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Theory of expansions

on template coding issues... archived and put here
Thanks CBD! // FrankB 17:57, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tech questions section:... on CSL templates (became {{32stories}}) templates issues Comma Separated List templates to archive] from here. // FrankB 00:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Irmo

Thanks - I obviously am a novice to this. I think that should be the appropriate response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kylelbishop (talk • contribs) 01:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Middle-earth cosmology

Oh wow! you archived your talk page. :-) Anyway, I know you are interested in Middle-earth cosmology, so I thought these sources might interest you. Carcharoth 06:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Repost of Robert Young (longevity claims researcher)

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Robert Young (longevity claims researcher), by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Robert Young (longevity claims researcher) was previously deleted as a result of an articles for deletion (or another XfD)

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Robert Young (longevity claims researcher), please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 19:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Young

Just a courtesy note to let you know that I have speedily deleted Robert Young under criteria G4 as a repost. The article may be different and have additional sources for notability but the AfD debate has been into the notability of Robert Young in detail and it was only closed five days ago. I know this is a matter of some heated debate but the policy in this speedy deletion is fairly clear. To write an article on Robert Young I think you need to get the sanction of deletion review; I will recreate the article to your userspace if you want to work on it. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pulling hair out: ... templates tech discussion moved to this archive (pre-expansion problems) // FrankB 01:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion of Robert Young's block has been brought up again at the bottom of Bart Versieck's talk's page. As well as a bit on Carcharoth's talk. I recall you being involved in his own article shortly before his indefinite block. Neal (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Template idea

Long time, no see.

As usual, I need your help.

I used your {{totd-random}} as a model to create user:The Transhumanist/Random task.

The difference between those is that the latter only provides a link (and prose), rather than transcludes a page named after a date. In other words, it is self-contained and doesn't rely on creating a set of pages to support it.

For a new project, I need a template that displays a scheduled link each day, and was wondering if there is any way to do this without creating date-titled pages for transclusion. I'd like to be able to create a list of links in the template itself, and have the appropriate link displayed each day.

Is that doable?

If so, could you write one? (a sample list of 5 or 6 links would do) Or explain to me how?

It would be a shame to have to create pages for transclusion that only contain a link in them.

Sincerely,

The Transhumanist 22:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Hi TH. A time based schedule of links can be built with a switch like;

[[{{#switch: {{#time: mdy}}
|112107=Frog
|112207=Thermodynamics
|112307=Impressionism
|112407=Qlippoth
|#default={{#time: F j}}}}]]

Which displays: May 10. Is that what you were looking for? --CBD 21:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes.

Thank you!

The Transhumanist 23:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

The template is {{lotd}}, and looks like this:

Today's featured list is: May 10.

The Transhumanist 20:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

I've adapted it to transclude the pages themselves to a scrollbox. See: Wikipedia:Today's featured list proposal.

The Transhumanist 21:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Olive branch

If there's a positive side to the events of this past week, it's posts like yours. Thank you for remembering that we're doing our best here even if we disagree on some wikiphilosophies and make some honest mistakes. Best regards, Durova^Charge! 14:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Layout bug

The bottom margin is out of control at Wikipedia:Today's featured list proposal. (A lot of space is being added to the end of the page).

I can't figure out how to fix it.

The Transhumanist 22:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Is there a way to transclude part of a page?

Well, the scrollbox idea didn't go over very well. Size and page-loading time is a main concern.

Is there a way to transclude part of a page?

Like the first 20 lines?

The Transhumanist 22:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Yes, see Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists. Basically uses <includeonly> tags and the like to segregate a portion of the list page for display when transcluded. --CBD 22:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's brilliant! I'll give that a try. Thank you! The Transhumanist 23:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's as much work as creating an excerpt page. Is there a way to control this from the other end? The Transhumanist 00:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is probably a way to define a frame which doesn't expand to fit the content placed within it, but that wouldn't work very well... text would get cut off in the middle of sentences, images might be cut in half, et cetera. Given the variation of list pages any 'partial content display' is pretty much going to have to be designed on a case by case basis. --CBD 23:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Section asking for input "Procedural minutia": Moved to this archive. // FrankB 01:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello

Odd request here... I'm going to be working on something in my sandbox over the next few days. Please keep an eye on it, as I've an idea you'll want to contribute. --Dweller (talk) 20:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ready for you now. --Dweller (talk) 12:03, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Me too.

section "Entropy repealed?": moved to archive here. // FrankB 01:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

...

Very wise words on the Durova/Giano thing. Respect. Zocky | picture popups 12:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 17:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was interested to see this list of indef blocks you posted to the MatthewHoffman RfArb. Nice to see someone confirm the gut feeling I had about an endemic culture of indefinite blocking. How harmful do you think this practice is, and is it worth trying to move the culture back towards something less, well, indefinite? Carcharoth 19:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alot of indefinite blocks probably don't do much harm... they hit vandals who likely would never have contributed anything but vandalism. However, there are also alot of indefinite blocks placed on people who just made newbie mistakes or disagreed with an admin. Those help to populate sites like Wikipedia Review and generate anger against Wikipedia in the general population. The problem is that the deck is currently stacked against opposing these blocks... discussion and consensus is required to overturn ANY block, but not to place even an indefinite one. The people who get them often don't know what they are doing and/or are argumentative... so 'taking responsibility' for them, as anyone overturning a block is expected to do, can be a very difficult and time consuming process - especially because blocking admins are often more than happy to goad people with persistent incivility and/or badgering until they make the slightest slip-up (or something which can be mis-cast as a slip-up, one admin actually called a citation of Occam's razor a 'death threat')... and then reblock secure in the knowledge that they were 'right about that troll all along'. The only way I see this trend reversing would be if there were more clearly defined limitations on blocking and the ability to overturn violations thereof without fear of it being labeled 'wheel warring'. --CBD 20:56, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds about right. What did you think of my proposal at the RfArb that indefinite blocks should only be temporary until discussion decides on the right length for a block (or indeed decides on an unblock)? And the additional bit that an indefinite block should be for a persistent (after several blocks) pattern of behaviour. I think a lot of this could be dealt with by getting people to impose blocks of a definite length until a persistent pattern emerges. Vandals and throwaway accounts won't come back anyway once a block has expired, and if they do, they can be blocked again. Part of the problem seems to be admins worrying that if they don't indefinite block, the nasty POV-warrior or vandal will be back again. Well, they are more likely to return with a new account anyway, but even if they return after the block expires, well, other admins will be around to deal with it. There is no need to pass final judgment immediately. Anyway, I'm currently adding evidence to the case. Will you be doing that as well? Carcharoth 21:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely think that starting out with 'fixed duration' blocks, as used to be the required standard, would be alot better. Indeed, I think that still would be the standard except that there were never any penalties for ignoring it. As to discussion of indefinite blocks, I'd rather do that before placing the indef block rather than after doing so. As to the case itself, I'm just reading up on it now... so I'll leave that to the people involved. I may add evidence of the common usage of blocks like this though. --CBD 22:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Section "More 32stories": moved to archive here.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/The Transhumanist 3

Further to your suggestion that you may do so, I welcome your co-nom. --Dweller 10:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Godsmack

Hi, would you please talk some sense into User:Demantos. He is trying to merge Godsmack discography with Godsmack. Godsmack has enough music to warrent a seperate article for discography, and any substantially successful band has one on wikipedia. Please comment on his talk page, and comment here.

Thank you,

Skeeker _[Talk] 01:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Diverging ideas of admin actions and when to block

I agree. I think it all boils down to people rushing and not taking time to carefully review their actions. See this warning and advice I posted. I suspect some people would have just slapped an indefinite block on, but I think my edit summary demonstrates why I didn't. Would you agree? Carcharoth (talk) 12:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems about right. The comments to Durova were totally unacceptable and aggravated by the general drubbing she has taken lately. If he had more contributions and/or hadn't previously cursed out Mel in similar fashion I'd probably just have told him about the need for civility. With the repeat problem on that the block warning was appropriate. He also has two deleted edits to what looks like a COI/low notability article (one a vandalism revert) and the one typo correction. Overall looks like a random person who doesn't really know or understand much about Wikipedia, made a few mistakes, and behaved badly. In general he just doesn't edit enough for much of anything to need to be done now... explain to him why his actions were problems, point him towards useful info, and hope that if he ever becomes an active contributor he takes some of that stuff to heart. If he were posting messages like the one to Durova regularly and refused to stop after a few warnings and temporary blocks then an indef block would be needed. Going straight to indef now serves little purpose... there is no significant disruption to 'stop'. --CBD 13:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK I saw this as I was about to tell Carcharoth they were right in every respect (which I will do here! thanks) - but - keeping to my hockey analogy, who is the tough guy sitting on our bench watching, ready to go out there the next time this happens, and even up the score? Was this really just an editing mistake or is it a seldom-used dirty player who the other team can send out to throw an elbow and take the suspension? The history is there, but it can be buried easily and hidden from superficial examination. So to the point, is there any way for you guys to watch a specific user's contribs and act immediately the next time? Franamax (talk) 13:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, we can't watch every user who ever did anything questionable every minute of every day... but why would we want to? Looking at this guy there are really only three possibilities;

He never comes back - doesn't matter whether he is blocked or not.
He comes back and acts disruptively - This is actually made more likely by a block, though of course he'd have to use a different account name if it was an indef block. In any case, if future disruption is significant... someone will block him. If it's a random 'hit and run' insult... do we really care? This isn't a hockey game. We don't have to call every 'penalty' to make sure the game is 'fair' to both teams. We actually lose ground if we 'escalate' minor problems.
He comes back and contributes positively - Granted, this is probably the least likely outcome... but why prevent it when doing so doesn't really gain us anything? --CBD 14:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict - and thinking CBD has put it so much better!) Watchlisting a particular user's contributions? Not that I'm aware of. Just a minor correction to CBD's analysis, which is that the vandalism revert was blanking an inappropriate comment on the article talk page. I agree totally with "he just doesn't edit enough for much of anything to need to be done". It really isn't worth the time. Best to respond with a warning and advice (as I did), and then wait and see. Part of the (faulty) reasoning behind indefinite blocks, in my opinion, is that "it's not worth the time, just indef block now and be done with it, as that stops time being wasted later". Which misses the point, and pre-judges on supposed future behaviour. Judging on past behaviour is better, and as CBD said, there is not a lot to judge on here. As for whether people amass an array of sock-puppets to make nasty comments on other editors at opportune moments, it seems unlikely in this case. If you do suspect a puppet-master behind this (masquerading as a typical new editor), you could file a request for checkuser, but you will need a fair amount of evidence for such a request, and you could be wrong. It's just not worth the hassle unless you happen to see a pattern somewhere. Going looking for patterns can lead to seeing patterns where none exist. It is a dangerous thing to do, as the Durova incident has shown. As for "even up the score". The hockey analogy can only be taken so far: Wikipedia is not a battleground. Carcharoth (talk) 14:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, "Wikipedia is not a game/sport" would be better here. In the sense of a MMORPG. Carcharoth (talk) 14:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also relevant here is the following from WP:BLOCK:

"Before a block is imposed, efforts should be made to educate the user about our policies and guidelines, and to warn them when their behaviour conflicts with our policies and guidelines. A variety of template messages exist for convenience, although purpose-written messages are often preferable. Warning is not a prerequisite for blocking (particularly with respect to blocks for protection) but administrators should generally ensure that users are aware of policies, and give them reasonable opportunity to adjust their behaviour accordingly, before blocking. Users who have been made aware of a policy and have had such an opportunity, and accounts whose main or only use is forbidden activity (sock-puppetry, obvious vandalism, personal attack, and so on) may not require further warning."

This what prompted me to step back from a block in this case. Carcharoth (talk) 14:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CBD, see here for me quoting what you just said. What do you think of the idea that deleted contributions don't count? I find that a strange idea. Carcharoth (talk) 14:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK all I'm going to do is put in what my e/c contrib would have been. You guys are both very sensible, plus I get scared when the screens change unexpectedly. I'll probly just watch from now on, you've both answered pretty much everything.

Orig contrib follows

As C rightly pointed out, I am acting emotionally, I'm not talking about hooking and tripping, there are words I use but would never put in print directed to someone else, that's where my team would just start throwing punches. Stand up for the team. I'll drop the analogy now :)

My further concern is that this account is still available for one-time disruption. Would I be correct then to assume that there is no way to put user-contribs onto a watchlist, for either editors or admins? I can watch articles, in this case for a low-usage account, I would be happy to watchlist the account contribs. If they became productive I would just de-list. Obviously there is some stalking potential. But here we have an account of demonstrated negativity, is the only solution to warn and walk away? Franamax (talk) 14:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Orig contrib ends

Carcharoth, yeah I don't see how it makes sense to exclude deleted contributions. By that logic some of the worst trolls out there should be unblocked... because they don't have any contributions at all once you exclude the deleted stuff. You look at everything the person has done and try to get a sense of their intentions. If they have steadily been making edits which turn out to be subtly incorrect (see this guy for instance) then they seem intent on causing problems. The user in the case above (and the RFA hypothetical) wanted to put up an article which turned out to short of our general notability standards... that's not evidence of bad intent. Acting out abusively when the article is deleted also isn't really indicative of bad intent, just bad behaviour, which might be correctable. --CBD 17:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Franamax, no there isn't really a simple way to get a list of 'recent contributions by this list of users'. If you watchlist their user pages then you'll see any time they get comments on their user talk... which, in the case of vandals, usually lets you know when they have become active again and someone else has warned them about it... but not when they make edits that no one comments on. You could open up your watchlist and click on each to check contribs, but that could take a while. Other than that it would take a bot or at least javascript of some kind. I'm not aware of any which do so currently. --CBD 17:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Move requests

Would you move a couple of protected pages please?

Now that Wikipedia:Contents is Portal:Contents, those of us in the contents pages project are naming all the members of that set of pages to be subpages of that portal. One of the subsets is:

Most of pages in this subset have been moved, without complaint, but the last two on the right are move-protected.

These moves are intuitive, so there shouldn't be a problem.

Would you do the honors?

The Transhumanist (talk) 05:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, have done. Think I got all the sub-pages and redirects. --CBD 21:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tech questions: ... on templates issues moved to archive from here. //FrankB 00:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Main page

I don't understand all the details of the localization work [1], but the text of the link in the sidebar is supposed to be "Main page" not "Main Page" per the redesign proposal from a year ago (or some such). Please find a way to fix the localization that does not interfere with the agreed upon display format. Dragons flight (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See my comments at MediaWiki_talk:Sidebar#protected_edit_request. --CBD 01:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.

For your statement about fictional articles on ANI. You said pretty much everything I feel about the core issue. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 12:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A dozen editors

A few dozen editors do the vast majority of the work against hundreds of people that perform any kind of vandalism, whether it be inserting obscenities, racial slurs, or creating fan-site articles.Kww (talk) 17:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slideshow

WP: VPP:Low priority; ... aren't commenting here... which I think is a language to browser thing. Can you weigh in on this, which seems to be a meritorious proposal to me, since would really help on some cluttered pages. Don't know squat about javascript's capabilities, only that it looks a lot like C/C++ which I do fake knowing fairly well and can hum a few bars! // FrankB 05:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]; O,btw-- I put the template into a test bed here: Maquis du Vercors. // FrankB 05:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Years Party/Reunion

I don't know how available I'll be at the time, but I thought I'd pass this AFT/RABT online "reunion" invitation along to you. If you can track down anyone else, pass it along:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.tolkien/msg/e393ef9b27b63475 --Steuard (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AFT/RABT? Never heard of it. :-) You and Steuard might be interested in this, which includes some regulars (and some people who aren't regulars at all or even remotely connected - as far as I know). And no, I'm not on that list though maybe I should be. It only includes people who use the same name in both locations. Carcharoth (talk) 15:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've seen a few other newsgroup folks around here. I'll try to let people know. --CBD 18:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Collision in cats

Hey! Think you're gonna miss the blizzards headed my way! Sunday's Football game looks to be "interesting times"

(Very low priority... I was just 'rediscovering' these two 'gallery templates' dating from before my long wikibreak last summer. Some discussions on the commons reminded me of them... and since here, they're only used on a few pages despite the villagepump "advert" last spring, you can back burner the "quasi-problem".)

I won't have time to systematically employ these or restart and continue linking with the Commonscats templates until into the new year, so take your time.
Can you take a look at the older of these two placement choices, and advise if there be anything that could make the order irrelevant. diff. That is, ideally, w/o using a forcing two by table externally, would be nice if would float to same relative "top" line of position.
A similar issue... thought the "inhibit" option on this template would make the elements place on same line... not so: {{Commons-gallery}}, see the middle cases in the usage "examples "1a, 1b, 1c", iirc.
If forcing is needed, do you know of any templates in place that make a row of two by, three-by, four-by table cells already around? Cheers! // FrankB 15:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Me-ref and Me-cite

Hi there. I noticed some requests by Surendil at Template talk:ME-ref and Template talk:ME-cite. I agree with some (not all) of those changes, but not sure how to handle them. Would you be able to deal? Carcharoth (talk) 12:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Need vs php changes

On taking diff's between pages.

Old syntax fails now.
One method still works Summary: Look what I found... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Diff#URL

So Bingo!!! ... But title and current seem busted...: t'was easier before http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AGG02&diff=178085476&oldid=177990250 // FrankB 02:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC) (Today section archived here // FrankB 15:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC))[reply]

WP:FC

Are you the guy who runs WP:FC? I am experimenting with an electoral WP:LOTD. What would you say about posting the winnners on your page? Feel free to come by and vote if you get a chance.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 21:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I set up and do most of the maintenance on WP:FC, but anyone can edit it. If you set up featured list pages in some sort of consistent retrievable format (by date for instance) then they could certainly be worked into the featured list section of the page. --CBD 23:18, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will get back to you in a few days with more details. I will have a list for you some time after the 20th.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:24, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

O.K. could you include {{ListoftheDay}} and {{ListoftheMonth}} at WP:FC starting January 1?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 13:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would probably like to have the list name appear without a required clickthrough to identify it if that is possible. I would also like to add the 500 character blurb that people used in the nomination. Do you know how to do a parser function with both linked and unlinked terms? I was going to work on that tomorrow or Saturday.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 00:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean something like generating both, 'May 10' and 'May 10'... I tweaked {{ListoftheDay}} and {{ListoftheMonth}} to allow that. Your header page still displays the same text. Can also now do things like [[{{ListoftheDay|011508}}]] to get List of islands of Scotland. The blurbs (and accompanying pictures) could be displayed on WP:FC if they were put onto individual pages - preferably with the same date stamp used in the list templates. --CBD 01:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think of {{ListoftheDaytext}}?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 22:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I stole a lot of your code to clean up WP:LOTD. I am now mostly concerned about what WP:FC will look like on Jan 1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 19:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For now, I used the format you put together for the header -> [2]. --CBD 21:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the proper thing to do is to somehow note that my userpage experiment has not picked up enough steam to be an official policy. We should put the words experiment somewhere so that it is clear this is one of the few things at WP:FC that is not an official policy.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 02:12, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move request

Please move sport agility over the redirect at agility.

Somebody apparently used "sport agility" as a poor substitute for "agility", because the latter title was already taken - it was a disambiguation page, which I've just moved to "agility (disambiguation)". The Transhumanist 11:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Done. Note that per Help:Move#Moving_over_a_redirect this kind of move ought to be possible for any user. --CBD 11:44, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the assist. By the way, I'm pretty sure that moving over redirects only works when the redirect on the target page points to the page being moved there (and there are no other edits). I just tried a test, to move my Sandbox22 to Sandbox20 where Sandbox20's only edit was a redirect to Sandbox21. The move failed. The Transhumanist 06:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bullet proofing issue on failure

Archived here... failure mode conversations / analysis for near identical template calls in family of such. FrankB 15:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Porthos (Star Trek)

Not sure if you missed this comment I made about why I nominated Porthos (Star Trek) for deletion. -- Ned Scott 05:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hiding lines in infoboxes

Hello, I'm really hoping you can help me. I saw your interest in Template talk:Infobox Conditionals and, with a little research into your template background, decided to pin my hopes on you. No pressure.
I want to be able to develop a series of templates that work conditionally, similar to Template:Infobox Ship Class, wherein -if I do not add data to the line item- the line item doesn't appear in that article's infobox. For example, using the style of infoboxes found at BattleTechWiki, specifically the code for the {{InfoBoxBattleMech}} template, the author of the particular #if statements shown has them adding in other data, if that data is present [see Speed]:


{| class="infobox"
|colspan="2"|{{#if:{{{image|}}}|[[Image:{{{image}}}|191px]]|}}
|-
!colspan="2" class="infoboxname"|{{{name|name}}}
|-
!colspan="2" class="infoboxheading"|Production information
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Manufacturer||{{{manufacturer|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Model||{{{model|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Class||{{{class|}}}
|-
!colspan="2" class="infoboxheading"|Technical specifications
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Mass||{{{mass|}}} tons
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Chassis||{{{chassis|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Armor||{{{armor|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Engine||{{{engine|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Speed||{{{speed|}}} km/h {{#if:{{{speed with MASC|}}}|({{{speed with MASC}}} km/h with [[MASC]])|}} {{#if:{{{speed with TSM|}}}|({{{speed with TSM}}} km/h with [[TSM]])|}}

|- class="infoboxrow"
|Jump Jets||{{{jumpjets|None}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|Armament
|
{{{armament|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|BV (1.0)||{{{BV (1.0)|}}}
|- class="infoboxrow"
|BV (2.0)||{{{BV (2.0)|}}}
|}

In order to develop my 'mad skilz,' I've been trying to develop an #if statement for the 'chassis' data that would state the line would not be shown if no data was provided for that line. The line I've been trying to adapt was:

{{#if:{{{Total ships planned|}}}|<tr valign=top><td>Ships planned:</td><td>{{{Total ships planned|}}}</td></tr>}}

However, every effort I make tends to move that data, when it is there, above the actual box and, when the data is not there, retains the line anyways.
Do you see a method, with example code for 'chassis,' that would work in this instance?
Very much appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks. --LeyteWolfer (talk) 06:46, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. For whatever reason that Wiki doesn't seem to handle HTML table markup (the <td> and <tr> stuff) very well. I added a copy of Template:! there and then used that to make the change you were asking about. Basically, by replacing '|' characters from the wiki table markup (e.g. |- and the like) with {{!}} you can have the logic insert the '|' after the #if parserfunction has completed evaluation... so the table markup can be enclosed inside the #if condition without the extra | characters being mistaken for #if syntax. --CBD 15:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. That does work quite well. I really appreciate the help. --LeyteWolfer (talk) 19:23, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Followup question: I've grabbed the code you provided and have adapted it very nicely to every relevant line item in the inforboxes I'm building, and it is working beautifully. However, since some sections of the infobox end up not having any lines displayed (in some cases), I can get two or more section titles grouped up, for no purpose. Is there a way to provide a similar #if statement for title sections, so that if no lines under that section are being used, the title itself is hidden? (I'd be more than happy to see your code demo here, on your talk page.) Thanks again, for any assistance you can provide. --LeyteWolfer (talk) 18:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can use multiple parameters in a #if condition check. Thus, if you wanted to make the 'Production information' header from the example above only display when one of the items under that header were set you could use;

{{#if: {{{manufacturer|}}}{{{model|}}}{{{class|}}}|
{{!}}-
! colspan="2" class="infoboxheading" {{!}} Production information}}

Of course, if you add more rows to the section then you need to add those conditions to the header check as well. Sometimes you can identify one parameter which always has to be populated if the section appears at all (or arrange the sections that way) and then use that parameter as the condition for the header also. Otherwise you need to do something like this list approach. --CBD 21:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As you speakth, so shall it happen. Thanks. As for the conditional that always must be populated, how would I state it?. --LeyteWolfer (talk) 00:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be dependent on the specific template. For instance, let's say you had a template for episodes of a television show. The 'Third season' heading might have multiple conditional rows for the name of episode 1, episode 2, episode 3, et cetera. You'd only want to show the rows of the episodes which had actually aired so far and you'd only want to show the 'Third season' header if at least one row in that section would be set... but you can always count on 'episode 1' being set if any of them are. You can't have an episode 2 or 3 without an 'episode 1' first. Thus, the heading could be conditioned by just checking episode 1;

{{#if: {{{s3-ep1|}}}|
{{!}}-
! colspan="2" class="infoboxheading" {{!}} Third season
{{!}}-
{{!}} Episode 1
{{!}} {{{s3-ep1}}} }}
{{#if: {{{s3-ep2|}}}|
{{!}}-
{{!}} Episode 2
{{!}} {{{s3-ep2}}} }}

So, I was just saying that sometimes you can have the heading displayed based on just one parameter rather than needing to list all of the parameters used for conditional rows in that section... if the template is such that one parameter always has to be set for that section. --CBD 01:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the two examples you've provided already, I grasp what you're saying. I'll mess around with it and see what that can do. Thanks! --LeyteWolfer (talk) 04:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Editprotect Merge Templates

Sigh, Can you install an "ORed with Arg-2" 'discuss link parameter'... {{{discuss|{{{2|... }}} params in protected templates Merge and mergeto, (See Mergefrom if you need "Help" or further clues!<BSEG> LOL)... this to standardize with logic of some of the split templates, and so forth, following the notations in common usage page, as well. Thanks. // FrankB 20:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BTW- who, if anyone, patrols these, checks for stale templates, stalled discussions, and so forth. I want to propose a "category: Merge discussion section talk not linked", or something like. Got a contact you can suggest? // FrankB 20:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made changes to the 'merge' and 'mergeto' templates. There isn't any centralized organization for merge discussions. You might try suggesting the new category on Template talk:Merge. --CBD 22:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas, BTW!

re: [3]... Is there anyway to float the bulleted column up AND keep the bullets? // FrankB 21:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Frank. Merry Christmas. Is this what you are looking for on the bulleted list? I'll look at the merge thing. --CBD 21:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Yeah, and NO! Darn it! <g>

I was looking for a more global solution vice the wikimarkup <tr style="..."> equivalent... but I guess that thar shoulda tole me from the "git-go" there weren't none to be had no-ways, anyhow! (Sorry... been in Hill Billy edit mode! <G> Do you need a translator? <G> ...Just got back from a holiday visit home, youse know!??)

Anyhow, I have another template in mind that might be more energetic with variations in content, as it were, and being able to "command a column alignment style" would likely come in handy. Having a HTML style type "This column alignment" was more my thought and thinking. But NBD, as I infer thar ain't no such critter. Thanks on the merge fixup. Also Big Thanks for the grunt work fix too though! Much appreciated too! Happy New Year! // FrankB 23:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A request for your consideration regarding CAT:AOTR

Hello fellow Wikipedia administrators open to recall category member!

I am leaving you this message because recent events have given me concern. When Aaron Brenneman and I, and others, first developed this category well over a year ago, we visualized it as a simple idea. A low hassle, low bureaucracy process. We also visualized it as a process that people would come to trust, in fact as a way of increasing trust in those admins who chose to subscribe to the notion of recall. The very informal approach to who is qualified to recall, what happens during it, and the process in general were all part of that approach.

But recent events have suggested that this low structure approach may not be entirely effective. More than one of the recent recalls we have seen have been marred by controversy around what was going to happen, and when. Worse, they were marred by some folk having the perception, rightly or wrongly, that the admin being recalled was trying to change the rules, avoid the process, or in other ways somehow go back on their word. This is bad. It's bad for you the admin, bad for the trust in the process, and bad for the community as a whole.

I think a way to address this issue is to increase the predictability of the process in advance. I have tried to do that for myself. In my User:Lar/Accountability page, I have given pretty concrete definitions of the criteria for recall, and of the choices I can make, and of the process for the petition, and of the process for other choices I might make (the modified RfC or the RfAr). I think it would be very helpful if other admins who have voluntarily made themselves subject to recall went to similar detail. It is not necessary to adopt the exact same conditions, steps, criteria, etc. It's just helpful to have SOME. Those are mine, fashion yours as you see fit, I would not be so presumptuous as to say mine are right for you. In fact I urge you not to just adopt mine, as I do change them from time to time without notice, but instead develop your own. You are very welcome to start with mine if you so wish, though.

But do something. If you have not already, I urge you to make your process more concrete, now, while there is no pressure and you can think clearly about what you want. Do it now rather than later, during a recall when folk may not react well to perceived changes in process or commitment.

Further, I suggest that after you document your process, that you give a reference to it for the benefit of other admins who may want to see what others have done. List it in this table as a resource for the benefit of all. If you use someone else's by reference rather than copy, I suggest you might want to do as Cacharoth did, and give a link to a specific version.

Do you have to do these things? Not at all. These are suggestions from me, and me alone, and are entirely up to you to embrace or ignore. I just think that doing this now, thinking now, documenting now, will save you trouble later, if you should for whatever reason happen to be recalled.

I apologise if this message seems impersonal, but with over 130 members in the category, leaving a personal message for each of you might not have been feasible, and I feel this is important enough to violate social norms a bit. I hope that's OK. Thanks for your time and consideration, and best wishes.

Larry Pieniazek

NOTE: You are receiving this message because you are listed in the Wikipedia administrators open to recall category. This is a voluntary category, and you should not be in it if you do not want to be. If you did not list yourself, you may want to review the change records to determine who added you, and ask them why they added you.

...My guinea pigs and the "A"s having felt this message was OK to go forward with, today it's the turn of the "B"s and "C"s! I'm hoping at least one of you chaps will point to their own criteria instead of mine :)... it's flattering but scary! :) ++Lar: t/c 17:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Happy New Year

re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabartus/tmp5 and Template:Publication order table

Tech feasibility request... Just feedback.

{{S5}} (and family} use a mode of displaying a message which when puts the tool tip over the link, one sees a message...

I'm desirous of having the latter (template) display as a tall narrow template, but hide the three current right columns unless wanted... so that mode comes to mind.

Given the publication dates matrix as the input for the tooltip option, AND given, say, using the template abbreviations for the "displayed links to articles" (GG01, GG02, 34TRR, 35TCL, etc.), the question becomes where and how the tooltip activated data would display and show the dates.

The best I can figure, that should be the Ebook order field. Would you agree such can be done. I'm figuring it would then be sensible to move the print publication order field after the shortened links to the book, or perhaps leave that at left, and move the overall order (e-order) to the far right. Thoughts? The snag if any, I would anticipate is in that the three pub date fields are relatively dynamic... only the e-book date will be a constant. But that is the nature of the best. I think Flint is reinventing an industry! // FrankB 17:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me. The tooltip is just defined by a 'title' attribute like <span title="Whatever">. You can put that around any text (link or not) to get the pop-up (the word 'text' there for instance has one). The 'whatever' could be a parameter to account for the dates that change. --CBD 01:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

32stories again

commented out request... issue resolved.

(I think I'm "Footballed out" as well!--too many bowl games these days!) G'night!// FrankB 05:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cancel my 32stories request... Specialexpandtemplates did point the way! Needed a newline before calling the {{Mid}} template. // FrankB 17:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:ISCA logo.gif

Thanks for uploading Image:ISCA logo.gif. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 19:53, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

~:) Nice to see I'm in good company,... not the only one going out of me way to deal with that idiot bot!

LOL Should be outlawed and forced into using AWB instead so human judgement involved, imho! // FrankB 16:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't speak so soon...humans tag valid images for deletion just as mindlessly. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 16:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh. That's clever! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 17:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. I don't know that it'll be judged kosher, but figured it was worth a shot. --CBD 22:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, heh, heh! Not too shabbby! BTW--speaking of finesse... Is there any elegentish HTML way to float this edit link other than my brute force approach. // FrankB 01:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are various {{edit}} templates which create links like this. I put one in on the page. --CBD 10:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need your help

Hey bud, I need to see if we can get your help on an issue. We are trying to get the article about the Grammy awards in shape and myself and another editor are trying to decide if we should keep or get rid of the "records" section of the article. It is true that the section does not have a lot of focus. As you can see here [4] the other editor is in favor of deleting it from the page. I myself feel that the section needs to remain. I feel that if people want to look up the information, they can go to the Grammy website and look up the information and confirm it with what we have included. Hypo feels that it seems more like original research. I feel that we both have merit, but we feel it would be best for us to have a third opinion. Can you ring in on this? I have always appreciated the way you look at thiese issues with fairness. Junebug52 03:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer... Yes, they need to make cites... <g> [It must be bedtime, I'm getting punchy!] with all the jawing they did, looks like they might have googled up about half of them... but aside from such mundane problems with ugly looking lists, I wanted to re-nudge you on multicolumn TOCs... have you given that any more thought? // FrankB 06:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

idea that grew from your own suggestions, re Beta's image tagging

For your consideration: WP:TODAY. Lawrence Cohen 17:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Magic words -- overconfident!

re: Mess in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_writers#Breivik.2C_Aamund Thought I'd 'ease' cites (note the <xref> in said mess...) with a typing aid...

The nesting of the magic words seems to be malfunctioning in an unanticipated way... I'm getting a subst: when I thought I'd see a subst'd value. Can you take a peek? The template has an lts edit link there in that section. This is a similar technique in long use now in my {{DATE}} template... sigh.

The bad news, I'd already posted two edits to advertise the bugger. Just call me overconfident! // FrankB 17:50, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_writers#Breivik.2C_Aamund fixed up and no longer has the template link or symptom.
Managed to get "the problem" (Template:Adt(edit talk links history)) working but without full capability. I had to trim out the optional (backdating) parameters: {{{1}}} and {{{2}}}. When you have the time, can you see the diffs and figure if there's anything that can be done to put them back. There seemed to be an issue with the subst's and placement of {{{1|... and }}}; and the last thing wanted is a parserfunction since it be subst'd by design. Perhaps moving the magic words inside those??? ... Otherwise, I need to change the usage. Unfortunately, I'm entirely likely to research one night and record things off line on my HDD, and then edit later, so the option would be nice!
1632 writers in pre-expand trouble again. Sigh.

Pre-expand include size: 2,047,807/2,048,000 bytes

Post-expand include size: 263,935/2,048,000 bytes

Template argument size: 538,330/2,048,000 bytes

which belies the point the bottom half-dozen templates aren't expanding,... and which includes the cites templates, which have barely begun to be added.

I'm thinking end run(s)...

(A) coming up with a subst'able template "GG", which is fed {{{1}}}==roman numeral, assumes {{{2}}} is the section (story) title, and so forth, then when subst'd builds a plain wikilink and suffixed text [which can be moved around later if necessary] in a

(B) non-{{32stories}} table... work around or look alike,

(C) "NotGG" which would be used non-subst'd for the two ROF's and 34TRR lines, again returning a single line for the table.

(D) It may be worthwhile to come up with a subst'able {{GG1|IX}} & {{GG2|XIV|story}} just to tighten things up with a plain wikilink when and where appropriate.

That line of thought is to also eliminate the overhead of the normal linking templates entirely in the {{32stories}} type tables... which will also need rethought and redesigned... one arg per line I guess, which means just using the column tables, Top, Mid, and such.

I don't think I'd want to look at the "mess" substing 32stories might give. // FrankB 05:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with Adt is an inherent flaw in template substitution. If a parameter in a subst'd template is unset then it substitutes as text rather than evaluating to the default value... {{{1|Frog}}} is treated as that full text (brackets and all) rather than 'Frog'. Thus, substituted templates should only include parameters which are always set to something. There is a convoluted way around this for named parameters;

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#ifeq: {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>uc:{{{day|}}}}}|{{{DAY|}}}|{{CURRENTDAY2}}|{{{day}}}}}}}

If the 'day' parameter is unset then the #ifeq: would evaluate to {{{day|}}}... which would then be capitalized by the uc: statement and match the 'DAY' parameter... and therefor print 'CURRENTDAY2'. If 'day' were set then it would NOT match 'DAY' (assuming that is never set) and the ifeq: would evaluate to the contents of 'day'.

As I said, a convoluted way around an inherent flaw in the way subst handles unset parameters... but it relies on capitalization of the parameter name, which won't work on a numeric parameter like {{{1}}}. There might be some other trick which could be worked out for numeric parameters, but I haven't done so before and can't think of any offhand. --CBD 01:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the 1632 writers page I think part of the problem is that there are just so MANY templates... somewhere around 100. Alot of those seem like article formatting things. For instance, {{ROF-2}} may take up slightly less space in the page source than [[Ring of Fire II]], but it takes up much much more in transclusion size for the same result. People are also just more familiar with the normal '[[' wikilink markup. --CBD 01:31, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Follow on to email

Thanks on the above... I'll need to digest the {Adt} answer better when fresher... but I think I followed along. (I just spent the last few hours weeding all the accumulated emails. What's 842 messages over six months! [ans: Seeing blurry right now!] Even visited and permanently cleaned out some old wikipedia emails going back to May 2005 when I was mediating a flame war... surprisingly brought a few smiles to me face! ..but that was taking a break, there's still a boat load of emails I haven't gone through.)
On 1632 writers issues... The sequence above: (A) coming up with a subst'able template "GG", which is fed {{{1}}}==roman numeral, assumes {{{2}}} is the section (story) title, and so forth, then when subst'd builds a plain wikilink and suffixed text [which can be moved around later if necessary] in a (B) non-{{32stories}} table... work around or look alike,
(C) "NotGG" which would be used non-subst'd for the two ROF's and 34TRR lines, again returning a single line for the table.

(D) It may be worthwhile to come up with a subst'able {{GG1|IX}} & {{GG2|XIV|story}} just to tighten things up with a plain wikilink when and where appropriate. is because of the same kind of thinking as your comment about the numbers of templates.

The emphasis being on I put myself in a corner, so I too asking: "what's the easiest way to extract my butt." <g> The problem is the story links using the s= defines to section link, when you come right down to cases by numbers and needs (p= is hardly ever used, and the simple switch commands 'i', 'o', etc. on that page are rare as well, but also susceptible to a GSAR)... so the subst'able hypothesized "GGnn templates" should allow a GSAR, and subst clean up in a one to three edit pass "fix". That is of course along the same lines as the '32Stories'/'32LS' subst-able pair per the email, and the below... which will clean up pre-expand resources in big chunks. (used to be every iterative call was calling comsubtemp and comoutput, plus the overhead content of 32L for each output in the table. I'm not sure the conversion to direct plain wikilinks has saved anything sizewise in the aggregate (under the field conditions of real world needs like DeMarce's contributions) given my initial subst results on /tmp1 (see this section and same in edit mode). However, subst'd the plain wikilinks are plain wikilinks and the pre-expansion overhead goes away... leaving a much less maintainable inline table.
speaking of which, when I closed the email and uncovered the browser again I was looking at /tmp1 and peeked at the subst'd results in the sections... see this one...
1. Is there any way to subst so the "#if tree" goes away too, or is this the best I can hope for? At least the plain links are extractable with hand edits thereafter.
2. You should be able to follow my "notes as section titles" annotations through the whole page... I was pretty linear! <g> (Is following a straight line any guarantee of being straight-laced?
  And if so, is it really a compliment? <BSEG>)
In any event, I'm pretty sure with the ongoing thought in subst'ble and GSAR versions I can come out on top of 1632 writers fairly soon.
If you can come up with anthing more elegant, that would make maintenance going forward easier, particularly in place of 32stories, or a subst'd equivalent, I will of course be duly grateful and glad to use it!
Thanks // FrankB 06:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, That was a major league ramble! Sorry. Got to cut out that late night non-thinking. OTOH, an answer on "3" above would be good. Should be back on 'that treadmill' in the next day or three and would like to know which why to jump. Thanks. // FrankB 18:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

counting chickens

There's a saying that you shouldn't count your chickens until they are hatched. With 3 days to go, anything can happen. I've seen your username before. You seem to be a low keyed admin who occasionally makes some wise policy statements. I must have read something that you wrote months ago and your name stuck. Any advice on being an admin, particularly starting out? Archtransit (talk) 16:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Archtransit. Congrats on the unhatched chickens. My best advice is to change as little as possible. The skills and methods which served you as an editor are the same that you need as an admin. Read up on how the extra buttons work and all that (see WP:ARL) of course, but just go about your business as you have been. Make deletions, protections, blocks, et cetera as they come up naturally in the course of your normal work. Maybe look around for some new 'admin only' tasks to add to your other activities as time goes by. Best of luck. --CBD 02:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need an expert, I was told you are the one.

Hi, I was directed to you because of your expertise. I need some help with a template infobox. Here is the problem; the header name needs to change when the deathdate field is used. I have it working. But I need it to be backwards compatible with previous entries.

The original parameter name was death_date, I changed it to deathdate. Now I want to make sure that if either datedeath or date_death is used that the background color gets changed from the default to silver. Can you help? See User:Jeanenawhitney/sandbox4 and feel free to make any changes. Jeanenawhitney (talk) 01:07, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. See a change for this here. The edit summary explains why it works. --CBD 01:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, once I saw what you did and explained it, I just wondered why I could not figure this out. I have only been learning this for about two weeks now. And what you did opened my eyes. Thanks! --Jeanenawhitney (talk) 10:56, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cite book

See my message at Template talk:Cite book. Graham87 12:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request

Hey CBD, thanks for helping out on the Grammy award page. I am asking if you would help me in getting the "Requests for rollback"? It says I have to contact an admin to achieve this.[5] I am working on the articles dealing with male pornography and have to deal with vandalism. Do you think that would be something you could help me with. Sooner or later I would like to apply to be an admin myself, but until such time, I have to rely on others LOL. Thanks bud Junebug52 19:50, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --CBD 10:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image:ISCA logo.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:ISCA logo.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. —PNG crusade bot ^(feedback) 22:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Noprint

Is there a HTML/Common.css class or whatever to suppress printing of a range? I want to take some hardcopies for comparison and standardization (guess where! <g>) but bypass things like synopses, {{[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of Template:CalendarSelAnniv

A tag has been placed on Template:CalendarSelAnniv requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Followup to Conditional Infoboxes

You helped me immensely a few months ago creating conditional infoboxes that I've found /very/ helpful in my private wiki. I'm hoping you might have some guidance on a related issue.

I've installed a wiki for a friend, where infoboxes are critical to the purpose of the site. I have conditional infoboxes working just fine on my private wiki, so I did a fresh install of MediaWiki for my friend and then copied & pasted code from my wiki (including MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css). I figured that I could set up the 2nd wiki to be near identical to mine, for the most part, and then go from there.

However, on the second site, the infoboxes get heavily distorted. I narrowed it down to the conditional fields, because it accepts just fine an entry that includes the name of the starship class being focused upon (as shown here where only the standard field is used).

To me, this means it relates to some change I made to the server-bound files on the original wiki at some point, and were not yet made to the new install. Someone at mwusers.com thought I needed to define the class "infoboxrow", but since MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css are a direct copy from the original site, I don't think that is the problem.

The original site is using MediaWiki: 1.11.0, while the new one is using 1.11.1 (I don't want to update the original, if screwed up infoboxes might be the result).

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated, Conrad! --LeyteWolfer (talk) 20:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conrad, the wizards at Bugzilla were able to solve my problem. I hope you get back to 'pedi-ing soon. See ya out there. --LeyteWolfer (talk) 18:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Merge

I just noticed a change you made to the Merge template back in December broke one of the links on it. I would fix it myself (it's a very simple fix), but I don't have admin powers. — NRen2k5^(TALK), 23:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can't take a break!

... or get one around here!

re: Template:Charlist

Would you agree a newish template, albeit not yet in use, does not satisfy criteria T3?

...grumble grumble...

You'd think RL don't exist for some of the people and procedures around here! // FrankB 23:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of Okidi Peter

A tag has been placed on Okidi Peter requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. CoJaBo (talk) 22:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CfD nomination of Category:Middle-earth food and drink

I have nominated Category:Middle-earth food and drink (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TfD nomination of Template:Redirectstohere and Template:Redirects

Template:Redirectstohere and Template:Redirects have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Hairy Dude (talk) 18:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back!

Hey, it's nice to see you around again. :-) the wub "?!" 10:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello wub. Thanks for the welcome. --CBD 12:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Request re:Boy2Boy thread on AN)

can you please ratchet the heat back a few notches on your posts in AN, please? It's a delicate enough situation that making inflammatory posts regarding what you consider to be other people's motives is actively unhelpful. Poor analogies like the Kitten comment, aimed at another user, doesn't make things any better. SirFozzie (talk) 21:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In what way was it a "poor" analogy? Did it not exactly parallel the position it was disputing? As to the rest, I didn't say anything (inflammatory or otherwise) about "other people's motives". I noted that the position taken was illogical. Beamathan was arguing that someone should be indefinitely blocked to prevent a situation which even he acknowledged there was no evidence might occur. I was hoping that demonstration of how "ludicrous" that was, via analogy, would get him to reconsider. Hardly inflammatory, especially in comparison to the rest of that discussion. --CBD 21:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template conversions

On some of the abs/etc conversions, you'll probably need to watch out for precedence issues (i.e., wrap the argument in parentheses). --- RockMFR 02:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. It probably shouldn't matter since they only take one parameter, but I have been adding parens on some of the more convoluted cases. --CBD 02:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Main Page template timers

Template:DYK-Refresh and Template:ITN-Update currently state that 0 hours have passed since they were last updated. Do your think your edits have done something unexpected? - Banyan Tree 04:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted and the template appear to be functioning normally now. - Banyan Tree 05:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I needed to set the formula to multiply by 24 before taking the 'floor'. --CBD 11:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

I wasn't aware Jimbo was stepping in when I posted. I've mostly been restoring a historic photograph for FPC this morning and just found out a moment ago. So I've followed up at ANI with a request for courtesy deletion on the page in user space. Best regards, Durova^Charge! 16:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. I figured the timeline was out of whack somewhere... given what had gone earlier I was surprised that he would go back to making useful contributions after being de-adminned, but checking his contribs it looks like you were talking about work he was doing prior to that. S'all good. --CBD 16:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I wasn't aware was all. Thanks. As you probably know, I never do IRC. So the grapevine hadn't wound around to me yet. Durova^Charge! 16:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blurb pages

Just curious as to the reason for your recent creation of /Blurb sub-pages? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 14:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For display on the featured content page. See Wikipedia_talk:Featured_lists#Featuring_.27featured.27_lists. --CBD 14:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 14:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GL Communications Inc

I've nominated this article for speedy deletion because at is obviously a self-promoting advert, however the author keeps removing the speedy deletion tag without giving an explanation. Could you look into this please? Thanks! Chem-MTFC (talk) 11:03, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NOINDEX live?

__NOINDEX__ thingies are live on en.wiki now? I'm asking because last time I checked they weren't, but the one you just added to {{db-g11}} seems to work fine (as a side note, I've <includeonly></includeonly>'d it, as I can't see any reason not to index the template itself), and I've wanted to make sure they get added to all the DRV log pages. Drop me a {{talkback}} or reply at my talk page so I'll see it sooner, please. Thanks, cheers, and happy editing! lifebaka++ 13:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, it went live about two weeks ago. See the revision notes or this week's BRION report. The inclusion tags are fine, though I think we may 'noindex' the entire template namespace already. --CBD 13:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rawk, thanks for the reply. It seems like we index template namespace right now, but noindexing the spam is of course fine. See ya' 'round! lifebaka++ 14:03, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Featured article review

Thought you might be interested in helping out with improving The Lord of the Rings, so I'm letting you know about Wikipedia:Featured article review/The Lord of the Rings. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 02:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

please delete the "Grubb" pg

Please delete the page you had authored in 2005 entitled "Grubb"... if this page is deleted it will allow users to search for people w/ last name "Grubb"... currently it is a forced redirect to "Hobbit families" which is cute but not quite what most users will likely expect. Thanks.! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.224.139.60 (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again

Long time no... Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 23:38, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Andy. Welcome back. --CBD 11:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on plagiarism

I saw your comment on Jimbo's talk page about plagiarism and copyleft. Would you have time to have a look at Wikipedia:Plagiarism and Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism (where most of the discussion has taken place)? Carcharoth (talk) 21:01, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That mostly looked like a discussion of issues of plagiarism ON Wikipedia, whereas I was actually commenting on a case of plagiarism FROM Wikipedia. Principles are largely the same, but I think the wiki format makes it difficult to sustain any case for extensive paraphrasing - even with proper credit to the source. Commented on the talk page there. --CBD 12:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. What do you think about the situation (somewhere on that talk page) of copying in large chunks from PD texts (eg. NASA pages, Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition, Catholic Encyclopedia, and so on)? That suffers the same problems with evolution of the text but is: (a) very widespread; and (b) some people are insistent that copying PD-text verbatim and incrementally rewriting it is OK. I'm obviously not so sure, as one rewritten, it becomes unclear what came from where, especially when trying to check things and/or update old sources. Carcharoth (talk) 15:28, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a disconnect between the traditional academic view of avoiding plagiarism and the fundamental nature of wikis. Traditionally, anything you write which derives from the work of one or more others must specifically state what was reused and from which source(s)... to not do so is plagiarism, academic theft, and highly unethical. On Wikipedia, and wikis in general, that concept is completely foreign. When someone edits an article to reword a paragraph they don't worry about differentiating which parts are their own original work and which parts were taken from text previously written by one or more others. Trying to keep track of and reference all the people who contributed to the finished product would be insanely complicated and require a reference document longer than the article itself. What we have instead is the page history. Every single contribution is tracked there and thus 'attributed' to the author. There is no 'plagiarism' involved in editing the previous work of others because it is all documented in the page history. I believe the same would apply in the 'copied PD document' cases... I'd even argue that the original poster including an edit summary along the lines of, 'Text copied from 1911 Britannica', would be sufficient. Thereafter all the changes can be tracked through the history. Where it runs into trouble is when we say in the article itself that the page or a section thereof is from another source... and then the 'other source' text gets changed. Rather than trying to track what comes from the original PD source and what from Wikipedians we should just remove any 'in article' reference to the prior source. If it isn't credited in an edit summary then a footnote template along the lines of {{1911}} can cover it... though I'd think that would be better if it said something like 'this article was developed using material from' and linked to the edit(s) when the PD material was added. That continues to give due credit to the PD source, even if all its text has been replaced, like any other 'contributor' who would normally be tracked in the page history. --CBD 16:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the problem with that, in my view, is that "merciless editing" is OK for text that someone knowingly submitted to a wiki., knowing that it would be mercilessly edited. But text that others wrote, even if PD, should not be placed in the mincing machine that is a wiki without better safeguards. In other words, there is a difference between saying "I wrote this, here you are, edit away" and saying "someone else wrote this, it is PD and I'm copying it in here, edit away". I realise that is part of what PD is about, but I don't think PD was even meant to apply to incremental editing of the sort we see here. One of the points being that a vague "some parts of this might be from the original PD text that started the article, but we aren't sure" is not really sufficient. We should have the integrity to want to identify what Wikipedia editors wrote and what was copied in. But not everyone agrees with that, if you read the talk page of the proposed plagiarism guideline. Unfortunately, this bust-up over how to treat PD-texts has obscured the real aim of the proposal, which was to increase awareness of the ordinary type of plagiarism of contemporary sources, such as insufficent rewriting or close paraphrasing. In some areas, there is a fine line to tread between stating unambiguous facts that can be obtained from many sources (and sometimes only stated in a standard way - eg. biographical information) and avoiding the copying of turns of phrases unique to a particular book or author. Would you have any idea how to get Wikipedia:Plagiarism moving again? Start from scratch, slim it down, start by adding stuff to other policy and guideline pages (as some have suggested)? Carcharoth (talk) 17:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war

The Sarah Palin wheel war arbitration case, on which you have commented, is now open.

Evidence for the arbitrators may be submitted at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war/Evidence. Evidence should be submitted within one week, if possible.
Your contributions are also welcome at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war/Workshop.

For the Arbitration Committee, Anthøny ✉ 21:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NOINDEX in Template:Nn-warn

Was [6] discussed somewhere? I understand the concern behind it but it seems a little drastic to NOINDEX the whole user talk page without informing the user. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Intention was to make the Article not indexed while it was tagged as 'non notable'. I agree that this isn't right for a user warning. I removed the tag. --CBD 11:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I wonder whether the already placed occurrences should be searched and removed. I guess a bot could be programmed to do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:55, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I'll take care of it. --CBD 12:56, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I hope you found a way to do it without too much manual work. It doesn't seem important whether you should miss a few cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of microformatted data

I thought I should bring this damage to your attention: Removal of microformatted data. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Book & Infobox journal

I'm back ;-)

Another editor (whom I've just contacted) made this change a year ago, saying "rv until code is fixed". It seems that the code has never been restored, so some very useful functionality, to do with COinS, was lost. Would you be interested in helping to restore it? The problem was discussed on my talk page, but the code wasn't mine and the original author has, I believe left. Infobox journal was also affected. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In particular, we need help with template syntax. Thanks. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 00:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I should be able to help. It sounds like the problem is with changes which have been made to limit the amount of text transclusion on a page. If a template is very long or gets used many times on a single page (or is used along with many other templates) then the limit is eventually exceeded and all template calls after that fail. So the key is to make any heavily used template as small as possible. The first thing which jumps out in looking at that code is the comment sections... comments COUNT against the transclusion limits. The commented text actually gets copied and parsed onto the page where the template is located... even though it effectively does nothing since comments are only seen when editing and transcluded text is NOT seen when editing. If we could remove the comments, possibly replacing them with explanation on the template page itself, that should decrease the size quite a bit.

I'll look at where and how these templates are used. I wouldn't think that infobox templates would get called multiple times on a single page. --CBD 12:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits#

With the comments and blank spaces removed the code is fairly compact and seems straightforward. Is there a reason that the span is placed around a non-breaking space? Could it be a completely empty span? Or placed around the entire infobox, book/journal name, et cetera? Having it around the nbsp means that we are putting out an extra space... most of the time it won't be noticed, but in some cases it could cause a visible mis-alignment or extra row. --CBD 15:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coins parsers replace the content of the span with a link; I think the span could be empty, but it can't go around article text. If you use Firefox, there's an extension, OpenURLReferrer, which recognises and displays COinS markup. In fact there's also a version for IE at that URL, though I've not tried that. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I installed the extension and have been testing it. An empty span or one with something like a comment or undisplayed HTML tag does not work. The markup requires some sort of 'displayed' text which gets replaced by the link. Thus, nbsp is a fairly good choice since it may be 'displayed' without being 'seen'. However, a nbsp on a row by itself creates a significant blank space on the infobox for people who don't have the extension. The nbsp could be hidden at the end of an existing row (after the book/journal name for instance), but it might then display oddly for users who have the extension. For example;

Wuthering Heights

If there isn't enough space the 'OpenResolver' part might wrap down to a new line. The user can also choose what link text to show in the Firefox extension - which could cause other wrapping issues. Do you think that is good enough? Note that there are also going to be formatting issues... the example above is based on the actual Wuthering Heights page. Note that the author and publisher are set as wiki-links, which looks a little odd on the target page, and the ISBN has no dashes... which prevents the book finder functionality from working properly. Web search on the name still works though. --CBD 20:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your efforts. That displays for me as Wuthering Heights [COinS], clearly down to the display text I configured in the extension, ages ago (and had thus forgotten doing). I'm not troubled by the white space, but then I wasn't the first time round, and didn't make the revert of the code's original addition. My PoV is that the additional functionality makes it worth while; but that people using the extension will be used to any display quirks it causes. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to anticipate objections. Most Wikipedia users probably don't use the extension... and thus would consider this 'no benefit'. If there is a blank space people will object that it is causing a 'problem' (no matter how insignificant) with no 'benefit' (to them). Which isn't a winning strategy - given that these same people will be the ones determining 'consensus' on Wikipedia. However, if it is completely invisible to them they likely won't care. I'll try putting them in the header for now. --CBD 22:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

← Thanks again. Those are working; but there seems to be a minor issue, carried over from the original code rather than introduced by your editing, in that [[ ]] brackets are included in the emitted HTML (line breaks inserted for readability):

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;
rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&amp;
rft.genre=book&amp;
rft.btitle=I%2C+Robot&amp;
rft.author=%5B%5BIsaac+Asimov%5D%5D&amp;
rft.date=%5B%5B1950+in+literature%7C1950%5D%5D&amp;
rft.pub=%5B%5BGnome+Press%5D%5D&amp;
rft.pages=253+pp&amp;
rft.isbn=NA">

[link]

</span>

For example, rft.author=%5B%5BIsaac+Asimov%5D%5D& should, ideally, be rft.author=Isaac+Asimov&; and the date is passed as date=%5B%5B1950+in+literature%7C1950%5D%5D& not 1950.

It works as it is, but is not ideal. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Postscript: I do like the location, at the head of the infobox! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:51, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I mentioned the problem with the brackets above... the issue is that the parameter is actually set up as a wikilink, Isaac Asimov instead of 'Isaac Asimov'. That displays as a link on Wikipedia itself, but the brackets aren't understood as anything but text by COinS. Unfortunately, there is no way to 'strip out' brackets. Or add dashes to the ISBNs. Or ignore linebreaks between multiple ISBNs (per the comments below). These are all issues with how the parameters of the template are set by each individual user. --CBD 06:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Book

I believe that your edit messed up the infobox on The Sword of Shannara..... ^-talk- the_ed17 ^-contribs- 00:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your hard work on adding COinS metadata, but I think you broke {{Infobox Book}}, and possibly others. Try looking at Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, for example, under Firefox 3. These are high profile templates, so I would appreciate your urgent attention. --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 02:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem occurs on uses of the template which have multiple ISBNs separated by a linebreak from <br>. See the discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_Book#Line_breaks_in_ISBN_parameter. --CBD 05:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New userbox for WP:DYK

{{User DYK helper}} -- can you modify this box so that it changes colors just like Template:DYK-Refresh ? If that is too hard to do or not possible, no worries. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 02:57, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your work on this. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 22:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any time for Tolkien reviews?

Hi Conrad. See here. I know you've been inactive in that area recently, but do you have time to help out? Carcharoth (talk) 19:28, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Some article traffic questions

Hello CBDunkerson,
I saw your questions at User_talk:Henrik#Some_article_traffic_questions:

Very nice idea!
Not easy to say, but there is definitely very much junk under those 'one-hit pages'. And of course those pages that do not get viewed, except by web spiders etc. (just have a look into one of the hourly logs).
Yes, that's caused by automated processes (there seem to many). For header info, see that request; currently no user agent based filtering is possible. --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 17:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

Thank you for your recent participation in the AFD which closed with a snow result of Keep. Unfortunately, the nominator is not content with this consensus and is now proposing that the article be merged. Please see discussion. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article/Blurb pages

Hi. I raised a question about blurb pages on WP:EA, and was told you were spearheading this project. One possible "problem" is that they've started showing up in WP:NEEDCAT - e.g. List of Archbishops of Canterbury/Blurb, List of Alpha Phi Alpha brothers/Blurb, List of Canadian provincial and territorial orders/Blurb. Would it be possible to:

automatically categorise these pages to avoid extra work for the categorising crew, or
get the bots to avoid flagging them as uncategorised

As part of the former, I'm trying to avoid extra pages if they're not necessary :-) Thanks. CultureDrone (talk) 13:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do the relevant bots trawl the Portal namespace? If not, I will move these to be sub-pages of the featured content page where they are used. That seems like the easiest solution. --CBD 17:18, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a humble Wikignome, you lost me at the phrase 'Portal namespace' - isn't that something to do with the space-time vortex... ? Anyway, the answer (in case you hadn't guessed by now) is that I have absolutely no idea! I can see that Alaibot was responsible for the tagging of the three particular articles I mentioned, if that's any help... :-) CultureDrone (talk) 20:12, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and moved them (e.g. Portal:Featured content/Lists/List of Archbishops of Canterbury). Should prevent further problems with the bots. If you're interested info on the 'space-time continuum' can be found at Wikipedia:Namespace. :] --CBD 22:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template help needed

You might be interested in this for help with coordinate templates. Thanks, Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments about Naked Short Selling?

Hi,

I've been following with interest the discussion about The Register's article about Wikipedia and Naked Short Selling Janeyryan mentioned that you had made some comments about this article on the "Signpost". However, I can't find references to any of these things; can you give me some pointers? Thanks! cojoco (talk) 00:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He was presumably referring to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Articles. --CBD 00:10, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! cojoco (talk) 00:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ME 0.7 discussion moved

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/Wikipedia 0.7 selection and the associated page and table. Carcharoth (talk) 06:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Alot" vs "A lot"

Thought you might be interested in this... Carcharoth (talk) 21:58, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. Remembering how grammatical pedantry made me crazy on some of the old-time Usenet threads? :] --CBD 00:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Generating lists using links in infoboxes

Rick's not that active at the moment. Would you be able to help with regards to this. I would normally ask at the Village Pump, but this is a bit of a tricky one. I remember we discussed this with the Writers Infobox and the magnum opus parameter, though that was two years ago now. So if you can't remember that's fine. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 07:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember the discussion, but I know the methodology you are talking about. I went ahead and put it in place. Will take a little time for all the links to be updated, but I saw a few pages being populated already. Might suggest setting up one page in project space somewhere with all the 'whatlinkshere' links arranged by age for easy reference. --CBD 10:58, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. I wasn't expecting you to go ahead quite that boldly! I'm sure that template has a huge job queue, similar to that for {{WPBiography}}. There was actually a DRV (and previous CfD) discussing this (though one of the annoying things is that people weren't discussing this, but focusing on the categories and not the bigger picture of the purpose of such things). Anyway, I've made an attempt at the DRV to explain what happened. See here. If you could comment there (in particular to say whether you were aware of the CfD and DRV), that would be great. I'm now trying to figure out just how many articles transclude that template, and how long it will be before the job queue clears (maybe it has already?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. It answered all my questions and more! I agree that these tracker links are very useful for maintenance purposes. In particular, see my comment here. I only had to click on three or four links and change them to "minus" values to find some errors where people had switched the birth and death dates and ended up with a negative age of death. Is it possible to tweak the template to: (a) warn people when they save something that produces a negative age of death; and (b) adds a tracker link that will make it possible to find all the current "negative" ages so people can correct them? Just looking at normal negative ages (0-125) won't work because people could have made massive typos and got very large negative ages. I suppose they could have got very large positive ages with typos as well - if it's not going too far, maybe a tracker link for all ages above 122 (or whatever the current oldest age is). There may be a few biblical and mythical people in that lot, but that's all the more reason to have a link for all death ages "over 122". Or all ages, for that matter. Hmm. Better take this slowly! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 21:42, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I created Category:Pages with negative age errors based on a change to {{Age at date}}. Note that this applies to negative values on more than just 'age at death'. Again, it will probably take a while for that to populate. Since any other big queues would slow down propagation of the negative ages I didn't do anything for death at 123+ yet. That'll need to be in {{dda}} and it looks like there are several other age computing templates which should probably be tied in eventually. --CBD 22:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Did one correction already: [7]. I like the way it produces a big flashing red warning sign on the earlier version! :-) One thing: shouldn't the tracking category be a hidden one? I will note this category at the DRV as an example of a useful age-calculation maintenance category. The only other case that I can think of is the "age 0" one, which seems to be surprisingly common. I think that will just have to rely on people checking that list to make sure people haven't copied over the birth date and then forgotten to change the year. It makes one realise that the calculation is only as good as the data entered. Truly a GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) situation! There are probably tons of other places where tracking categories like this would be useful. The geographical co-ordinates ones for instance, though I can't think of a way to do that straightaway. Humans are rather good at spotting on maps when a tropical location ends up in the Arctic, or a land-based location ends up in the Pacific. But I can't think of a way to detect that with template logic. Probably not possible. Getting back to the age stuff, a common mistake seems to be getting the wrong century when people are born in one century and die in another. For example: here, though I initially thought I needed to swap the dates round, as done here - that had me very confused for a while! Sometimes they are just typos, as here. One thing I would like to do is see just how many errors there were. But that would require tracking the tracking links... :-) I could also just let the category fully populate, but it is a nice feeling to see the errors pop up in the category as the job queue reaches them, and swat them one-by-one! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 23:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Can the age calculation templates cope with BC dates and the Gregorian/Julian calendar transistion period and BC/AD transition period? I think BC dates would "only" require reversing the logic, but goodness knows how that could be done in template logic. Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I just forgot to set the category hidden. Corrected now. No, it doesn't look like either of those date templates has any logic for handling special date conditions. That could be done, but it would probably be best to clean up the proliferation of age computing templates first. BTW, another possible way to go about this would be to put all pages in a single 'Age at death' category which is SORTED by the age. That would put all the negatives at the top and all the really high amounts at the end. --CBD 23:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. Nice idea. Well, for that one application. But you could also do the nifty "jump to point x in this category" to enter at the point of a certain age. Like you can jump to the "Smiths" in Category:Living people. Hmm. Just imagine... Category:Living people sorted by age (or even nationality). BTW, some of these errors are OLD! One was 20 months old. See my comment here. I'm wondering whether the author of that article (who made the initial error) would thank me for pointing this out, or biff me (metaphorically) on the nose, or get depressed, or all three? :-/ Carcharoth (talk) 23:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or, more optimistically, the wiki-way is so strong that all errors will eventually be detected. Or alternatively, there will always be some errors somewhere waiting to be corrected. Sisyphean or what! <can't think of a suitable emoticon for that>. Carcharoth (talk) 23:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Talking about consolidating age calculation templates, I came across Template:BirthDeathAge. Seems to do quite a good consolidation job, but not sure how widely used it is. It does allow for an age range when only the year of birth or death is known. Carcharoth (talk) 07:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Scrub that last one. Seems it is used on only 70 articles and needs to be worked on. Also, as birth and death entries tend to be separate, still needs to be entered twice, and seems to make things confusing for the editor. Speaking of date calculations in general, I'm sure you know of them, but Category:Date mathematics templates (has some Julian calendar stuff) and Category:Time, date and calendar templates (some BC stuff and other calendars and geological periods). Carcharoth (talk) 15:30, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Help!

Can't make head or tail of these templates! :-) I was trying to get {{Age in years and days}} to incorporate those links you did for {{Death date and age}}, and failed miserably. I tried this, but the testcase had some cases where only a birth date was put in (i.e. the parameters 4-6 were left out), so I tried this instead, but the test page now had the tracker links showing and not hidden, for some reason. I then realised (rather late) that the template is also used for living people, so the "People who died aged XX" links are not appropriate. Is some more template logic needed, or a separate template for "Death date in years and days" (it's for the centenarians)? There is also {{age for infant}}. I don't want to specifically link to ages in days and months (years is enough), but I am trying to extend the tracker links to other death date and age templates. I suppose the alternative is to add "death age in years and days" functionality to the "Death date and age" template, and then switch the current uses on dead people of "Age in years and days" (somewhere between 250 and 500 uses on live and dead people) to the "death date and age" template. Which would make sense, really. What do you think? Carcharoth (talk) 07:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I consolidated {{Age in years and days}} and the vast majority of other pages through {{Age}}. There are several seldom used templates like {{age for infant}} and {{Age in years and months}} which don't use 'Age', but all told they account for only a couple of hundred pages. Both the existing 'whatlinkshere' and the 'negative age errors' category will no longer work as the logic behind them has been replaced. However, now that things have been consolidated at 'Age' we could recreate one or both of those features there. For now I have that template populating Category:Template computed age sorted by age. Unfortunately, '132' will there be sorted between '13' and '14'. Likewise, age '2' will show up just before age '20'. It will identify all age zero, negative age, and error message results, but the ultra high and 1-9 ages will be scattered throughout. Logic could be put in to place results >99 and/or <10 in the category under different sort headings, or put them out to a 'whatlinkshere', or a separate category entirely. Or we could have different categories for each age / group of ages, et cetera. Only concern would be to prevent it from getting so convoluted that the template gets excessively long.

Let me know if you agree with the approach of controlling everything through the 'Age' template and then we can talk about the best way to break things down. --CBD 20:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. It's quite a big change, but if it was the best way to consolidate things, I suppose it was for the best. I certainly couldn't get my mind around that logic. One thing I have noticed it that with "what links here", you could limit the results to article space, whereas here you are getting templates and other pages appearing in the category. The strange number sorting is also unfortunate. I have put {{CategoryTOC-Numeric}} on the category page, but that doesn't quite have a range of links needed - will need to do a custom one, I think. The other thing is that while you can jump to a start point, it is difficult to see how many (for example) 43-year-olds are there. With the previous system you could get the results from 126 different links and have an answer. Also, even though the use of the infant and age in years and months ones are limited, is there no way at all to include them? Either by getting them to use "age", or some other way?

Oh, totally off-topic, but I had to tell someone! I was just watching a TV program here on the BBC where Stephen Fry was touring the USA, and who did he meet up with in Washington DC? Only one Jimbo Wales! He asked a few questions and let Jimbo talk for a few minutes about Wikipedia, and it was surreal to listen to that! Fry: "So you are not one of those dot.com billionaires, then?" Jimbo (smiling): "Oh gosh, no!" (or something). And some nice idealistic stuff about how in 200 or 500 years time people will look back and think that Wikipedia was one of the great things about the early days of the internet. And how Wikipedia only has a staff of ten (not sure when it was filmed) but thousands of volunteers and "a really active core of editors and admins". And stuff about a "can-do spirit" and the ideals of building something up as a community. I hadn't realised before what a good speaker Jimbo is. :-)

Anyway, to get back to the age stuff. Would it be possible to get the ages to sort as 000, 001, 002, and so on to 099, 100, etc? I think one of the problems is that the category only has headers for 1-9, and nothing for 10 or above. That's not a big problem - it is really the sort order that needs sorting, if you get my meaning. Talking of which, did I ever point you to Wikipedia:Biographical metadata? Ultimately, it would be great if all the thing such as name sort key (DEFAULTSORT), age, birth date and death date, gender (not really recorded anywhere in any form at the moment!), and so on, were more easily extractable, and in particular not entered several times in different places. But that will have to wait until another time. Carcharoth (talk) 21:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see. Yes, the remaining small templates can be tied in. However, I figured it made sense to finalize the format first - rather than adding logic to each of them and then changing it down the line. I thought about leading zeros, but that would put everything from 000 to 099 under '0' in the category sort... they'd be in a more logical order, but all under one number. Also, '-1' would become '0-1'... which would be less than helpful. That could be avoided with special logic for negatives, but that starts to get lengthy. On finding the 'range for 43 year olds'... well, you could jump to 44 to get the end and then jump to 43 to get the beginning. It would also be possible to set up pages with special names like 'Wikipedia:=====44=====' and give them sort keys to put them at the appropriate break points. Or the >99 pages could all be shuffled off to 'Category:Template computed ages over 99' and then the '1' header on the category sort would contain 100-199... and anything in the '1000' range.

OR we could use the hidden links (the reason those were showing up as text before was that the template called to set those links had text inside it which confused the wikilink markup syntax) and have special logic for <0 and >122. Or some mix of categories and links.

Thinking about it, the easiest way to handle more complex logic would be to pass the years to a sub-template as a parameter. That prevents having to recalculate for each separate condition to be tested. Should make it possible to do whatever kind of configuration you want. --CBD 22:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What? Nothing on Jimbo? :-) BTW, not to change subject or anything, but if you are online (as I think you are), could I get your advice on this? See also the message I left here. I was going to mention it at WP:AN, but if you think there is no need to do that, I'd be just as happy not to overly publicise that. I mean, I'm sure lots of userpages have that kind of story behind them, but for various reasons both way, some delicacy (and ruthlessness as well) is needed. What do you think? I was thinking of blanking the image deletion discussions and leaving only the MfD page (the one I linked to in the deletion summaries), if that. Carcharoth (talk) 22:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you can probably just leave it as is or blank any/all of the discussions. User never really worked on Wikipedia at all and the images hadn't been and weren't likely to be used in any articles. I think all the *fD discussion pages are now set 'noindex' so that they won't show up in external search results. Thus, I suspect that this stuff will shortly just be lost in the archives even if you don't blank it out. On Jimbo, yeah I've seen some similar bits. He's good at 'painting the big picture'. --CBD 23:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Thanks for the advice. I think I will just leave it as is. With the IfD and MfD discussions, though, someone might end up saying something. I guess we will see. And thanks again for the age-stuff work. Do you need any more "requests" from me, or do you want to just carry on developing it and let me know what you come up with? I'm most interested in ease of use, and ability to query things and get results. Ultimately, I suppose, other tools should be used for that. I do like, though, the way that categories count things for you, so piggybacking on that would be quite good. Carcharoth (talk) 23:24, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See {{Age sort}} and the resultant categories; Category:Template computed age, Category:Template computed age over 99, and Category:Template computed age non-articles. The 'Age sort' can be adjusted as need be. --CBD 00:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness. That's impressive! Don't have time to look now (need to let the categories update, anyway, I think), but will look later. BTW, when you do IF: NAMESPACE, does that test for any namespace other than "0". ie. Namespace "0", the "front-facing" side of the encyclopedia, as I saw Werdna call it, is easily separated from all the others namespaces (1, 2, 3, etc)? That's handy, if so. This is now looking a lot better. I just hope it leads to something! :-/ At some point, synchronising the Persondata, categories, and infobox birth data will have to be attempted. The previous attempt got bogged down instantly under the weight of the data. Did I ever point you at that? Have a look for "Polbot" in my subpages. Carcharoth (talk) 00:42, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS. {{Lifetime}} is an interesting template dealing with this sort of stuff. Carcharoth (talk) 00:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The 'NAMESPACE' magic word returns text such as 'Wikipedia' or 'Portal talk'. However, for the main namespace it gives a blank result... #if: evaluates blank as 'no' and non-blank as 'yes', so yes that is an easy way to differentiate between the main namespace and all others. I went through and corrected several negative and incorrect 100+ pages this morning. --CBD 11:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Some people (like me) might still be clicking on the old category of Category:Pages with negative age errors and wondering why it is not working (or whether there are no more errors or if everyone else is getting to the errors first). Might want to delete or update that category (checking what links here first to update the locations where it was discussed, or rather linked and discussed). Where exactly do we now track the negative ages? Go to Category:Template computed age and Category:Template computed age over 99 and look where exactly? Theoretically, the centenarians will make looking in Category:Template computed age over 99 difficult, so one for over 122 would help there. Though there will still be some in the 'over 99' one. Ideally, some intersection of the 'over 99' and 'centenarians' one would be good, but I've only ever worked out how to do that manually. Are there tools that do category intersection (I'm aware of Wikipedia:Category intersection)? I'd also be interested in getting a listing of the living centenarians. Any idea? (If this seems like a never-ending set of feature requests, it is! Feel free to cry "stop!" at any time...:-) Carcharoth (talk) 12:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More thoughts

This is funny! I also noticed quite a few institutions or companies have had this "age" thing added. That probably needs sorting out at some point. Maybe a separate "establishment age" template, or something, to go with Category:Establishments by year and Category:Disestablishments by year. Also, a few animals have been marked with ages, which is more understandable, but still seems like mixing in things that should be separate. I dread the day, though, when people say "shall we split out ages by nationality" or something, and then the whole subcategory debate starts again. BTW, Robert Young would be interested in the "over 99" one, and would probably request an "over 110" one. Do you want to drop him a line? Carcharoth (talk) 12:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pages with negative age errors - I redirected it to 'Template computed age'
Negative ages - Will show up under the '-' sort heading at the very top of the category. There won't ever be any under the 'over 99' category because negative anything is less than 100 and the 'Template computed age' page doesn't show any currently because I cleared them out earlier. You can see some at Category:Template computed age non-articles though.
Over 122 - I just started with Jeanne Calment and worked down. Can also 'jump to' 122. Any '13#' or '14#' type ages will be at the end of the '3', '4', et cetera sort headings. I did run into one page where the person was listed as 1029 years old or something like that... got put into the '9' sort heading because that category is sorted by 'age - 100'.
Category intersection - I've seen some rough tools for doing it in the past, but don't know if any of them are still around.
Separate out living / establishments / animals / et cetera - Doing this would require that additional parameters be passed to the template to identify the 'type' of thing for which an 'age' is being computed OR separate templates for each 'type'. There are alot of pages where people just use the 'age' template directly. In any case, not something which can be done with a template alone - would require thousands of manual edits or a bot that assigns 'type' based on some criteria like categories the page is in.
Supercentarians - I think it is probably better to populate things like 'living centarians' and 'over 110' by hand - with this used to find pages which should (or should not) be included. This works better as a hidden maintenance category than a displayed category. --CBD 12:32, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did two fixes like this, but I'm not sure if subst'ing "age" like that is a good idea. It leaves a lot of raw code behind. Maybe using preview and typing in the calculated age (for those reigns) is a better approach? The centenarians still being a bit mixed up is unfortunate. I suppose this is the same in the under 100 category? Would it be simply to split off an "under 20" category for "children"? Picking under 20 seems better than picking one of the definitions of "child". The "jump to" methods you point out will work, but putting something at the top of the category explaining it to people (like the category contents template I put there, briefly) would be good. Of the "type", Category:Living people could be used. The other "types" will probably need doing by hand, as you say. Carcharoth (talk) 13:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Biographical sort keys

One last thing for now. Just want to put down a few thoughts on biographical sort keys, and get your opinion on whether an approach like the above would ever work for name sort keys. See Hedges for a list that I expanded recently (mainly because I noticed that the Robert Hedges linked for the 2008 awards at Royal Medal was a 19th century colonial administrator...). The point here is that a full index of all people articles sorted by name would be ideal to help disambiguation like this. The trouble is that, while Category:Living people is a good approximation of a list of all the living people (because it is fully populated and not divided into subcategories), Category:People is not helpful for listing all the people articles (because it is divided into subcategories, many of which contain non-people articles, especailly when you get very deep into the category tree). One of the approximations to a list of all people is the transclusion list of {{WPBiography}} (though there are hundreds, and probably thousands of people articles that lack that talk page tag). The problem is that the DEFAULTSORT used on the biographical pages (though getting a listing of which ones lack DEFAULTSORT is another seemingly intractable problem) do not affect the sorting of the listing of talk pages. So a bot needs to work from the transclusion list and grab the DEFAULTSORT values. And look for pipes and the listas parameter used in WPBiography. That was the intention behind the bot request that led to User:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run. But it never really got anywhere (partly my fault). I know this is a massive task, but can you think of any ways to simplify things? One of the problems is that DEFAULTSORT is a magic word, not a template. Possibly if all biographical articles were converted to use {{Lifetime}}, then that might help. Certainly, finding out which biographical articles lack that template, rather than those that lack DEFAULTSORT, would be easier. Carcharoth (talk) 13:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CfDs on hidden categories

Will be asking one of the CfD regulars, but I also wanted to let you know I had left a comment here updating that discussion on what we had been doing (well, mainly you!). I also included a handy link here to list some of the corrections you did. The question I had there was whether there have ever been any discussions over hidden categories. I guess most of those debates would take place at WP:TfD? Are all hidden categories applied by templates? I see we have Category:Hidden categories, which says we have 2,257 hidden categories. Hmm. In case you missed the debates when hidden categories were introduced, I've summarised here where the original discussions and announcements were. I'll copy all this over there, in fact, and ping some people to get their opinions. Carcharoth (talk) 14:26, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Posted here. Carcharoth (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raymond Hoser

Hi there, I've found some peer-reviewed publications that discuss Hoser's work. Could you take another look at the article and the AfD discussion? Tim Vickers (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Date autoformatting

Hi CBD. I was wondering if you might take a look at WT:MOSNUM and User talk:Lightmouse and see if maybe you could help get things going towards a better solution for date linking/formatting. I've tried, repeatedly, to get something going (a software solution, or at least better consensus for date unlinking) but to no avail. Those involved seem unable to see that twelve editors on an obscure MoS page can't just decide to kill something lots of editors have grown accustomed to. Or maybe I'm overreacting. Your input would be appreciated. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 03:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template help needed:

Hi,

Can you assist in re-writing a template, as briefly discussed at Infobox templates with data entered by column, please? That job is beyond me. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Some article traffic questions (No. 2)

Hello CBDunkerson,
referring to #Re:_Some_article_traffic_questions, I have created a page view distribution list:

http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest-daily/wikipedia/en/distribution.htm

The page will be a bit more detailed soon. I will have to work on finding out how many articles (~%) do not get any single hit per day, for example. --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 17:42, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link you gave me back doesn't work ;-) But you are right! Redirects are counted as well, as it is not easily possible to figure out the millions of redirects efficiently, unfortunately. But I will work on that some day using API. There are also many many non-existent "articles", see Wikipedia:Most missed articles (included in the pages number, of course). After finding out the share of those hits I can tell you how many articles do not get any hit. But at the moment I am busy with other things. Nevertheless, I think the current distribution overview (not including offensive spam towards non-existent pages, by the way) is a good beginning :-) --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 17:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.s.: Quoting you: "Is interesting that redirects get hit more often (at least 3.3 million times) than the content pages themselves." -- First, not all of that are redirects, maybe much non-existent stuff. But with redirects it's probably because there are 2 or (sometimes many) more redirects for one artice. If they only get one single hit they will be counted. But the articles themself get much more hits (in numbers). It's just because there are so many many redirects what makes the number appear that big. The substantial traffic goes directly to the articles, I think. --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 17:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

LONI

Could you please reinstate the redirect of LONI to Laboratory_Of_Neuro_Imaging? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iwaterpolo (talk • contribs) 22:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

user:Georgezhao

i am not sure if i register account name ‘georgezhao’ before, i want to Manage my global account, but find this user name 'georgezhao' used different password, i cannot remember which one to use. i faided to merge my english account and chinese account. could you please help me to figure out why?

it seems no people is using this account‘georgezhao’ , please help me to change my user-name 'gzhao' to georgezhao？ thank you very much。 Gzhao (talk) 20:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Portal:Featured_articles

Portal:Featured_articles, 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/Portal:Featured_articles and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Featured_articles 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. Ruslik_Zero 13:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Featured content

Howdy. If you're not too busy (ha!), I was wondering if you could take a look at Portal:Featured content in order to properly delegate/advise/fix some of the problems that are being reported at talk (eg 1 and 2). Main 2 problems are: demoted content showing up, featured lists regularly showing up in full.

I posted a notice in April to WT:FL (archived link) which resulted in this reply from admin Matthewedwards, so possibly he could help?

Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template loop

The template Template:List preview contained a template loop, caused by the page calling upon itself when you used "FULLPAGENAME". Have a look at my fix. I hope that helped. Debresser (talk) 12:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:32stories

Template:32stories has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Ricky81682 (talk) 23:07, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of Fictional Curse Words

Why did you delete it? Many have found it a valuable tool, and if you had allowed it to remain it would have certainly gained more contributors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.52.50 (talk) 21:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hip-Hop Dance

Just wanted to thank you for creating the template for generic infoboxes. When I was rewriting the above titled article, I didn't know which infobox to use but I found yours on this list and it works great. // Gbern3 (talk) 18:17, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for File:Middle-earth.jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Middle-earth.jpg. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the file description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Ozhiker (talk) 23:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Portal:Featured content

Please refrain from introducing inappropriate pages, such as Portal:Featured content, to Wikipedia. Doing so is not in accordance with our policies. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. minhhuy*= (talk) 11:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ummm... seriously? I'm gonna guess, 'automated tagging tool failure'. Either that or some sort of wacky 'point'. --CBD 18:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RT Template:coord

You are the first in Special:Whatlinkshere/WP:RT. Is it possible to convert the values from Template:tz/coordinates, a ISO 6709 subset, to values accepted by template:coord]? TimeCurrency (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Time zone fix

Template_talk:Infobox_country#Time_zone_fix - the 2nd contribution, mine. "Please allow override..." Could you put example code in the sandbox? TimeCurrency (talk) 12:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:FALink

Template:FALink has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Magioladitis (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Template:Findbox

Template:Findbox, 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:Findbox and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Template:Findbox 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. WOSlinker (talk) 22:18, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Data/Mud Lake (California)

Template:Data/Mud Lake (California) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:13, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

proper alignment

I can't get proper alignment for Template:Infobox ice hockey game for "previous" and "next". For ex., 2000 IIHF World Championship Final, the "<-1999" should be at the far left of the infobox, not the middle. Can you help? thanks. Slaja (talk) 01:13, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Merge JRRT

Template:Merge JRRT has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Axem Titanium (talk) 11:50, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for merging of Template:Today

Template:Today has been nominated for merging with Template:Date. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Set Sail For The Seven Seas 271° 21' 30" NET 18:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Infobox generic

Template:Infobox generic has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 12:06, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am waiting for your response.

I sent you one mail on 03rd December on Tripura Charan Devasharma. May I expect a reply and an early action ?

Nirmalya Banerjee Nirban (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

May I Know the Reason for Deletion ?

Dear Sir,

Today, I suddenly found that the page "Tripura Charan Devasharma", created by me, was deleted by you on 10/02/2007. But no history or reason for deletion could be found by me. The page contained a brief biography of Yogacharya Tripura Charan Devasharma, a famous Yogi of India. His name was mentioned in a page "Ganesh Baba", who was the disciple of Tripura Charan Devsharma. However, this page is still there. I can not make out, why the page describing the disciple was untouched, but that of his Guru was deleted ?

I would like to inform you that Tripura Charan Devasharma, who had hundreds of disciples allover the world, was a famous Yogi of India. I think you have the idea about Indian Yogis. He wrote many books which were mentioned in the article. His biography has been printed in different magazines and different books, mainly in Bangla and English. The disciples of Ganeshananda Maharaj (Ganesh Baba) thanked me for that article and his photo.

The deletion has hurt our religious sentiment. I am a senior Govt Officer and a humble disciple of Tripuracharan Devasharma. A disregard and disrespect to the Guru (Religious Master)is counted as a serious personal insult to a disciple. I feel insulted, hurt and humiliated. May I request you to kindly let me know the exact reason for the deletion of the page ? I would like to request you to kindly restore the page. If it is not restorable anymore, please let me know and I shall repost the same.

I pray to Tripuracharan Dev to bless you.

Yours Sincerely

Nirmalya Banerjee,

Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Nirban (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to the deletion log that page was deleted by Pilotguy on 02/07/2007 for copyright violations. This might happen if you copied text from some other website as part of the article. However, I had nothing to do with it so I really wouldn't know the details. --CBD 19:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of the page on Tripura Charan Devasharma

Dear Sir,

When I could not find the page i tried to repost the page. there it was mentioned that you have deleted the page. But you are saying that it was done by Pilotguy. I do not know how to contact him. searching his name has not given any result. Also, I can not make out how, Wikipedia can allow somebody to be an administrator who does not even have the courage to publish his real name ! Regarding copyright violation, i feel much annoyed. I can assure you that, EACH AND EVERY WORD OF THAT ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY ME. If this article was published in any other website then they have violated copyright, and not I. Now, may I repost it once again ? An early response from your end shall be highly appreciated.

Yours sincerely

Nirmalya Banerjee — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nirban (talk • contribs) 18:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Unleap

Template:Unleap has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:15, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Leapday

Template:Leapday has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:37, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wow!

Wow! You created the Portal:Featured content! That's great! Clap, clap, clap... Good job! --Catalaalatac (talk) 00:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'm glad you like it. :] --CBD 18:36, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Was it you?

I was looking throught this discussion (don't ask me how I got there), and noticed your comment at the bottom. Are you saying that you were the creator of the Flying Moose? If it was you, wow...I remember that site from years ago. Loved it. Nolelover^{It's almost football season!} 18:23, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I was just one of the contributors. The actual creator and maintainer of that website (and most of the craziness on it) was an old friend from Usenet named O. Sharp. Nice catch though... the fake version of LotR that I was referring to is still on the 'Tolkien sarcasm page' there. --CBD 19:01, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe, that site was one of the first Internet pages I ever got on (as in ever), and I remember thinking "Holy crap, this internet thing is awesome..." Nolelover^{It's almost football season!} 19:13, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, our beloved E-text. The memories, the memories. (To give credit where it's due, though, the Beruthiel reference in that newspaper article was from O's own "homework help" page, which I think predated our E-text by a few years.) Incidentally, apropos of nothing, are you on Facebook, CBD? A number of us old Usenet folks have loosely connected there. --Steuard (talk) 20:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Given how all-encompassing Facebook and Twitter are becoming I will probably eventually have to break down and sign up, but I'm still avoiding the whole 'social networking' thing for now. --CBD 15:24, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, you're being perfectly sensible (especially considering Facebook's war on privacy). I do like it as a way to maintain some tenuous contact with distant friends and relatives, but I worry about the social cost. Take care! --Steuard (talk) 21:40, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

?

Care to explain your "no consensus" here? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lamia (Dungeons & Dragons)‎ - There is not one "keep" that is not based on an absurditiy, falicy or downright lie. Active Banana (^bananaphone 02:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Theory of expansions

Irmo

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Robert Young

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Godsmack

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idea that grew from your own suggestions, re Beta's image tagging

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counting chickens

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