making maintenance easier, but I know that page loading is a nightmare when editing any page with a lot of templates. Until we have a solution like Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Demo of specific proposal, you can be certain that nobody will be rushing to impose a "house style". Anyway, I've not said all that to give ammunition in a dispute, but to try to suggest that there's plenty of common ground if everybody can get onto it. Please do your best to encourage Ceoil to look for cooperation, not conflict. Regards, --RexxS (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I have no clue why the script won't work - I've tried, refreshed (I run Safari), restarted, but it's not running. It does look useful though. Regarding the templates, SlimVirgin removed over 200 harvard templates that I'd added from Ezra Pound because of load time issues. I think there are arguments for using both. I don't have an issue formatting them; each is easy to me. The problem as I see it is that they require citation templates for the targets - and I was really shocked to find how badly those had degraded on Hemingway. On a page with as many as 30 to 40 sources it's much easier to keep track of the sources without the templates and to fix the degradations. It's also easy to copy sources from one page to another for subarticles when the same sources are used. If there were a way to render the harvard style without the use of the citations templates I'd be more of a fan. But I do dislike citation templates; formatting difficult sources is easier without templates in my view. Anyway, that's my take on it. I think Ceoil reacted badly to seeing the olive branch message summarily dismissed. Unfortunately there's not much I can do to restrain a hot-tempered Irishman, but he seems contrite. Truthkeeper (talk) 02:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

TK, might {{wikicite}} be a possibility? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:05, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nikkimaria - I've played with those. I find that a lot of these things work well for books, but when journal articles or book chapters or multiple titles written by the same author in the same year, it's gets a little complicated. I really have thought about this and have found that free-hand is the most flexible. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay. I thought that one was meant for use with freehand, but I've never actually used it myself, so I'll defer to your experience. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:51, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

If you want to get away from citation templates for the full references in a Bibliography/Sources or similar section, you can with a little HTML because {{Harvnb}} generates a link to a target so that (for example) {{Harvnb |Brubakk|Neuman|2003| pp=358–60}} creates a link that looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#CITEREFBrubakkNeuman2003 . Normally you use the |ref= parameter in the citation template (as "harv" or "CITEREFBrubakkNeuman2003" explicitly) to create an anchor (i.e. a target for the link). However, you can write your hand-coded reference and enclose it in <span class="citation book" id="CITEREFBrubakkNeuman2003"> ... </span> or equivalent tags to achieve the same result without the use of templates. Disclaimer: I'm not encouraging the wholescale removal of templates from articles, just suggesting ways of reducing the load time when editing articles with hundreds of templates in them! For what it's worth, the deployment of WP:HLIST will remove massive numbers of templates from navboxes, and do more for editing page load-time for most articles than us struggling to prune citation templates. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Just one other clarification. There were never any broken references on the Hemingway page. It gets a lot of traffic, despite the semi-protection. Since July there have been two Hemingway pages on the main page which pulls a lot into the biography and I tend not to bother to tend when that's happening because it's a time to let people edit. Since July I've put through four FACs, and have had a very busy work schedule and just haven't gotten over to Hemingway to tidy. All that was missing were dates in a few of the refs, and some had been added by other editors and I had to track down the sources - some of that I'm still doing. Anyway, as the main contributor and the person with all the sources, I'd prefer to see these discussions taking place on my page or on the Hemingway talk pages, because people are getting the sequence of events wrong. Honestly I don't think it's right for you and Maunus to be talking about me, or anyone else for that matter, on a page where clearly responses are unwelcome. I'll ask the same thing of him. Thanks for your understanding. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm really sorry I had to mention you, even obliquely, on a page where you couldn't join in. I sincerely hope I did not mischaracterise you in any of my comments there, so please tell me if I did. I trust you understand though, that I was only posting in reaction to Maunus' distortion of reality there; I didn't raise the subject and only replied to correct his errors. I'm afraid I have to differ with your assessment of the state of the references at Ernest Hemingway, as I don't have to look any further than Diannaa's edit on 19 November to see her fixing an invalid ISBN number (0-521-45479-X isn't Cambridge Companion). If you look at the References section in that diff, you'll see no.178 is "Baker, pp. 101–121" which doesn't link to a target because the year is missing (could be 1969, 1972, or 1981). It would seem that some of the Sources (such as Baker 1981) weren't in use as references. Those sort of difficulties would qualify for me as "broken references", although I do accept that others are free to disagree with that phrase. If other editors had been unable to format the refs properly, then gnomes like Diannaa are just the people to find those problems and list those that they cannot fix themselves. I've read and re-read her opening post to Talk:Ernest Hemingway#Citation problems and, try as I might, I just cannot see what was there that deserved such vitriolic responses. If you look through her contributions, it is exactly the sort of cleanup she does all the time, and nobody deserves responses such as these:

• "Diana, offer trivial complaints to sate sour grapes often? listed in the bib but is not referenced in the article. O for fuck sake. Get a life. Such moral superiority and arrogance from a person who has not interest or knowledge of the subject matter. You are the enemy, you are the problem; an admin who is now persuing an editor from bitterness over a seperate and equally trivial argument. Nice."
• "Your just cross fire TK, dont worry about these pricks. The edits were even unnessary; biblo does not equal sources."

Truthfully, that sort of rhetoric (complete with elementary grammatical and spelling errors) only serves to drive divisions between editors - and the ignorance of the importance of Bibliography to Harvard referencing is breathtaking. Ceoil obviously looks to you as a role-model and friend. I really hope you can somehow explain to him that the only enemies on Wikipedia are the ones we create in our own minds – we have all taken up this hobby with the same purpose of building an encyclopedia "in an atmosphere of collegiality, camaraderie, and mutual respect among contributors." Regards, --RexxS (talk) 01:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

A couple of things, and then I think we should let this go, but I appreciate your point-of-view. First, as you know, it spilled over from another page. Second, of the 10 points Diannaa raised, 5 were sources that other editors placed on the page - not placed there by myself. I felt attacked by Diannaa's comments. Is there a rule that I have to drop what I'm doing (and I was working up another page which I haven't been able to return to since) to move a source from the article to bib? Could she not have done that? Of the other five points, most would have been easy to sort by a quick sortie to WorldCat to see what's what. That editors who work on these large pages are stuck with constant maintenance like a millstone is not something I realized when I wrote the page, but is something that will prevent me from writing other such pages, despite my content knowledge and expertise. Which is a shame. As for Ceoil - please bear in mind that spelling mistakes often have more than one cause. I can't put a leash on him, and won't. But I will ask him to tone it down a bit, if that helps. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, a request coming from you is likely to be worth a hundred leashes (lashes???). I have a reasonable grasp of sourcing and access to a decent library, so if you're snowed under at any time, I'd be happy to help out in any way I can. --RexxS (talk) 01:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll talk to him when I'm back. I've decided to take a break. I've been thinking about all of this, and it's ironic that it started with something to do with accessibility which I honestly have a great understanding of for a variety of reasons. I have fairly bad vision, had an unsuccessful eye surgery last year, which combined with severe astigmatism when letters look like this, make editing in an edit window very difficult. Curly brackets all blend together for me. In long citation templates I can't make out one field from the next. So that's my story. Anyway, I think I need to be gone from Wikipedia for awhile. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Template talk:TFLcontent

Template talk:TFLcontent, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template talk:TFLcontent and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Template talk:TFLcontent 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. Bulwersator (talk) 17:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hat

Thanks! Hold on to it for now, please, and I'll get back to you about it. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe someone who lives in or near Manchester can hold on to it and I can see them sometime to collect it. Or maybe someone can post it to me: if you let me know who has actually got it I can email my address to them. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hehe - sorry James, that was a joint effort using Julia's mobile and was brief. It turns out that Harry had been sitting on your hat. Boing! said Zebedee (talk · contribs · logs) as a responsible local took charge of it and promised to get it back to you. Give him a poke when he gets back from the meetup. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I must remember to find ways of getting back at Harry, like trying to get him desysopped or something. JamesBWatson (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, we'll just get him elected to ArbCom next year - that's a far worse fate. --RexxS (talk) 22:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hah, I second that idea! Nice to see you both yesterday, hope you had good journeys home. the wub "?!" 20:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	Your BEANS edit at ANI was funny SPhilbrickT 18:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

My warning came too late --RexxS (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

LDR fan here

Just a shout out because I see you are a fan of LDR. They are obviously far from perfect, but I'm using them on articles I start, and occasionally converting some existing articles.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I've always been amazed that anyone would think that writing out an entire reference in the middle of the article content was a "good idea". I try to use sensible names for the named references: author_last_name-year-page is currently my favourite as it allows me to match up any Harvard referencing quickly as well. The only caution I'd urge is that some editors consider the upgrade to LDRs to be a "change of style" and therefore a forbidden change (while in fact they are merely a variation of the implementation of a given style). I've found it's not worth having an argument about, as there's always another article where improvements will be welcomed! Regards --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Your warning is too late :) I got my hand slapped here, so now I propose at the talk page, and wait a little longer to see if there's objection. My biggest accomplishment was Reelin with almost a couple hundred refs.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Hehe - at least Dabomb understood and it turned out right in the end. Reelin is an excellent advert for LDR, and I'm jealous as that's a much bigger job than my biggest (Oxygen toxicity). If you're still familiar with the refs at Reelin, check out the References section as I think some extraneous duplicate named refs are in there? I'm not sure, so I won't mess, but I'm guessing a bot probably consolidated a few dupes. --RexxS (talk) 15:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Nice work on Oxygen toxicity, which, being a featured article, can be used as a nice club positive example if there's pushback. I'm still sorting out how I feel about a canonical ref naming convention, have taken a more eclectic approach so far, but will take a look at your suggestions and see if it works for me. I haven't looked closely at reelin recently, will take a look to check out dupe refs.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I may not be following what you mean when you referred to dupes in Reelin. My original interpretation was that a reference to a single article was listed as two difference references, with different reference names. I sorted all the refs by title, and I believe every title is unique. I reread your comment, and now think I'm not quite getting it. I realize it was some time ago you looked at this, but if you could give me an example, either real or hypothetical, it would help me search for problems.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

They were cleaned up in this edit just after we'd discussed it. The named refs were like this: <ref name="pmid18319075"/> and a few had crept in among the full refs in the References section (usually a sign that a bot has consolidated duplicates), whereas named refs should never be in that section, only the list of full references. All fixed now, so nothing to worry about :) Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 01:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh good, I was worried I was either missing something or not understanding. Glad it was cleaned up.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 02:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Frohliche Weinachten und Gluckliches neues Jahr

Christbaumschmuck an einer Nordmanntanne (fotografiert in Baden-Wurttemberg, Deutschland)

Photo from Baden_Wurttemberg, Germany.PumpkinSky talk 12:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Viele Dank' mein Freund! --RexxS (talk) 12:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Bill Gaede

Thanks for attempting to assist me with the Bill Gaede article.

It turned out that the IP user who was reverting Gaede's article was not addressing my replies and attempts to find common ground in discovering a policy by which we may guide out edits with on the talk page, but rather just reposting the same thing as if I had not replied: as you can see Though the page appears to have been cleaned by Nohomers48.

As the IP user doesn't seem to have any criticism, besides his distaste for the content, I second Nohomers48's reply. The sources used are completely adequate for the claims made in the article in question, e.g. YouTube is a primary source in the claim that Gaede's ideas have been proliferated via. the internet, and so forth.

Best Wishes Alexoneill (talk) 21:21, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to drop by. I'm really pleased that the article has settled down now; it's strange sometimes that you get editors who just won't communicate.

You probably already know, but always be careful in citing YouTube because the content there is all too often uploaded without the copyright holder's permission, and we are prohibited from linking to external content which violates copyright. In this case, it would be reasonable to assume that it is the author who is uploading his own content, so it shouldn't present a problem. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 01:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Accessibility request

Hi RexxS, could you take a look at User:Crisco 1492/List of Ministers of Justice of Indonesia and give me some input on how to best meet the accessibility requirement for Featured List? I've tried fixing the table but... Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Crisco - I've made some edits to the table (hope that's ok) and left edit summaries for each step, so you can go through the diffs to see what I did. Please feel free to chop, change, revert what I did, as it's only meant to be illustrative. At least you can see how the ideas of table caption, column and row headers, and css styling can be implemented, even if you want to use them in a different way. Hope that helps, and please feel free to ping me if I can do anything else for you. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 15:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#List markup

Flatlist, or maybe hlist. Alarbus (talk) 16:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks a lot, both of you. I'm not very strong on WikiTables (I try and avoid them, for the same reason), but sometimes... Anyhow, thanks. I'll take a look at those links later. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:57, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		This is awarded to RexxS for seeking to make Wikipedia a kinder place FClef (talk) 03:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for being a "white knight". I agree with your comments and have responded on the Adoption category Talk page. Enjoy your New Year. FClef (talk) 03:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Ouch!

Ouch, Rex, the nerdspeak is defeating me again. Just look at the last section header in the TOC on my talk, would you? It doesn't lead to anything. And then there's the mystery category the page has been placed in. Two connected weirdnesses, possibly? I went to the category page and read the explanation of what the cat is for, so now I definitely don't understand. Help, please? No great urgency, for once (as long as you don't mind listening to my desolate sobs over the desecration of my page). Happy new year! Bishonen | talk 20:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC).

(talk page stalker) It's a copy of WP:STFU that's messing it up. The see also section and template that added the category are from that. Regards, Buggie111 (talk) 21:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Buggie. You hatted a chunk of stuff, chère, but inside it was a level two heading See also. That makes an entry in your TOC which has nowhere to go to while that chunk is collapsed. I've nowiki'ed the heading for you, so your TOC has now resumed its usual state of awesomeness. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 03:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

P.S. The {{essay}} template with three parameters caused the "Category:Wikipedia shortcut box first parameter needs fixing", so I've nowiki'ed that as well. If I were you, I'd archive that section as soon as possible. --RexxS (talk) 03:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both. I don't know how I got so stupid. Copypasting a whole article without a care in the world! I despair, I really do. Why archive in a hurry though? Are the templates still leaking something toxic? (I just archived the whole shootingmatch less than two weeks ago. I like the page long. :-() Bishonen | talk 13:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC).

Having articles in your talk page is a magnet for bots and admin wannabees to come along and "clean things up" blindly. You'll have your page nominated for deletion before you know what's happened.

A little known fact is that all articles contain midi-chlorians, which surround and permeate the whole Main Space, binding it together. If the little buggers get loose in the other name spaces, you never know what they'll get up to. Archiving that one section would be a kindness. --RexxS (talk) 14:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Young man, you have been reported to WP:ANI for saying "bugger". AdminWannabe ^BITE. 15:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC).

http://newcastleupontyne.tripod.com/geordie.html#B refers, canny lass. --RexxS (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Back

Copy of my note to Bishonen: Dear RexxS, It's OK, I'm feeling better, I'm back. Mightily cheered and surprised to receive this. Thanks again for help; I will still be bringing you various qs in 2012. Have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. FClef (talk) 00:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Houston Texans Pro Bowl FLC

I've added images, and replied to your other comments. Mind explaining the whole span=col thing, please? I'm not really that keen on it. Buggie111 (talk) 04:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It's really just a way of making absolutely sure that screen readers for the visually impaired identify the column and row headers in a table. There's a good description of how JAWS (screen reader), one of the most popular ones, can make use of headers to assist navigation in any direction through a table at http://www.freedomscientific.com/Training/Surfs-up/Tables.htm and it's worth a look if you want to know why we mark up tables in that way. I've marked up the column headers with scope="col" for the 2003 table, so if you just need to see how to mark them up, there's an example for you. To be honest, the visually impaired gain very little from headers in short tables, although it's good practice to mark them up properly anyway. If you decide to create one large table for all the years, then the headers would become much more valuable. I'll revisit the article and the FLC anyway after others have had a chance to comment because I suspect that there may be pressure to provide a single list. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Is WP:FAR an overseas territory of Wikipedia Review?

Hi, Rex. You're being referred to, indirectly and directly, here. Bishonen | talk 17:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC).

Comedians. I wonder if he was referring to me in the sense of "work-shy" or "unpiloted"? - or even "monotonic"? Can't say I'm terribly impressed with any of them, but then again, I'm far too mild to reply in kind. Pity we didn't get Famously to do the job in the first place. --RexxS (talk) 00:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I can understand that the delegates are worried about the shortage of reviewers at FAR, and don't want to lose any. But I still don't understand how they can be so keen to placate and retain somebody that counterproductively belligerent. Perhaps the Relapse FAR is uncharacteristic or something, I haven't studied the OP's other nominations. Let's hope so, because potential new reviewers will surely shy off from all that FUD. Except Darwinbish, I suppose... there's a thought. She might fit right in. Bishonen | talk 01:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC).