User talk:Makyen

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Archives: Index, Index, 1, 2, 3: 90 days

Archives

This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by when more than 2 sections are present.

Moving talk page archives

I saw what you did on Talk:HIV/AIDS. Talk:Comparison of American and British English has the same problem. If you could move the archives on that one too, that would be great. →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 09:52, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done.

If you want me to do more of these it would be easier for me do the moves prior to fixing the "MiszaBot/config" to point to the correct page name. Doing the moves after changing the template (and having lowercase sigmabot III perform an archive move) makes it such that the last page needs to be merged instead of moved. A merge is significantly more work and results in the edit history being left at the old page name. Alternately, the "MiszaBot/config" could be pointed to the correct page name and the "count" argument incremented so that a new page number is used. Moving the pages prior to correcting the "MiszaBot/config" is a bit cleaner, and probably preferred. Makyen (talk) 00:23, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll keep that in mind. Thank you. →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 00:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chaos at User talk:Hassocks5489

Hi Makyen – thanks for your note; I was going to reply this evening to ask for some help if you wouldn't mind! I set up the archiving years ago (or maybe somebody set it up for me) and to be honest I wouldn't know what to do. Any guidance you can provide would be much appreciated! Cheers, Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 16:35, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That looks perfect – many thanks! I imagine Cluebot will sweep through in due course and archive stuff between May and 90 days ago (is that right?). I'll just add a note at the top to say that pre-August 2008 threads are all on the User talk:Hassocks5489/Archives/2008/August page, in case anybody ever needs to dig back that far and look for anything! Thanks again, Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 21:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Could you drop the text on my talk page, and the list of spurious pages, and I'll pick it up from there. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 22:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	Just to say thanks for your hard work over several days to diagnose and fix these problems. Everything looks fine now! Best, Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 13:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

ClueBot III

Thanks for bringing the error of ClueBot III to my attention. Unfortunately, I only know how to sort out ClueBot settings and not MizaBot settings. I guess nobody has really shown me how to set the MizaBot for archiving. Adamdaley (talk) 00:56, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier this year I did try having my talkpage archived with ClueBot III. I find that doing the ClueBot III is easier than the MizaBot. Adamdaley (talk) 02:42, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Smartphone display lists

I withdrew the AFD and boldly did some changes to List of mobile phones with HD display to bring it up to "proper" standards. ViperSnake151 Talk 01:38, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you (belatedly). I like the changes. Makyen (talk) 22:28, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You

Thanks for fixing my talk archives. Would've have never figured that one out on my own -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"RE:Help! I Need Somebody. Help! Not Just Anybody. Help! You Know I Need Someone. Heelp!"

Hello, Makyen. You have new messages at Marchjuly's talk page.
Message added 14:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Makyen. You have new messages at HitroMilanese's talk page.
Message added 12:38, 20 December 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Hitro talk 12:38, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Makyen. You have new messages at Template talk:MonthlyArchive.
Message added 17:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The difference between × and x

Hi. I see that only after you changed several dozen pages that you got around to updating the Manual of Style, and then quickly reverted yourself. We use the multiplication sign for both multiplication and (pixel) array dimensions. For example, in the 1024×768 screen resolution, there are 786,432 pixels. You get that number by multiplying the two numbers. Are you going to go back and undo all your recent edits, please? Wbm1058 (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am going back and reviewing all my edits. Those that are in error will be fixed (there are some, but most are correct). However, I will be re-reviewing all of them.

Yes, I reverted a change to MOS specifically in the discussion of dimensions. After making some changes, I realized that some of the changes had modified dimensions which I needed to go back and fix. Looking briefly at the MOS, the statements in multiple sections appeared contradictory. A first attempt at rectifying that was not thought through sufficiently which was why I reverted it. I will be editing the various sections of the MOS pages to actually reflect the consensus reached in the archives of the talk pages.

I had to go to the archives of the talk page to determine what was actually reached as the consensus (2007).

The MOS is currently unclear and has multiple potentially conflicting statements. From reading WP:MOS#Units of measurement and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Conventions there is an implication that the "×" (×) symbol is to be used for dimensions. However, only if it was written as "1920 pixels × 1200 pixels", or "1920 px × 1200 px" not "1920 × 1200", or "1920×1200". WP:MOS#Common mathematical symbols and WP:DATE#Common mathematical symbols state that the unspaced "x" is an abbreviation for "by" and that "4x4" is a correct way to write it, not "4 x 4".

Looking back at the original discussion, which was specifically about arrays of pixels (e.g. 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, or 64x64) the consensus was actually that either: "16x16", "16x16 pixels" or "16 × 16 pixels" were acceptable. However, "16 x 16" and "16×16" were not acceptable.

Prior to making any more changes, or reverting the ones I have already made, I was to do some more reading to determine if there were further discussions on this topic. I will probably quickly go through the changes I made to see which ones are clearly wrong. From memory, these were changes from clearly wrong to also clearly wrong. Makyen (talk) 05:00, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be specific, "1024×768" is one of the formats that was specifically not acceptable. If you were multiplying the pixels then it would be: 1024 × 768 = 786,432 pixels. If you were writing that you had a screen that was of those dimentions, it would be "1024x768", "1024x768 pixels", "1024 × 768 pixels", or "1024 px × 768 px", but not "1024×768". Makyen (talk) 05:06, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I should have been a bit more clear. The "1024 × 768 pixels" format was decided as acceptable in the original discussion, but subsequent discussions on dimensions indicate that it is not acceptable to have only one statement of the units when using the "×" (×) symbol. Makyen (talk) 05:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your diligence in attempting to determine historical consensus on this matter, but you probably should have re-raised the issue on the MOS talk pages before boldly editing in a manner that seems to have changed a defacto consensus. You're going back to a discussion that's over six years old, and consensus can change over time. I only see one link where you referenced a past discussion, please correct me if there are more that I missed. Note that even the Four-wheel drive article uses the multiplication sign, even though multiplication isn't applicable in that context, and that usage has stood uncontested for several months. See:

Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 16:51, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In retrospect, I can see that there is a need to re-open the discussion regarding the formats used for this representation and that it might have been better to have that discussion prior to making changes. I will start such a discussion later today. After looking into it last night, prior to getting some sleep, it appeared the current usage had migrated such that "×" was being used in that manner in a significant number of places. This was even though using "×", without units on both numbers and spaces, is one of the formats which is explicitly stated as not to be used.

I did not include any additional links here because I am/was still in the process of looking through the history and wanted to get a response to you in a reasonable time-frame. The one link I did include appears to be the original genesis for the "4x4" text. I included it here, to a large extent, because that discussion was explicitly about arrays of pixels. The fact that the text on the MOS happens to say "4x4", which we all associate with Four-wheel drive, appears to be an artifact of the text chosen for the wording. I will provide additional links here later as finding all such discussions is a prerequisite to opening up the discussion again.

I have been considering reverting my edits pending such discussion. My problem with doing so is that the use of "×", in the form that I changed (i.e. without units on both numbers and spaces; e.g. "1920×1200"), is one that is explicitly stated as not to be used and was consistently objected to in all of the discussions on this topic. The primary objection being that "×" is the symbol for multiplication which leads to possible confusion as to how "1920×1200" is intended to be read. In reviewing my edits there definitely were cases where the use of "×" was confusing and could have been intended to indicate multiplication instead of "by".

I did go through all of my edits and changed a some of them back to using "×". My criteria for doing so was the requirement for both A) units to be specified for all numbers, and B) spaces to be used. This included some tables where the units were specified in the header but the actual text in the table did not have units (e.g. "1920 × 1200" where the header states "x (px) × y (px)"). A good number where spaces were used were changed to "1920x1200" where using units on all numbers was clunky, or inconsistent with usage throughout the rest of the article. In the interim, If you have articles where these changes are of particular concern to you, please tell me.

I will probably not start the discussion until late tonight as I have some things that really must be done today. Makyen (talk) 22:21, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, take your time. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness about this. This type of MOS stuff can sometimes get heatedly contentious (prime example is the hyphens and dashes) and I don't want to go there. I'm fine with waiting until a firmer consensus is confirmed before going back to fix any articles. Cheers, Wbm1058 (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yeah, I am hoping that it will not be that contentious 8-). However, I do look forward to more clarity as a result of the discussion.

As it turns out, I significantly underestimated the amount of time I need to spend on some issues in real life. I am about at the end of what I should do without any sleep. If I can catch a few hours sleep now, I should be able to get to this after the workday. However, I will need to see if I am reasonably up to snuff in the evening tonight. If not, I will try to catch a few additional hours of sleep and get to it late tonight (Friday). Makyen (talk) 12:31, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just mentioning something to consider when you find the time. See MOS:BASE, where 0x (zero-ex) is used for hexadecimal numbers. It's nice, in articles using both hex and array dimensions, to have "x" for hex and "×" for arrays. For example Timeline of DOS operating systems, which is the article that by far I've put the most work into, uses both extensively, albeit never in the same timeline elements. Think how redundant it would be to put pixels or even px on every single one of those video resolution arrays. It should be obvious from the context that it's referring to pixels. In the first usage, I do spell it out and use wikilinks: "720×350-pixel display resolution". After that it's no longer necessary to spell out pixel or link to it. Regards, Wbm1058 (talk) 17:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing me to the Timeline of DOS operating systems article. Both a good example where × is being used and an interesting article. I was aware of the basics of what went down during the time, but not in that detail.

I had not considered the issue with hex. Overall, the problem is the overloading the "x" symbol, and now the "×" symbol. Overloading the "x" arises from the days when ASCII, or earlier, was the limit of the character set available. The fact that "x" was available directly on keyboards, and thus its ease of use, continues to contribute significantly to this overloading.

Ultimately, I think the primary issue is that it not be possible for a reasonable reader (or even a somewhat unreasonable one) to be confused about what information is intended to be conveyed. At a minimum this needs to be the case within any single article. I would hope that it also would be the case across multiple articles where the reader might be clicking through links.

As to the Timeline of DOS operating systems article specifically: All of the uses of "×" — I'm definitely going to have the alt-0215 memorized by the time I done with this — are in prose. I would strongly consider using " by " in at least the first, if not all of the locations which currently use "×". For a naive reader, this would make it more understandable. This would leave "×" available to be used exclusively as the multiplication symbol elsewhere in the article. From my brief look at the article, there appears to be at least one instance where you are effectively performing multiplication, but not leading the reader through the calculation. So that you can take a look at what I am attempting to get across, I am going to edit the article to show this. Feel free to revert/edit it if you don't like the change (My edit really is mostly to help communicate what I am saying in this paragraph). Arrrrgh... Ok, so this edit is taking longer and is more involved than I had planned. Also, as I was editing the one primary section I looked at it felt that the text was a bit over crowded with information on the page. Thus, I moved most of the calculations into end notes (which the reader can hover their mouse over to see the text). OK, Firefox crashed and I lost the edit. I will now be doing this in at least two edits, one which is just the "×" to " by " change. That way you can revert either, or both, edits if you desire. As I think about it, if the multiplication is only in end-notes, then it does not matter as much if "×" is exclusively for multiplication.

As to actually getting the "×"/"x" discussion going on the appropriate talk page, I have allowed myself to be distracted by editing the Timeline of DOS operating systems article. Not sure at the moment when I am going to get the discussion started. I have some hard RL deadlines (court) early in the week for which I need to make sure I am ready. Getting this discussion started is high on my list of things to do, but I am feeling that I am distracting myself from doing what I need to do in RL, along with other commitments I have made here. Makyen (talk) 05:30, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Makyen and Wbm1058, noticed this discussion, and wanted to mention that use of the multiplication-sign in four-wheel drive actually *is* correct, because the statement is a shorthand meaning "four-by-four", thus the multiplication-sign is used thataway. I believe that publications (magazines/manuals/etc) also use the multiplication-sign when speaking of four-wheel drive vehicles. Hope this helps, thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:01, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but that doesn't mean a vehicle that has an array of 16 wheels. It just means 4 wheels, which are all powered. But the point is taken that some editors feel it is appropriate to use the × character in articles in a way that does not strictly mean a multiplication operation. Regarding Timeline of DOS operating systems, if you take a look at the talk page, you'll see at least one editor who feels that the timeline is "getting out of hand". So, I've made an effort there to keep that very tightly written, and the idea is that there are several hyperlinks on each timeline element that users should click for further explanation and clarification if they want or need that. Now, many of these articles that I link to there are of a lower quality, but that's another issue. But I think your editing there was somewhat helpful. I tend to work in spurts on that article, and sometime within the next several weeks I hope to get back to finishing it and perhaps submitting it for good-article review. I'm perhaps 90% done with it at this point. {{Ping}} me if you start a discussion on a Wikipedia talk page. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 18:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been delaying (procrastinating) starting this discussion on the relevant talk pages. Mostly this is due to not desiring, at the moment, to sink the time the traffic on those pages would require. Obviously, while delaying I have not been making any such changes (other than to maintain a status quo). I have been monitoring those talk pages and they have had up to 40 or 50 changes in a single day over the last month. I need to do get this started, hopefully within the week. I will certainly {{Ping}} anyone having made a comment here that I have actually started that discussion (as I said I would).

74.192.84.101, As to your statement with respect to the use of "4×4" instead of 4x4 on the four-wheel drive article: The use is clear in that article because it is explicitly stated in the first sentence that "4×4" is being used in that manner within the article.

I think that we can all agree that we are attempting to refer to something that is "4 by 4", not "4 times 4" and we want the reader to understand that. Two of the questions are A) how to do so in an unambiguous manner that immediately communicates the concept to the reader and B) is it appropriate to use such abbreviation in article text (i.e. locations unconstrained by space considerations) to save 3 characters at the cost of potential ambiguity?.

Re:Timeline of DOS operating systems: I read the talk page prior to making my edits. At the time, I noticed the comments regarding it being "Out of control". I partially agreed with both sides of that discussion. I like the information, but can see it becoming overwhelming. My hope was that moving some of the more detailed information into end-notes could reduce the impact of so much information while leaving the information there for those that desired it. There were/are also places where implicit calculations were being made, without clearly showing derivation, which could confuse a naive reader. Given that it is clear you take a special interest in that page, I wanted to merely provide an example of what might be a useful tool. Much of the information which I assume was producing the "out of control" impression in that editor does not appear to be appropriate to leave as just a hyperlink to an entire article. The amount of information, in most cases, needed to have reasonably complete entries is much less than forcing a reader to dig through an entire additional article. Having the hyperlinks is good, it is also helpful to have a brief amount of information immediately available. Using end notes is just one way to provide slightly more complete information when such might be helpful for the reader to know, or to lead them through how something was condensed (e.g. calculations), while not "cluttering" up the article prose with such clarifications.

I also noticed the "Garish color coding" comment. One additional point on this is that color choices should also consider color blindness. I have found the Firefox extension Colorblind Design to be helpful in that specific area. I made no comment there because you had obviously made reasonable changes at the request of that user. Makyen (talk) 20:02, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just located and installed Chrome Daltonize! in my browser, thanks for that tip. When I look at a biography page with a face photo it's obvious that the colorblindness simulators change the color tones of the picture, but when I tried it on the timeline page, I couldn't see that it had any effect. So I guess the colors that are there are good from that standpoint? I've thought about making the colors yet a bit more brighter still. When I go back and look at the page history and see how loud the colors were, I wonder how I tolerated them like that for so long. And yes, putting the calculations in the footnotes was helpful. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:20, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In briefly trying, I did not get their non-chrome bookmarklets to work, or at least there were no significant visual changes on images of people, or elsewhere. I really don't know enough about CVD to evaluate the Firefox extension which I mentioned above from an accuracy point of view. When used, it does show significant differences in color for all the pages I on which I have tried it. On Timeline of DOS operating systems, all different views were readable and had a reasonable differentiation between most of the colored highlights used. If the simulations had resulted in something unreadable, I would have mentioned it at the time I first looked at the page.

I agree that the color change was a good one. I am glad that I had not been attempting to use the page with the prior color scheme. Thank you for making the change.

Color design is a field in itself. I have only touched on it a bit in designing some advertizing for a company for which I used to work. At the time, I had bookmarked several different sites, but I now appear to be completely missing those bookmarks, or the ones which I have are mostly dead. While I did not believe so, the bookmarks may have primarily been at the company. A Google search for "color design for the web" produced 120M results including several sites consolidating lists of color design tools. The primary issue was to pick a set of colors that go with each other. There are a variety of ways which colors harmonize with each other which can be used to pick color schemes. What I found to be most helpful was the variety of tools available on websites which help to pick sets of colors. The very short version: take a look at a few of the sites which allow you to pick different types of color sets. Pick a method of producing sets which has enough colors in it for what you need and then play around with the various tools to get a set which appeals to you and provides good visibility, then check it against the various types of CVD. There are a large number of sites which explain color schemes better than I can. Picking a color scheme can take a considerable amount of time.

I was not intending to imply that the colors need, or should, be changed on Timeline of DOS operating systems. My mentioning the "Garish color coding" thread was intended to be to say that I think the color change was a good thing. However, I appear to have not actually said so in my previous post. Sorry about that. Makyen (talk) 01:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Just for your help on my talk page archiving, and the general TP archiving work that you've done on the help page. Ged UK 13:27, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:SORCER

I have reverted your addition of automatic archiving to this talk page. I appreciate why you have done it and I am in favour of it at some point in the future. Today there is no consensus for it, and such consensus must be built before article talk pages are placed into an automatic scheme. This is common and accepted practice.

At present that talk page's active contents need to remain on the active talk page. The article is in development and the page is being used for that purpose. Automatic archival at this stage would be counter-productive. The prior manual archiving was performed to remove genuinely redundant material to the archiove.

By all means raise the concept on the talk page itself, but, please, leave it a couple of months to allow the article to be reconstructed from the lengthy talk page discussions. Fiddle Faddle 10:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I, personally, have no problem either way in this specific instance. Thank you for explaining your reverting of my addition. Given that you have also made comments to this affect on the Talk:SORCER page, I will make a couple of comments there as it is the more appropriate place to continue any discussion. I will say here that I feel using the automatic archiving bots is a much better solution, from a point of view of fulfilling editor expectations, than the ad-hoc, manual method which has been used on that page in the last month. Makyen (talk) 16:50, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but what sort of expectations do the editors working on that talkpage have? Most of them are beginners, and would not expect auto-archiving. :-) I also thank you for the addition, though I also think we need a couple more months before it will be helpful. As a separate matter, can we call on your services for edit-requests from time to time? Many of the folks at Talk:SORCER have some WP:COI encumbrance, and FiddleFaddle and myself are trying to teach them Jimbo's Bright Line Rule. You are of course by no means WP:REQUIRED to take on this task; totally up to you. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In normal circumstances, Makyen, I would agree absolutely that bot archival is to be preferred. This article is an exception. It has a difficult history in terms of "this is relevant", "no it isn't!" "yes it is!" and so forth. 74 has, with consensus, archived the clutter, and presented us with a clean, though immense, 'current talk page'. With the editing skills displayed by the main protagonists migrating the current elements to the archive will serve only to confuse.

Comments form you on the article talk page will be/are wholly welcome. You have a long history here and exhibit calm impartiality. Fiddle Faddle 19:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.

I can understand that there are such issues on that page. Perhaps, I should have spent more time reading the archive prior to adding automatic archiving. However, I did glance through the archive prior to doing anything. The only section heading which appeared hinting at archiving was on the main talk page. That section explicitly stated that some of the archived threads might have still been active. I generally consider archiving threads that might be still active to be a bad idea. Thus, that statement raised a red flag. That statement was a significant contributor to my choosing to add automatic archiving to the page. Combined with my not seeing any separate thread about archiving, or mass archiving, raise some concerns. I do, now, see that there was a brief discussion within a thread.

I would suggest changing that statement such that it is clear the manual bulk archiving of the page was consistent with a consensus.

Automatic archiving is, usually, a better solution (as we all appear to agree). It permits easily archiving just the inactive threads. Combined with judicious manual archiving, made easier with User:Equazcion/OneClickArchiver), it can do a good job of keeping a talk page more on-track towards improving the article. In this case, I had set the automatic archiving to be at 90 days. That was intended to provide a significant amount of time for the current threads to be on the page. Under most circumstances, that is way more than enough dwell time for inactive threads. My expectation was that someone with more familiarity with the actual discussions would change it to a time-frame appropriate for the page. The 90 days would have kept the current threads on the page through March and into April. When adding automatic archiving to a talk page I try to see where there are natural breaks in the discussion and set the time such that the current discussions are not affected, but that clearly old ones are archived.

Not having automatic archiving is also a solution, but setting it up now with a time in the future for the archiving to start gives editors time to be accustom to the fact that automatic archiving is/will be a normal process. Making sure that the archive box includes a mention of automatic archiving is usually sufficient notice to editors who are new to a page, in most situations.

I full accept that editors more familiar with this page believe that automatic archiving is not appropriate at this time. I will not be pushing for it.

I am willing to perform edit-requests, if desired. I am not, currently, watching for such requests. I can begin to do so. I clearly do not, yet, have a reasonable knowledge of SORCER, and would want to become a bit more familiar with it prior to making such edits. As long as it was not a major time-sink, I am willing to do so. I sympathize with you Jimbo's Bright Line Rule is sometimes difficult for people who are invested (emotionally, monetarily, etc.) in a topic to understand. Makyen (talk) 22:01, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SORCER - 1st paragraph - request for edit

Hello

thank You for Your feedback about 1st paragraph of SORCER. I agree with your comment.

There is now proposal of correction according to your suggesion (Talk:SORCER#Decline). Could You please comment it and, if it's ok for You, to apply proposed change?

Pawelpacewicz (talk) 12:36, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]