User talk:Tbrittreid/Archive/2008/March

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Bugs' Bonnets

Hey, Ted! I thought I'd go ahead and ask for your assistance. I know that you and I are both Bugs Bunny fans; with that said, would you mind stopping by and expanding the new Bugs' Bonnets article I just created. It needs a lot more work, work that I might not be able to provide, given that I don't yet have the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5. Any expansion is appreciated. Thanks in advance! Cinemaniac (talk • contribs • critique) 01:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Doctor Strange

Hi. Just want to ask you to give a quick read at WP:CITE#Shortened notes. "Sources" isn't a standard subhead. And the "Notes" section in this example uses the term "reflist" the name of the section is still "Notes" (alternately, "Footnotes"). Thanks. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I wish you would not use such an abrupt tone, particularly when you go against established guidelines and policies. Also, Wikipedia editors do not point to other articles to bolster our arguments since so many articles are misformatted. We can only go by policy. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your kinder tone; it is appreciated. I guess we could centralize this at the Doctor Strange page; my thinking was that it might have been less public and more comfortable for you to do this your talk page.

Honestly, Wikipedia policy isn't arbitrary in that it's product of consensus that in some cases goes back years and has been thoroughly debated; this doesn't mean policy doesn't adapt and evolve, and when it does, that, too is the result of debate and consensus. Consistency of formatting is important, and with literally over one million articles, there going to be non-standard formatting. Whether any one style of non-standard formatting is "the majority," I'm not sure either of us can say — I can point to a hundred articles in a matter of minutes that follow policy. I think that's what we should be striving for. Otherwise, there's a hodgepodge. I'm not sure that's a better way to go.

Again, I appreciate your discussing this. I certainly don't go around as the Format Police, and really only concern myself with things in WikiProject Comics and a few pages outside it on my Watchlist, so maybe I could offer the compromise that you'll let WPC follow policy, and if you don't want to follow policy elsewhere, I will be completely hands-off! Fair? --Tenebrae (talk) 20:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

And thank you for being a collegial peer! Happy Wiki'ing! --Tenebrae (talk) 20:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

My bad

My error - I meant to say 1974 for Invasion of the Dinosaurs (and of course by "different format" I mean the fact only black and white and/or different broadcast resolution versions exist from those originally broadcast). Thanks for checking with me, though. I'll go fix the error ... and the typo, too! 23skidoo (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Elmer Fudd vandalism

Hey there, Ted! I've noticed that, in the last couple of days, there's been some serious vandalism done to the Elmer Fudd article, in which some IP tried to be funny and changed all the r's and l's in the article to "w"'s. Unfortunately, due to conflicting edits, I couldn't undo the vandal's edits. I've been able to manually restore the lead to its previous form, but I don't have enough time right now to fix the article as a whole. I've already warned the IP who did this nonsense, so d'you mind fixing the entire article? Sorry, but thanks! Cinemaniac (talk • contribs • critique) 02:41, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Good job, and thanks! I caught a couple or two unnecessary "w"'s left in the article, but I took care of them. :-) I would've done the bulk of the work myself, but at the time when I relayed you the message above, I was running out of time for that day's session. Thanks, again! --Cinemaniac (talk • contribs • critique) 02:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Spring in the Air!

Happy First Day of Spring!

Just wishing you a wonderful First Day of Spring {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}! ~~~~

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are entering the season of Autumn not Spring then I wish you a happy First Day of Autumn {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}!
To spread this message to others, add {{subst:First Day Of Spring}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Cinemaniac (talk • contribs • critique) 03:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Diffs

Hello. I read your note [1] on WP:AN/I where you mentioned having issues with diffs. Try this:

go to the Zoe Heriot article
click history at the top of the article
click the left radio button beside the edit dated 11:47, 16 September 2007 by 83.104.34.185 (note how this makes a right radio button appear by the newer edits to the article)
click the right radio button beside the edit dated 11:53, 16 September 2007 by HungryHorace
click the "Compare selected versions" button at the top

You are now looking at the diff (or difference) for HungryHorace`s edit to the article. Hope this helps. Good luck! --Kralizec! (talk) 20:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

What web browser are you using? On IE and Firefox, the radio buttons appear in between "(cur) (last)" and the time/date of the individual edits. I did not say this in my previous message, but the URL of the diff is normally used your text here, which in wiki code looks like

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zoe_Heriot&diff=158306327&oldid=158305394 your text here]

Thanks, Kralizec! (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

But you do not see the two columns of radio buttons between (last) and the date/time links on the history tab? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In that case the issue must be a compatibility problem with your browser. I just check the Zoe Heriot article history with two versions of IE and one of Firefox, and I see heaps of radio buttons rather than just two black dots. --Kralizec! (talk) 21:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

That is fine, but if you do not see what the rest of us do, then something must be wrong with your browser. Perhaps something in your IE has gotten corrupted or damaged? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

But do you see the links labelled "cur" and "last" in the page history? You can get diffs from those, even if you don't have the radio buttons. (Although you would only be able to compare each version to the previous version or the current version, not able to compare just any two version with each other.) By the way, the radio buttons are little circles just to the right of the links labelled "last". --Coppertwig (talk) 12:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on Doctor Who talk

Hi. I stopped by Talk:Doctor (Doctor Who) and read some of your contributions. While you have some genuine points to make, I'm afraid that the way you express yourself does not make it easy for other editors to engage with you, and hence makes it unlikely either that you will persuade them, or vice versa. May I suggest that you read these essays: Beware of the tigers, The Truth, and The Most Important Thing Possible? Some reflection on those might help you to dial your rhetoric back a notch or two and allow you to collaborate more effectively. Cheers, Bovlb (talk) 21:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Speaking as an un-involved editor (your post [2] to WP:AN/I a couple of hours ago was my first interaction with you), I feel that Bovlb is pretty spot-on here. Likewise, I suspect that most Wikipedia editors would view your rather snarky reply [3] to Bovlb as prima facie evidence of this. --Kralizec! (talk) 22:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I could also suggest No angry mastodons. In particular, your responsibility to be civil and respectful is unilateral and it becomes more important, nor less, if other editors express disagreement or if you perceive yourself to be the recipient of incivility. Please stop and think about that the next time you find yourself using the "but he did it first" defence or offering speculations about what flaw may have led other editors to disagree with you. When you next respond, please indicate whether you have read the four essays I recommended. Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 23:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Diffs

I replied to your message at Help talk:Diff. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Now I've replied at User talk:Coppertwig#Diff problem. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I posted this at Help talk:Diff [4]. Does that help? (The "radio buttons" that you can see change when you click next to a particular Diff.) --Newbyguesses - Talk 00:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I replied further on my talk page (User talk:Coppertwig#Diff problem). --Coppertwig (talk) 22:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot & capitalization in tags

I have seen in several articles this bot (and perhaps other[s]) changing the capitalization of the key word in tags requesting citations, clarity, etc. The most recent one is in King Kong (comic). What possible difference can this make? The change certainly doesn't cause the tags to display any differently in the articles. Honestly, I am expecting a reply opening something like, "The difference is...." It's just that seeing these when I check the edit history of an article I am interested in/working on bugs me, and if I understood the point, they would slide right by me. Otherwise, I wonder if there isn't some better use for the energy/server space/whatever (that should give you some idea of how little I understand of how websites work from the technical perspective, and that I am wide open to a justification of this activity). Thanks. Ted Watson (talk) 20:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that the parameter "date" is valid and will put the item in a hidden category, in this case Category:Articles with unsourced statements since February 2008, whereas "Date" is invalid. 97 times out of 100 Smackbot simply has to add a date parameter, three percent of the time it needs to fix up an incorrect date, misspelled parameter etc. Rich Farmbrough, 20:56 24 March 2008 (GMT).

Yes, SB does that too :- it canonicalises certain templates. But it should only do it when it is dating a template in an article. In a very rare case, someone will manually date the tag or remove it before SB gets there. (I've only seen this once, but it must have happened more often.) Rich Farmbrough, 21:38 24 March 2008 (GMT).

Happy Rabbit

Fixed, until he comes back again, if ever. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 22:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! I apologize for not being able to participate in this latest revision; I've been rather busy in this week, and will remain so until the coming weekend. I see that you two are doing more than a fine job without my assistance, though. :-) Cinemaniac (talk • contribs • critique) 02:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Alistaire Stuart

Carelessness, basically. I originally had it linking to "Alistair Stuart", but that was a dead link. So I found the misspelling and corrected the link, but due to distractions, I forgot to correct the visible text in the piped link.

Why was it a piped link in the first place? Because the original text before I made the link just said Alistair, and I thought it was smoother to leave it that way (his surname having already been established with Alysande). Again due to distractions, I forgot I was doing this, and added his surname to the visible text anyway. Fixed it now; thanks for pointing it out. Daibhid C (talk) 22:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)