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Administratorship

I extend my appreciation for your thorough-going efforts in responding to people's questions on the help-desk page, and your willingness to discover and convey the conventions and policies, such as they are, in this neighorhood. I freely admit I have not explored many of the corners of Wikipedia's routines as deeply as your exploration, and perhaps that is the primary content of my admiration. I recognize that your article edits are not so numerous, and subject to criticism on that score in relation to a request for admministratorship nomination, and your own interests and motivations may not include the tasks that admins elect to undertake. Despite all of that, I, at your humble and extended leisure, would be willing and happy to nominate or participate in motivating you to seek administratorship at a time that makes sense for you, and to draft some (inadequate) reasons why your perspectives are a valuable administrator quality for the Wikipedia commnity to avail itself of. (No, I have not ever nominated anyone previously for an RFA.) I don't pay that much attention to the Wikipedia:RFA page, but I suspect the closest parallel and similar nomination to your own potential nomination...and potential reaction would be this one, the comments on the nomination of a now departed template editor, Ben, in March of 2007.
Your continuing thoughts invited.
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It's something to think about, if I find myself asking administrators for help. So far, I don't think I have actually done that, other than maybe suggesting a change to some protected page somewhere. One task where I could probably use administrator tools might be generating shortcuts for the Editor's index, which needs possibly several hundred of them, and mass-creating shortcuts by hand via the usual page-creation interface is quite tedious. I thought about running Perlwikipediabot to generate a copy of the shortcuts we need, on another wiki where I do have administrator access, and when I get the bot code debugged, I would just find an admin to run it for me on Wikikpedia. Other than that, I haven't really felt motivated to seek adminship, but I suppose if someone hangs out on Wikipedia long enough, adminship is sort of the natural direction one would go. (What else is there to aspire to?) Should I ever begin to think I need adminship, I'll be calling in these offers of support, so thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I read PrimeHunter's RFA, and now maybe I could think about seeking nomination on a similar basis, for example to view deleted pages so I can coherently respond to WP:WWMPD questions on the Help desk. I have close to the same number of edits on the Help desk as PrimeHunter (we seem to be battling for second place there). I can't see myself getting too involved in the bare-knuckle brawling aspects of adminship (blocks, deletions, etc.), although that does sound intriguing. So if you still want to nominate me, I guess (gulp) I'm ready to be thrown to the lions. --Teratornis (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, Thanks for letting me know. I'd like to, over the next month or so make the time for a thoughtful introduction, and that would allow you (and me) the opportunity to mull over the potential (ad)venture. And if someone else gets you there first, so be it. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 05:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
That sounds good to me. There's no hurry. --Teratornis (talk) 06:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, there's no hurry. Once in a while I run across something I could use admin powers on, such as looking at deleted articles when people ask about them on the Help desk, but it's not a screaming need. I'm sure you'll get to it soon enough. In the meantime, there's more than enough to do as a plain user. --Teratornis (talk) 02:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • As I start to finally review your fine editorial activities, you may desire to be thinking about the standard questions, and anticipate the likely ad-hoc questions that will arise. Cheers, -- Yellowdesk (talk) 04:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh dear, that sounds as if it may require some actual thought. I guess the RfA procedure discriminates unfairly against nonthinkers. I'll rely on PrimeHunter's RfA to some degree, since my case is similar insofar as our Help desk activities go. --Teratornis (talk) 05:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I have some notes at: User:Teratornis/Notes#Request for Adminship. --Teratornis (talk) 21:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
That was interesting. Thanks for your efforts. You might want to send a copy to User:Tanthalas39 who also offered to nominate me. Oh, and I looked again at poor Ben's RFA. My editing history is a little more well-rounded than Ben's was at the time of his RFA. I just checked, and I have 1198 mainspace edits now. Still pretty lopsided with half (3428) of my total edits (6852) on the Help desk, but I think Help desk experience leads to more in the way of general knowledge of how Wikipedia works than template tinkering does. Certainly from a dealing-with-people perspective, given that the Help desk entertains some questions from users who arrive in a state of emotional unrest. --Teratornis (talk) 06:26, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I sense...

I sense a touch of liberal in you, judging from Wikipedia:Help Desk#safety. Kudos on the well thought out post :) Seicer (talk) (contribs) 17:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

To the extent that liberalism means attempting to base one's beliefs on facts and critical thinking, then I suppose some people might momentarily call me a "liberal," depending on which subset of my beliefs they might be noticing at the time. However, all the self-described liberals I know waste about as much gasoline as the self-described conservatives I know. The notion that something could be inherently wrong with mass automobility is extremely rare where I live. Rarer still are people who oppose automobiles without opposing technology in general (I want all the Moore's law we can get). None of the Democratic Party candidates in the current U.S. Presidential campaign have suggested that the United States should begin taxing motor fuels the way Germany and France have done for decades. Even so much as lip service acknowledgement of the insanity of mass automobility is rare in any political quarter, but it can be found among a (very few) conservatives. For example, some conservatives are able to put two and two together and realize the folly of our "addiction to oil" (as George W. Bush put it, although I don't see Mr. Bush cutting back on his insanely wasteful trips in Air Force One). --Teratornis (talk) 18:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I substantially depart from both liberalism and conservativism on their basic views of human nature. As Steven Pinker points out in his book The Blank Slate, liberals tend to view humans as having no innate nature; rather, we are born as blank slates and shaped by society. Marxism involves a more extreme version of this view. Conservatives, on the other hand, may be somewhat more likely to view humans as having an inborn nature; the racialist views of Naziism involve an extreme version of this view. Political views tend to originate from an armchair perspective; the scientific method, in contrast, tries to get at the truth of things without preconception. The truth about human nature is probably more complex and nuanced than the notions that form the basis of any existing political philosophy. --Teratornis (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Awesome

I don't like going off on tangents on wikipedia often, but I thought that your latest post at the Helpdesk was awesome. Here have a cookie.--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 18:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried eating that cookie, but it tastes oddly like glass. (Do we have any SVG cookies? Then we could zoom them up to full-screen.) I'm not really sure what was tangential about my latest post on the Help desk - that is, what was more relatively tangential about it than the Help desk in general, which seems to field every imaginable question. Besides, if someone wants to apply the "for the children" argument to Wikipedia, I'm going see if they want to apply that argument consistently. --Teratornis (talk) 19:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh your post was far from tangential, my comment here was the tangent, and also that cookie picture unscaled is rather large. :)--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 22:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Tracking things that are archived

Thank you for letting me know about your addition to the answer to my question, and for the answer itself. I'll try it out.

When I asked the question, I had no idea there would be multiple ways to approach the problem. The more I learn of this software system, the more amazed I become.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 19:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thanks for the feedback. --Teratornis (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Google images

TfD nomination of Template:Google images

Template:Google images 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. — Nsaa (talk) 11:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me. I added a comment citing the issues from the earlier related discussion: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_19#Template:Google which resulted in: not deleted. I see that {{Google images}} needs its documentation to be similar to that for {{Google}}, with a notice not to use the template in articles, so I will do that now. --Teratornis (talk) 17:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Great! Nsaa (talk) 22:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks again for notifying me. I would probably not have noticed the nomination otherwise. --Teratornis (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

See my reply. And again, feel free to ask me any questions or anything. -- Ned Scott 05:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned on the template talk page, thank you very much indeed for the most impressive answer. --Teratornis (talk) 07:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Need major help

HI THANKS I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE EXPERTS OF THIS STUFF IM NEW I CAME HERE TODAY! and i was wandering i made an article called Siege of Kapisa, and i dont know how to make it look like a battle article with the commanders or casualties or that blue box on the side if you can give me instructions or put it for i will be in debt for you, and if you can tell me in my talk how to change title of article of Siege of Sardis to Siege of Sardis (547 BC), tell me, and if you can just do it yourself do it and tell me how at the same time, sorry im a rookie at this stuff i love wikipedia and i joined to give new info to it, thanks!--Ariobarza (talk) 09:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

EIW shortcuts

Okay, I've posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) as well as at WP:BOTREQ. Assuming someone volunteers a bot and there is no surprise opposition to the EIW shortcuts, it will take me perhaps an hour to add all the shortcuts that are needed to the Index. But I'm going to hold off (I did do "A" as a demo/pilot) until it looks like things are good to go.

And thanks for keeping an eye on this; I do need prodding from time to time. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Any chance you could take over the request at Wikipedia:Bot requests for a bot to set up the EIW: shortcuts that are in place at WP:EIW, for the letter "A"? The only special requirement I know of is that they should include the template {{R from shortcut}}.
If you can work with someone to get the "A" shortcuts put in place, I'll then add the B to Z shortcuts so the job can be finished.
If you don't have time, I will get to this, but it might take a bit longer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been wanting to play around with bots on my corporate wikis (one of my coworkers already has a little). Maybe I can figure out exactly what to do, and debug the method on one of my backup wiki copies that I run under XAMPP on my computers. (It's too bad I can't just use Special:Import to import a set of shortcuts in Wikipedia after I generate them locally, but if I can tell someone who runs bots on Wikipedia exactly what to do, he or she should have no problem.) So, I'll try to get to this before you do, but I can't guarantee I will "win." Thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 21:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Search VP?

Hi. I was wondering if it were possible to do the same magic you did for searching the help desk, over with the Village pump archives? It appears (from a bleary post-lunch glance) to probably require a bunch of page-moves/structure-changes to implement, but it'd sure be useful.. Would it be possible? Just a thought :) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

This may be tricky because of the naming scheme for the Village pump pages. Google's custom search likes to have the slash character for a delimiter. Unfortunately, the various Village pump sections use parentheses. However, it seems Google's custom search can use the ( character as a delimiter, allowing one Google custom search to search on all the sections and their archives simultaneously. In any case, it is straightforward to search on the individual sections. Check out these examples I created by copying and editing the table of examples I had written earlier to document {{Google custom}}:
Type this To get this What it produces, or searches for
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump||Search Wikipedia:Village pump}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump Blank form to search only the "main" Village pump (does not find the parenthesized sections)
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) Blank form to search the Village pump (policy) section and its archive pages
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) Blank form to search the Village pump (technical) section and its archive pages
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump ( Use the ( character as a search delimiter to trick Google into searching the sections
I added the above examples to the table in Template:Google custom/doc. {{Google custom}} is a general template that can create links to Google searches on any part of Wikipedia that ends in a page name, or a slash, or a parenthesis character it seems. I made {{Google help desk}} as a cut-down copy of {{Google custom}} that I hard-coded to search only the Help desk. That saves much typing when I answer Help desk questions and I want to illustrate an answer with a search of the Help desk archive pages. If you need to search a particular part of Wikipedia many times, you can easily copy {{Google help desk}} to a new template and edit it (also copy the {{Google help desk/doc}} page). Or if it is too bewildering, I can do this for you. Just tell me what particular search(es) you need. Since the Village pump page naming scheme makes searching a bit awkward, I'm not sure exactly what template(s) you might want. --Teratornis (talk) 02:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
That's excellent. Thanks. I'd guessed that the search absolutely-required a slash as a delimiter.
If you'd like to, I'd suggest adding links to these and other searches, at somewhere appropriate (VP headers, talkpages, Wikipedia:Village pump archive, etc). Maybe a search for "Wikipedia:Village pump (" (as above), and another for the earlier section listed at Wikipedia:Village pump archive#July 2002 - July 2004. I'd assume the "October 2004 - October 2007" section is unsearchable...?
(However, I was initially just trying to find out if any questions about "watchlists" had been asked there recently, and knew of your useful helpdesk template. I'm not involved with VP maintenance/related at all, so wouldn't know where to be bold, etc).
If you don't, I might try poking at it next week. (replies here are fine :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks like the place to add search links would be the {{Villagepump}} template which has the table code for WP:VP. Since I don't hang out on the Village pump much, I'm hesitant to be WP:BOLD. I guess I'll try editing a test copy of {{Villagepump}} on my User:Teratornis/Sandbox2 page to add some search links. If that works OK, I'll leave a comment on Template talk:Villagepump#Village pump section search links asking the good people there if they like the search links. It does seem like kind of a no-brainer, though. You go to a page that lists a bunch of archived content, of course you'd probably want to search on it. Maybe everything on Wikipedia that generates big archives needs a {{Google custom}} search. --Teratornis (talk) 06:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, check out: User:Teratornis/Sandbox2 (diff). --Teratornis (talk) 07:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Template talk:Villagepump#Village pump section search links may not get a lot of attention. If you know of a place to ask this question that gets more eyeballs, please ask it there. --Teratornis (talk) 16:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I edited Template:Google custom/doc to document the above findings. I made a separate section:

to make this method of searching archived discussions easier to understand. I added a link to that section under WP:EIW#Archive. I followed some links from WP:EIW#Archive and left some comments for other users who may find this search method useful:

The {{Google custom}} template would be widely useful on Wikipedia for searching the many sets of archived pages. --Teratornis (talk) 19:23, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I tried experimenting to create one for the psychokinesis talk page, but was unsuccessful. In the example you gave {{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser||search the AutoWikiBrowser discussion archive}} it uses the address phrase "/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:" yet talk pages use just "/wiki/Talk:" in their urls. I tried both ways, did searches for defintely findable terms like "telekinesis" and "PK" and the Google searches came up zero. Let me see a working template example for the psychokinesis talk page and its archives. My experience with Google is that they intentionally block the Wikipedia domain after one or two results; otherwise, searches could result in page after page of just Wiki articles. You sure about this? Leave a brief note on my talk page and I'll come back here for your reply. Thanks. 5Q5 (talk) 23:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Every namespace has an associated talk namespace. See: Help:Namespace and Help:Talk page. Articles are in the "main" namespace which has no prefix, so its talk namespace has the prefix: Talk:. All the other namespaces have their associated talk namespaces, e.g., Wikipedia: and Wikipedia talk:, Template: and Template talk:, User: and User talk:, etc. I looked at Talk:Psychokinesis and the archives are the usual subpages, so I expected the usual Google custom method to work, but it does not appear to work:
Type this To get this What it produces, or searches for
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychokinesis||Search Talk:Psychokinesis}} Search Talk:Psychokinesis Blank form to search Talk:Psychokinesis and its subpages - does not work
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychokinesis/||Search Talk:Psychokinesis}} Search Talk:Psychokinesis Blank form to search Talk:Psychokinesis and its subpages - does not work, with or without the trailing slash
Also, I tried some plain {{Google}} searches as you mentioned, such as: Talk:Psychokinesis, and Google does not even return the Talk:Psychokinesis page as one of its results. Google does appear to find a copy of that page on somebody's mirror wiki, but not Wikipedia's talk page. This is very odd, because both plain Google search and custom Google search return Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser, for example this plain Google search finds the page as the first result: Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. It's looking very much as if Google only indexes talk pages of non-article namespaces. That is very strange. As you can see from my table of examples in {{Google custom}}, I hadn't actually tried any Google custom searches on the Talk: namespace yet. I will ask on the Help desk to see if anyone knows anything about this, and add a note to the {{Google custom}} documentation that the search doesn't seem to work on Talk:. Thanks for pointing this out. --Teratornis (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I Googled for clues (naturally): google does not index wikipedia talk pages and found this blog post by User:Cumbrowski:
which includes a comment posting that says "Google excluded the talk pages from the index" by which he probably means article talk pages, since Google is still indexing talk pages for non-article pages. So I guess there is nothing to ask the Help desk about. {{Google custom}} is not going to work on the Talk: namespace. --Teratornis (talk) 09:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the All Wikipedia Links Are Now NOFOLLOW Jan 2007 article link. I'm going to post a brief note of it on the PK talk page to inform other editors. 5Q5 (talk) 15:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Rollback

Hi, I noticed your great contributions and thought that you might like rollback. It's basically a quick way to revert vandalism. Remember, rollback should never be used on good-faith edits or in an edit dispute. If you'd like to test it out, you can head here. Happy editing! bibliomaniac15 01:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That could come in handy sometime. --Teratornis (talk) 05:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Why do you hate Scott A. Brown?

Why do you hate Scott A. Brown? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.55.114.252 (talk) 22:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The above question appears to be vandalism. See: Special:Contributions/84.55.114.252 and User talk:84.55.114.252. --Teratornis (talk) 22:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

WAZZ/WFLB

Please see my reply to your reply on the help desk.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear before, and I may just have made things worse. Nevertheless, I followed the directions and discovered that a merger of those pages has been proposed. Some of the content on the WFLB page is specific to WFLB and should be preserved, although it would be no problem for me to start that page over.

Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger and re-creation completed, though there is still a history issue. Those who contributed to the former WFLB article can still be seen on the new WFLB page, but somehow this needs to be made clear in case anyone is looking at the WAZZ page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:41, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Since we cannot edit the history directly, the best option I can think of would be to explain on the talk pages of these articles the details of the page mergers, moves, etc. Then anyone who need to reconstruct the provenance for the GFDL can do so. Thanks for taking such care on these articles. --Teratornis (talk) 16:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Canadian Pacific Steamship Captain

Thanks for your help at Wikipedia:Help Desk#Article Naming Conflict ....

The new article has been entitled Samuel Robinson, RNR because (1) this is the way the mariner seems to have identified himself in the 1924 report detailing what happened to RMS Empress of Australia during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923-- see here; and (2) I found another book which explained that all Canadian Pacific steamships in this period were captained by men from the Royal Naval Reserve, having an implied cachet in the early years of the 20th century which passes unrecognized (or under-appreciated) today -- see Tate, E. Mowbray. (1986). Transpacific Steam: The Story of Steam Navigation from the Pacific Coast of North America to the Far East and the Antipodes, 1867-1941, p. 238.. There may be a better way to name this article, but this choice is at least plausible and informed. --Tenmei (talk) 14:33, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I'm not sure how much I actually helped, about all I know how to do is find the manuals, but I'm glad to see you figured out a course of action. Almost everything we do will probably get edited into something else eventually. --Teratornis (talk) 01:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Peak oil

Hi, you've made some good contributions to the article and discussion at Peak oil, so I was wondering if you would mind having a look at and commenting on what's going on here. Thanks, NJGW (talk) 00:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The bad news is we're running out of liquid fuels. The good news is I helped create a navigation template. Industrial civilization may collapse, but at least our site is looking cool. I try to help where I can. --Teratornis (talk) 19:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

A star

The Help Desk Barnstar
For your way of answering this[1] and others at the Help desk, I award you *cue fanfare* the now prestigious Help Desk Barnstar! Julia Rossi (talk) 08:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Sometimes I wonder if I'm talking to myself on the Help desk, so it's nice to get the occasional feedback from someone who finds some value in what I wrote. (I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but in the interest of accuracy, I only post to the Help desk which is distinct from the Reference desk. Then again, I often do answer questions on the Help desk that belong on the Reference desk, so in a larger sense I am effectively a Reference desk contributor even though I have very few if not zero edits there. We could edit the above to use {{The Help Desk Barnstar}} and no one will be the wiser.) --Teratornis (talk) 17:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Please, be my guest Teratornis. It just shows your attention to detail and the barnstar is all yours. There again I learned there's a difference – I find so much that's helpful on the help desk, I rarely need to pop up there in the questions or answers but appreciate its offerings more than I can say. It was time to say... thanks heaps.  ; ) Julia Rossi (talk) 22:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Tweaked it on passing by, : ) Julia Rossi (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar thanks

I didn't know that one. Thanks! PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the Korean user

Sorry, I'm about to be out, so I can't help the Korean editor right now. I would help him or her about 3 hours later. However, admin BorgQueen speaks Korean fluently, so he or she could help him/her if the admin is active. --Appletrees (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Dude.... I need help finding a nice mountain bike.

I like your bike I saw tonight. Where can I find one?--Deca2499 (talk) 02:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I got the bike from the Randall Scott Company. --Teratornis (talk) 03:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! ! I will go check them out! --Deca2499 (talk) 03:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

y does this site suck so bad

I loved your reply to the above question at WP:HD#y does this site suck so bad. Even though the poster will probably never read it, I appreciate your educational answer and assumption of good faith along with a small measure of appropriate sarcasm. Touché! Thomprod (talk) 17:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Instead of getting defensive when someone "insults" our beloved Wikipedia ("When you impugn the honor of Wikipedia, you impugn the honor of all of France!" or something), I acknowledge that yes indeed, Wikipedia sucks for lots of people. Then I explained why. I know it came off as being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd like to think I was simply being factual. Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself project, and most people simply are not do-it-yourselfers. If someone who isn't a do-it-yourselfer wants to feel embarrassed about it, I suppose that's their choice. In any case, the ergonomic view of software is to acknowledge that all software sucks for somebody, and good design is about adapting tools to their users rather than the other way around. If people are having trouble with Wikipedia, we should at least be aware of it, and maybe we can think of some ways to make Wikipedia suck less for more people. --Teratornis (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Well-said. I agree. (And notice that I said "appropriate" sarcasm. <g>) Thomprod (talk) 18:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Response to your comment at my User Talk Page

Sorry for the late response to your comments and questions at my user talk page. Well, better late than never, right?! Cheers! --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 05:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
Just to say thanks for helping me quite substantially on the Help Desk! Adam (Manors) 17:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Teratornis, I'd just like to say Thanks for your support on my talk page. I will respond to all the messages on my page now. Adam (Manors) 21:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: User talk:UBX#Category suppression

Mets is slightly inactive. Just make the change yourself - he won't mind. Cheers, xenocidic (talk) 01:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for SeaMonkey help

Thank you for the help today. It was up only about an hour after I posted it. It worked! That is, you prompted me to find what in SeaMonkey corresponds to the Firefox Content Tab. In SM, the image manager is under "tools". Indeed, a gremlin (it couldn't have been me!) had blocked Wikipedia. Thank you, again. Greetings from Naples, Italy. I owe you a pizza, and take the rest of the day off!Jeffmatt (talk) 08:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. I think the gremlin explanation may be legitimate - with software getting so clever these days, it's easy to bump the wrong keys and trigger some massive chain of unintended consequences. A pizza sounds really good, but Naples is a long hike and swim from Ohio. If you're feeling really grateful, you might consider answering questions on the Help desk someday. We always need more volunteers to keep the response times short. It takes a lot of volunteers to cover the Help desk round the clock. It's something to consider if you get bored with other parts of Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 23:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Linking to a point within a page

Interesting discovery. It's logical, but I didn't have any idea that it was possible. One reason I missed this is because of the similarity of redirects to section headings, which DO get hardcoded. It raises the interesting alternative of adding "span" anchors in such cases, so that if a section heading is changed or a section is merged into another, the redirect doesn't need to be changed. (On the other hand, it DOES complicate the wikitext even further; probably best to pay the price of a bit more manual work in order to keep the working of things more obvious to the vast majority of editors.)

Anyway, thanks for keeping this issue alive, and helping to fix it. (I still have my heart set on some EIW:xxx shortcuts, for which the solution you found doesn't apply, but what you've done makes that a bit of a lower priority.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Shortcuts

Hello Teratornis, I just got my computer back from Repairs and just seen your messages. Yes I would be happy to create Shortcuts, please let me know how I can help with this. Adam (Manors) 21:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I just created and placed WP:COFAQ. Is this done correctly? Adam (Manors) 21:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I went ahead of myself and did the same for all the FAQ headers, hope it's OK. Adam (Manors) 21:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, those look good. (Be sure to type edit summaries when you edit any page.) I was sort of thinking to make all the redirects have names like WP:FAQCO, so they would group together with the FAQ pages themselves on the Special:Prefixindex/WP:FAQ page, but that isn't a huge deal. We can always add any number of shorcuts later that link to the same pages. Assuming we'll go with your shortcuts, the next step (somewhat laborious) is to add invisible name anchors and {{Shortcut}} templates to each FAQ entry. For each FAQ entry, make up a brief abbreviation for it, ideally something easy to remember, but keep it short enough to be easy to copy. I will add a first example now so you see how to do the rest. --Teratornis (talk) 22:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, see my diff and do something similar for each FAQ entry, adding name anchors off the shortcuts you just made for each FAQ page. The anchor names only have to be unique within each FAQ page, since you have separate shortcuts for each page. For example, I just made the section shortcut: WP:OFAQ#WHAT, but you could also have a #WHAT entry on another FAQ page, since it would base off a different shortcut page. Thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 22:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm on it now Teratornis, I just created a #WHO tag. Adam (Manors) 00:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Just done all of WP:OFAQ. Adam (Manors) 00:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
That's beautiful. Now the FAQ is becoming more useful as a tool for the Help desk. And note that linking to a entry in the FAQ is smaller than transcluding or substituting a standard response templates. I don't object to standard response templates (I was one of the people who called for writing more of them), but they do tend to bloat the Help desk page after a while. Lately I'm thinking maybe all we really need is to link to FAQ entries. It won't hurt a questioner to click on a link. Anyway, it's good to see you contributing constructively, especially after I "vouched" for you. --Teratornis (talk) 02:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I've now done shortcuts for all of WP:FAQ, WP:OFAQ and WP:RFAQ. Your right that simple shortcuts will make the page look a lot more simple - I like the standard response things but they make the page massive and hard to keep track of. I'm off now but I should be back in a while to do some more. Adam (Manors) 13:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Shortcut Template

Just to let you know I added {{R from Shortcut}} to all my Shortcuts. Adam (Manors) 10:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Good job. --Teratornis (talk) 05:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Ilities

I have raised some concern about the naming of the Ilities list on that article's talk page. Please leave your feedback. Thanks. —Latiligence (talk) 17:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Shortcut locations in the index

If I understood the discussion at the template talk page, It looks like the underlying cause of the problem was a software change (bug), which has been fixed. Since it seems fixed, I've put the shortcuts for subtopics back on the subtopic heading lines. I'm seeing a bit of misalignment in Firefox on the Mac (the subtopic shortcuts are on the right side of the page - good, since that was the problem - but not aligned with topic shortcuts, which are on the far right). But I'm not seeing the same problem in Safari on the Mac. I've not looked at IE7 and Firefox on a PC.

So - a question: What's your opinion of putting topic shortcuts back onto the same line as topic headings? (Thinking about it, I suppose that would solve any misalignment problems on the far right, in any browser.) I don't have a sense if it makes for cleaner edits - that is, easier to read wikitext - to have such shortcuts on their own line; of course, that is a bit inconsistent with subtopic shortcuts not being on their own line. And I'm probably not taking into account other considerations - which is why I'm very interested in your take on the situation.

(And, of course, thanks for working away at the problem until it got fixed; it wasn't a fatal problem but it certainly was annoying.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Whatever you want to do with the shortcuts is fine with me, as long as I end up with shortcuts I can copy and paste. The cosmetic problems are annoying, but not fatal. I don't think we actually fixed the horizontal alignment problems. See: User:Teratornis/Help desk notes#Shortcuts and User:Teratornis/Help desk notes#Shortcut template testing. In Firefox, the {{Shortcut compact}} template is not always floating to the far right. I made the {{Shortcut compact}} template to squeeze into vertically-constrained areas, such as on successive list lines, but the template is not working yet. Davidgothberg tried some things but has not fixed the problem yet. I should probably work up a request for help on WP:VPT where more people might know about templates and CSS. Thanks for letting me know the alignment looks different in different browsers. I've only been looking at it in Firefox on Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, where the horizontal alignment problems look identical. --Teratornis (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
The original problem (and if this wasn't clear, I apologize) was that shortcuts were ending up in the left side, totally disrupting the index. As it is now, Firefox on XP doesn't line up the shortcuts consistently on the right (as you noted). IE7 on XP, however, does. So there is something in the Firefox code - on all three platforms - that is different. I'm going to do some testing with no shortcuts having their own line, and see what difference that makes. (And yes, absolutely, the shortcuts need to be visible so they can be cut and pasted.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

FAQ

Hello Tera, just a quick note that I've done the damn long FAQ Page, contributing, and now I'm only left with 4/14 to complete. Slow and steady wins the race. Adam (Manors) 21:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. WP:COFAQ does look brutally long. I see lots of the entries could use links to the related entries in the Editor's index. Those could be useful to work in at some point. --Teratornis (talk) 21:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

A barnstar....

For this comment:

Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar
Your comment on the Help Desk regarding inexpediency of omitting details was not only timely, but truly inspiring. For that, this barnstar, the first I've ever given. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 21:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I thank you kindly. It seems I get about one barnstar per 300 edits on the Help desk. I need a lot of shots to hit the mark occasionally. I guess I'll stay away from stand-up comedy. --Teratornis (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Great line

I love this line "To paraphrase Archimedes, give me a place to stand, and I will offend the Earth" - I think I shall adopt it as my motto! DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Offending the Earth is quite easy - just get your facts right. --Teratornis (talk) 21:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

regarding toni jo heni

thanks for ur reply to my question. i do not want to write the article buti will give you link if you want to check it out for article.

http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/tonijo.html

like i said before she is pretty interesting to me and will have movie coming out next year about her life called the pardonBold text. i am using a work computer so can not creat the article myself. also unclear of copywight laws for the website i found. anything you can do would be great.

thanks, brandy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.41.204.3 (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

add to guidelines

Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed


You should add this to the Wikipedia guidelines so people can refer to it. Some CNN blogs written by CNN reporters are not really blogs but news stories. Carinsuranceismandatory (talk) 16:22, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Anybody can edit the Wikipedia guidelines, and that includes you. If your question refers to my comments in WP:HD#E-mail as a Source (eventual archive link: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2008 May 22#E-mail as a Source), note that I quoted from a footnote in WP:V#Notes and references, so that material is already in the WP:V policy ("verifiability" is a policy rather than a guideline). --Teratornis (talk) 17:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Help page patrol

Hi Teratornis. As you're listed listed on Wikipedia:Help Page Patrol, I thought you might be interested in a discussion regarding the use of the {{resolved}} template. Editors have argued that it slows the loading time down through the use of graphics in particular, and also it is sometimes incorrectly placed, leaving some editors with an incomplete or incorrect response. Please express your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:Help desk#Recent constant use of the resolved template. Thanks, and keep up the good work. PeterSymonds (talk) 17:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

huggle white list

in reply to:

  • How did you find out you were on this whitelist? Ideally, whatever you saw that informed you of this should also have contained some link explaining what it means. If the link is not there, then we should fix that if possible. Since Wikipedia is a do it yourself project (and probably the world's largest one), we need to make everything on Wikipedia as self-explanatory as possible. (Reference: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 June 5#'huggle whitelist')

I typed my user name in on Google (i have this same usernames on different websites) and then the huggle white list came up...but it was not a Wikipedia page, it was an inderpendent website. Ill get it if I can. Aflumpire (talk) 04:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. According to the link at the bottom of that page, the page is a mirror of Wikipedia:Huggle/Whitelist, and it looks like the one sentence of rather cryptic explanatory text comes from Wikipedia:Huggle/Whitelist/Header. Therefore we (i.e., Wikipedia users) can probably make this explanation more likely to inform people who stumble into the page or its mirrors by a Google search on their Wikipedia usernames, and who otherwise have no prior knowledge of Huggle. --Teratornis (talk) 18:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

thanks

Thanks Teratornis, I am getting the general idea slowly but surely and learning why Wikipedia needs to be as it is. What strikes me immediately is that people like you are willing to help out so quickly which is really encouraging. My article is coming on quielty in my sandbox and I am learning how to format it, ie why my "External Links" heading has been lined out and changed to "Headline text" or someting similar and also why there are dotted blue lined boxes suddenly appearing??Mark J Richards (talk) 08:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Dotted boxes can occur when you inadvertently use one of the formatting methods in Help:Wikitext examples#Just show what I typed. Also read WP:NPOV and WP:PEACOCK - you have some phrases that express subjective opinions, such as: "The interior is arguably one of the finest in Scotland." On Wikipedia, that's a no-no if it appears by itself. Instead, you have to reliably source that type of opinion to some qualified critic. For example, if you can find and quote a notable authority on the subject, then you can present that authority's opinions. Otherwise, some editor may challenge your apparent statement of fact. Subjective opinions are not necessarily facts, but it may be a fact that some notable person published a particular opinion, so we can cite that. --Teratornis (talk) 21:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


Thank you for your help

Hello Teratornis

Many thanks for you help on[2]. . The wiki system is so complex and I have no idea why but trying to find info on what to do is a nightmare? I am aware that the powerful & informed always win, but there is this pack mentality, that attack in a swarm after a few unpleasant experience I have see many many editor just walk away. When you’re trying to play the wiki game as an independent editor and then find that you have three others that will oppose you no matter waht, then to me its bully tactic or fear munga ring at its bets. For example [[3]]

The instigator or the ring leader is this User:ScienceApologist his record is appalling? His block log is a disaster see [4], but back he come to bully the new editors, who have little experience to adjust to this surprise attack. Even is user page is offensive and mean inn the extreme "I act to mitigate, redesign, and occasionally destroy the offerings of users who think that a particular "breakthrough" or "notable idea"..."[User:ScienceApologist]. Then to play he places a RETIRED notice up crossing out the RE all odd & planned? This behavior is not going to improve and at some time someone with guts, in the wiki system, will have to address this user and not leave it to people like us, who need time to understand how it all works. And thats sad!

It seems to be a new trend in the wiki world that the new editors are told you can play that the wiki way and then powerful have their fun & sport. The solution? Who can tell.

But again many thanks, Best Regards Vufors (talk) 05:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia can be a cruel place, but it all depends on what you try to do. If you choose to edit controversial articles, then you can expect people with strong points of view to use any available means to oppose you. If you decide to enter a gun fight, you'd better learn how to use all the available guns. Fortunately, most of Wikipedia is not like that. There are lots of boring articles on boring subjects where the vast majority of people agree on the facts. Lot of those boring articles need lots of work, so why don't you start with those? (See: WP:CLEANUP for lots of articles that are just dying to meet you.) Then when you learn enough about Wikipedia to take on the User:ScienceApologist aggressive types, you'll have a hand to play. On Wikipedia, knowledge is power - the only kind that matters. If you want to do stuff that requires power, you need to get a lot of knowledge first. This takes time and effort. You have to come back and read those instruction pages over again, day after day, until they start to sink in. Also check out other wikis - Wikipedia is hardly the only game in town, and probably not the best game for most people. If it's not fun to edit here, you can probably find a fun wiki to edit. But remember, on Wikipedia we have rules for just about everything, along with highly effective mechanisms to enforce the rule. But you have to make sure everything you do is on the right side of the rules, or you lose. The more you understand Wikipedia's rules, the more fun you can have here. Another way to learn the rules is to answer questions on the Help desk. I've recommended that to at least two other users who were having edit disputes with other users. On the Help desk, you can learn how to search and apply Wikipedia's rules to real problems that other users have. Once you get to the point where you can answer most of the questions on the Help desk, you will know enough about Wikipedia to hold your own here. See Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer if you want to really learn how this place works. --Teratornis (talk) 06:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I do agree that Wikipedia presents itself as being more welcoming than it actually turns out to be for lots of users. It's kind of like tossing candy all over a mine field. People see the enticing candy, but they only learn about the mines by stepping on them. For example, lots of new users jump straight into creating completely new articles from scratch. It's easy enough for new users to figure out how to create new articles, but not nearly as easy to learn ahead of time that a very high proportion of new articles by new users just end up getting deleted for violating various policies and guidelines that a new user is unlikely to understand. Wikipedia's philosophy seems to be that it's better to stay out of the way and just let some people make mistakes and end up wasting their time on edits that were doomed from the start - as long as some percentage of people figure out what to do, the system as a whole will continue to work and grow. --Teratornis (talk) 08:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Just another update and opportunity to thank you for the other wiki links, they have been very helpful. I understand what your saying in regards to the mine field, but wiki promotes this as a place open to all its free donate your cash concept. It's still not right, imagine work if thats what you and I had to put up with just because we were new on the job or just some powerless worker. I wonder if wiki will make the next 10 years... over the last 2 years I have seen more anti wiki than ever before. My University outlaws its use as a reference and by the looks of it, it is being attacked from outside everyday and by the storm troopers from within. But... I am still a supporter... for how long? Thanks for letting me talk it out, pop some of my steam.
In regards to the admin editor User:Kwamikagami, well I set out my argument in detail in the discussion with the official sources [5] and did the edit. I am trying to get a NPOV, the problem there are 12 theories competing for the explanation, but the 4 skeptics are POVpushing one the ETH hypnosis. The other is that it is about the word unidentified however their intro quotes the stats for identified but that theory has its own wiki page Identified_flying_object. No other edit will last NPOV right or wrong! Like I said that not wiki, well in my eyes. Oh well.
I did the edit at 06:42 [6]
120 second after that the admin User:Kwamikagami was on my edit and it was reverted [7]. No explanation no discussion nothing.
Not bad, some third eye... radar?
I reinserted my edit and asked politely (See Discussion - Discuss your reasons. Thanks) [8] This time he must of read my discussion, but never placed a comment at the location. But he did accept only part of my data. Small steps are always welcome. But then he went and insulted me… it seems that my writing is incoherent… Mmmmmm go figure that?
So I left a message over at his talk [9] setting out my grievances.
Well I got an apology and then a right royal face slap! But again small steps.
So it’s literally a Mexican Standoff.
So we now wait the return of User:ScienceApologist the wiki die hard to come back on line… Mind you reading between the lines it seems that User:Kwamikagami is also on a die hard mission. WISH LIST: This is when (a) senior admin needs to come in and say cool it or let someone follow the edits...? Guts, non bias, independence, above approach etc those real world traits that leaders take pride in.
But... Oh happy days!
Thats off my chest, off to bed, work in the morn... and some sleep its dark down under and cold.
Best Regards to you Vufors (talk) 13:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Incubator

I'm puzzling over this addition to the index. My conception of the index is that it isn't intended to help editors of other Wikimedia projects (Wikinews, etc.), and isn't intended to help editors of other-language Wikipedias. So it's unclear that the incubator entry falls within the "charter" of the index. In any case, Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia/About probably should be expanded to address this point. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:47, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Usually when I add an entry (or another shortcut, for that matter) to the Editor's index, it's in response to a question on the Help desk. In the case of the above edit, the question was WP:HD#New Language Wikipedia (eventual archive link: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2008 June 13#New Language Wikipedia). It didn't occur to me that my addition was pushing beyond the scope of the other links already under WP:EIW#Translate, given the presence of links already there which might involve translations from the English Wikipedia to other languages. I sometimes use the Editor's index as a place to stash links that come in handy on the Help desk, given that the index organizes them efficiently. I'm probably thinking more in terms of "Oh, this link could come in handy on the Help desk again, and this is the place I would logically look for it" rather than "What the Editor's index is not." If you think that particular link is pushing it too far, I can probably find the strength to soldier on, perhaps after a brief cry with a grief counselor. The Help desk does not necessarily determine the scope of the Editor's index, but in a sense it might sort of, because I routinely use the index to answer questions on the Help desk, and the Help desk is where Wikipedia editors go when they have questions. Over time, the index might sort of be the comprehensive answer to the Help desk. If one chooses to view it that way, then we would be letting editors themselves determine what they need in an Editor's index, by reading their questions. --Teratornis (talk) 03:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
No, I think you've got it pretty much right on - if an answer at the help desk includes a link to a reference/information page, with the exception of such things as topical Wikiprojects, then such a page belongs in the editor's index. In this case, an alternative response (certainly, less helpful) could have been "This is the place to ask questions related to the English Wikipedia; for questions about other language versions, see m:Meta:Babel or m:Metapub."
Having said that, I also agree that since Wikipedia is not paper, there isn't any reason not to try to be as inclusive/extensive as possible, in the index. So I'll ponder on this a bit - I'm thinking of something like an "Other language Wikipedias", and "Sister projects", plus moving the link you added to both these new topics. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:55, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

ping

Hello, Teratornis. You have new messages at Template talk:Archive box collapsible.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

What is or is not encyclopedic content nowadays?

Based on your excellent discourse on the Help Desk page about cabinetmaking software and the issues to which it led, I'd like you to take a look at the discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 June 18#National Express West Midlands route 283. While I am the deleting admin being reviewed, I think the issues involved are deep-rooted enough that this request does not constitute canvassing. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

For being fluffy

The fluffstar of fluffiness
For being one of the fluffiest, most helpful people I've seen with the new and confused, particularly for setting up Grimfilm's userpage. 79.66.22.23 (talk) 20:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to assume this is a good thing. I hadn't heard of fluffstars before. Search the Wikipedia: namespace for: fluffstar finds nothing. Maybe this is new. --Teratornis (talk) 02:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Admin

I just spent ten minutes looking at your contribs and history. Why aren't you an admin? Tan ǀ 39 18:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Because I have not passed a request for adminship (for starters, no one has nominated me, and I feel no urge to self-nominate). See User:Teratornis/Notes#Request for Adminship. --Teratornis (talk) 18:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
If User:Yellowdesk is MIA on this, I'd be happy to write up a nomination for you. Let me know. Tan ǀ 39 18:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
It appears that User:Yellowdesk hasn't mentioned anything in a while. You are welcome to nominate me if you'd like, or perhaps you and Yellowdesk can co-nominate me. --Teratornis (talk) 21:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


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